Remote Nation

What is the best project management tool for businesses & remote teams? We get this question a lot, and it’s something that’s critical to all of our projects at FullStack. We’ve used a variety of tools over the years starting with our own home-grown application that we called “Workflo”. Eventually, we moved onto some open source tools like Trac and Redmine. We’re now running things on SaaS offerings because the quality of available tools has picked up significantly in recent years.

Each project we work on is completely different, but proper project management has certain fundamentals that need to be addressed, no matter what tool used.

For these reasons, we’ve decided to create a series of different categories (plus winners) allowing you to pick the best tool for your needs.
We’ve divided our review into the following categories: Large Projects, Small Projects, Free, Personal & Overall Winner.

***We know there’s many, many great project management services out there, but we just haven’t had the time to properly use them all.  If there’s something you think we HAVE to try, please write in the comments!

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Pivotal Tracker

Pros

1. Points – Pivotal makes assigning points to stories very easy & gives project managers many different options to choose from for point systems. (Fibonacci, standard, etc)
2. Linking b/w Cards- Pivotal assigns id #’s to each card, making linking very easy b/w various cards.
3. Integrations – Pivotal integrates with almost every other service you might use in development (github, hipchat, slack,etc)
4. Multiple WorkSpaces – If your team is large and has multiple projects, the Multiple workspace features allows you to jump b/w the different ones.
5. Velocity + Volatility – Pivotal has many tracking features of points, allowing sophisticated teams to measure / optimize their workflow, identify bottlenecks, and work smarter.
6. UX / UI + Flow- We love Pivotal’s automatic movement of cards for sprints from “Backlogs” into “Current”, the limited options, and simplistic feel of it.
7. Reports: Pivotal gives users the ability to create burn down charts & other awesome projections easily and succinctly.

Negatives:

1. Cost- Pivotal charges per user, so for large teams- or for teams that need to have non-developers ‘monitor’ the progress, the price can get quite high quite quickly
2. Break in Period- There’s a break in period to get used to the flow & general look / feel of the board.  A full board can look quite intimidating at first glance
3. Creating Cards – Creating cards can take a long time since there’s so many fields.  Not a problem for important projects, but unneeded for simple or test projects
4. Small Cards – The actual size of the cards is small, which is not a problem for viewing the board, but is very annoying when creating the cards for the first time.  We really wish creating the cards happened in a larger box.

Overall:

We’re really big fans of Pivotal Tracker for project management, but the developers we work with also prefer it over other tools we’ve tried it in the past.  Pivotal has it’s share of weaknesses, and it isn’t the fastest tool to use, but large projects w/ a big scope generally won’t have cards that need to be re-written, or moved around quickly.  If your company or project is looking for something consistent and methodical so you can just focus on development, Pivotal should work great for you!

Jira

Pros:

1. Feature Rich – Jira & Jira Agile has a tool for almost any project you could possibly think of.
2. Well Known – Many people have used Jira at some point, so there’s not much of a break-in period.  At the very least, most people have used one of their other, non project management products.
3. Atlassian – Jira is apart of Atlassian, which is essentially a Salesforce for developers.  They have a different service for everything a team (large or small) of developers would ever need.
4. Flexible – So many features allows users to stick w/ Jira / Atlassian, and use different types of boards w/ different methodologies (Agile,Kanban,etc) without changing services.
5. Stable – We haven’t really noticed much downtime in any of the projects where we’ve used Jira.

Negatives:

1. Too Busy – The actual board itself is very busy w/ lots of features, which takes away focus quite easily.  While there are ways we can minimize this, we
2. Too many features– There are SO many features that it’s easy to get lost as you’re trying to create the perfect environment for your team and projects
3. Cost – Like Pivotal Tracker, it can get quite pricey quite fast.

Overall:

Overall, Jira is a solid option for many teams, but it’s hard to transition into after using other software.  Unfortunately, Jira is on the ‘More is better” side of the fence, and they have an overwhelming amount of features.  This produces the expected result of confusion, training manuals, and less focus on the core features from their internal team.  Hence, if you’re looking to switch and don’t see your company switching again for a long time, or already use another Atlassian product, then Jira will be a great fit.  Otherwise, we believe there are better options.

Basecamp

Positives:

1. Simple Interface – Basecamp has a very inviting look & feel to it,
2. Well Known – Basecamp has been around since the early 2000’s, which is quite a bit longer than the other services on this list.
3. Good for non-technical. – Basecamp can be great for those who are non-technical and need a project management tool for non ‘app’ related things
4. All-in-one features– Basecamp has chat, calendars, messages, etc.  It’s swiss-army knife, but doesn’t go crazy (like Jira)
5. Built by customers – 37Signals has always built their product w/ their community’s feedback, so basecamp could be the perfect solution for what your team needs.

Negatives:

1. Too Simple – For sophisticated & large development teams, Basecamp is simply not robust enough.  If your team has a dedicated project manager, scrum master, product manager, etc- there’s going to be a lot of things that the team will need to measure against, but Basecamp won’t be able to provide.
2. Tracking – Similar to above, Basecamp is light on the # of tracking and measuring tools.
3. Non-Professional– This is about ‘nit-picky’ as possible, but Basecamp’s warm and inviting interface might give some clients the wrong impression of it’s power.

Overall:

Basecamp is a great option for both small and large teams, and could be a perfect fit for agencies that don’t need to get too technical w/ their projects – designed focused firms for instance.  Either way, we definitely suggest Basecamp as an option for teams & projects leads to check out.

Trello

Positives:

1. So Simple! – Trello is so ridiculously simple to use it’s funny.  We’ve gotten so good at it that we can create an entire set of user stories + sprints for a large project in under an hour.
2. Well Known – Trello is becoming well known w/ non technical people, which can be great for input from clients.
3. Drag-Based Interface -Trello has a very simple point and drag interface, which also carries over to their free iOS and Android apps.
4. Communication It’s very easy to write messages & get team member’s attention through their @ feature + assigning cards to different people.
5. Shortcuts – Trello has some nifty shortcodes which allows power users to create cards extremely fast.
6. Cost – It’s free!  The premium & business tiers have a few more features, but it’s mostly organizational things.

Negatives:

1. Too Simple– Trello has many features that work for a variety of projects, but it starts to become too simple for teams larger than 5.
2. Tracking– Similarly to basecamp, Trello leaves a lot to be desired for teams that need to measure & optimize their output.  Trello wasn’t made for those types of projects, so it does prevent itself from reaching the entire PM market, but tha

Overall:

We love trello!  We’ve used it for managing projects, sales pipelines, content for our RemoteNation, around the house things, personal study projects, and even planning a bachelor party :).  They biggest downfall of trello (that it doesn’t have the sophisticated tools as Jira or Pivotal) is a blessing in disguise because they stay true to what the product is: a super simple and fast project management service!

Asana

Positives:

1. Well Funded – Asana has raised over $38 Million (we’re not sure how…) so it’ll be around and they’ll be able to keep innovating
2. Content Holder– Asana’s ‘project’ categorization style is great at holding large amounts of content for different projects
3. Works– We’ve never really noticed bugs, or really anything wrong w/ the actual functionality of asana.
4. Calendar– They have a great calendar which is good for collaboration.
5. TeamWork– Asana is built for teams, so teamwork is a huge part of its workflow.

Negatives:

1. Not Intuitive – Asana has never felt truly intuitive, and it took us awhile to get used to it.
2. Pricing- Asana has a free tier that will be enough for most users, but the premium features can get quite expensive even w/ a small # of users.
3. How it Works – Asana has invested quite a bit of time & money into their how it works videos, pictures and tutorials; proving that the app is not simple to use.

Overall:

Asana can be a perfect option, but it’d take a very specific project or team.  We assume that it’d be hard for most teams to switch to Asana if they’re already using something else; but, after looking at their portfolio we noticed most were startups so it was probably their first project management service.  Either way, solid tool that is something your team should try in some context.

Other Great Options (that we haven’t had the time to use)

Our #3 might be a head scratcher to some, but it all is based around our main criteria for greatness in this category, convenience & speed. We’ve decided to not select one application, but a few that are built into some very popular other services.

1. Clarizen – Clarizen’s execution platform gives your whole team a centralized environment to manage projects, tasks, resources, budgets, as well as associated emails, chat and documents.  However, we find it to be a bit clunky and non-intuitive.  It could probably use an entire UX facelift, but that would disrupt all of it’s current users
2. Podio – Podio  lets you get work done with your co-workers and clients on a social work platform that you make your own.  They claim to have over ½ million users, but we’re not sure if that’s accurate… The platform has a ton of features, and seems like a hybrid of Jira + Assana.
3. Wrike– is all-in-one project management software that helps remote and co-located teams get more things done together.  We like Wrike’s central focused layout (everything is in the center..) because it forces the user to focus on the task at hand.  This makes multi-tasking harder, but that’s exactly what they’re trying to prevent.

Best Project Management for Small Teams

1st Place: Trello

Trello is a perfect fit for small teams that do not need sophisticated tracking tools and metrics that pivotal or jira provide, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful and perfect for small teams.  Trello shines in communication, UX, and their super simple interface which allows teams to jump into Trello immediately.  Also, we think features such as chat, calendars, and video conferencing are almost always better when you use a standalone app.

2nd Place: Basecamp

We considered many different options for our #2, but ultimately decided on Basecamp because it’s features are streamlined for small teams, and it can be used as an ‘all-in-one’ tool with its: chat, calendar, and many more features.  Finally, basecamp works really well for storing documents, so for a small team w/ a limited amount, it makes choosing Basecamp that much easier.

Best Project Management for Large Teams

1st Place: Pivotal Tracker

We use Pivotal for many of our large projects because it does exactly what we need, agile project management for large projects.  Pivotal is great when forming our sprints, release planning, and daily standups, but the ease of developer communication amongst cards & their integrations makes tracking progress easy for everyone involved.

2nd Place: Jira

We might get some pushback with choosing Pivotal Tracker over Jira for our #1, but we find Jira to have too many features ‘out of the box’.  Jira comes packed w/ many features that 99% of teams won’t end up using, but there’s a solid use case for everything included with Pivotal.  The price differences are nominal, & they have the same integrations, but we just ultimately find Jira to be too cluttered.

Best “Cost Sensitive” Options

We understand that startups, small businesses, and individuals typically like to save their resources (aka $$) for other essentials, when ‘free’ services are available. However, the services on the following list shouldn’t be looked at as inferior as to the other options. Rather, we think that the features list + the free aspects still make these excellent options for users in the need for video conferencing solutions.

Tie for 1st Place: Trello

Since trello is free and has all necessary functionality for teams, it’s an easy #1 for us.  While Trello does have a premium level, the only thing that’s really beneficial is the team organization, but that’s a ‘nice to have’ feature.  Further, there’s a “Scrum for Trello” for chrome (you can find by searching in the extensions) which allows teams to point their stories if they care to do so.

2nd Place: Basecamp

Basecamp came in as our 2nd choice because of their many features + their unique pricing setup, which could be a perfect fit for very large teams w/ a small # of projects.  Unlike almost every other service, Basecamp charges by the # of projects, NOT the # of users in a profile. Theoretically, a team of 50 could use Asana for $20 a month, VS $300 a month for Pivotal Tracker.

3rd Place: Asana

Asana has basic tier (up to 30 users) which is the only tier we’ve ever needed to use.  As we listed above, minus the quirks of Asana, they provide almost every tool a small or large project would need.  Certain things like giving points to stories for Agile teams is missing, but we’re sure you can mask this problem by creating your own system of labels in Asana.

*Bonus* Best PM Software for Personal Projects

Checklists and ‘to-do’ lists are quite common for a typical person, even if they’ve never touched a software project in their life.  These types of needs are quite different than one of a project manager for a lare software project with a large team, but that’s not to say the following are perfect to manage your life 🙂

1st Place: Trello

Trello wins again for its simplicity, ability to add photos, rapid creation of cards through shortcuts, and the intuitive UX/UI of the app.  As you can tell, we’re big proponents of trello, but for good reason, it has a ton of necessary features, but they don’t pile on the unnecessary like most of the other options on this guide.

2nd Place: Todoist

Todoist is a well known and powerful checklist creator built for a non-technical crowd.  Todoist has 100’s of use cases, but what it’s really great at is having a simple & clean user interface to get work done quickly in an organized manner.  Also, for power-users, Todoist has an easy folder system for categorizing larger projects or initiatives you might be working.  Finally, Todoist also has a nifty iOS and Android app, and more features on the way!

3rd Place: Checkli

Checkli is an even simpler form of Todoist, and places great emphasis on the task at hand.  Checkli has limited features, but is a great tool for creating simple daily to-do lists (grocery lists, chores, etc) but could also be used for larger personal initiatives.

Overall Winner: Trello!

We use Trello every single day for small, medium, large and personal projects.  It’s free, take < 2 minutes to create a workable board for a project w/ user stories + cards, and is simple enough for even the least tech-savvy client you’ve ever had 🙂  While some teams have to be able to measure and get reports on their progress each week, we feel as though this is still doable (not cleanly) through the “Agile for Trello” extension in the Chrome store + a few minutes of busy work on the PM.  Overall, there’s really not any core features missing from Trello (that can’t be found packaged in another tool we already use) so it was an easy choice for our team.

Please let us know your thoughts!  The Project Management Software industry is super competitive, so we know there’s a few we’ve left out!

What is the best video conferencing tool for business & remote teams? We get this question a lot, and it’s a tool we use for the majority of our day, everyday. For a long time, it was hard to find a good video conferencing tool that actually added value to the interactions of a remote team. Now there are finally a number of viable options serving different needs, so we’ve created a series of categories winners, allowing you to pick the best tool for your needs. To get the most out of your video conferencing solution, we recommend checking out our article on the best audio and video setup for remote teams.

We’ve divided our review into the following categories: Large Teams, Small Teams, Cost Sensitive, 1 on 1’s & overall winner.

Best Video Conferencing Tools for Large Teams

1st Place: Zoom.us

At FullStack, we typically have monthly release planning meetings with our biggest clients.  Our biggest client, Higher Learning Technologies, asked if their department heads could be on the call, in addition to the development team. We were already at about 9 people at that point without the other department’s, and the Google Hangout quality was not sufficient and had a hard limit of 10 participants. After extensive research, we found that Zoom.us was the best for large teams because of:

Positives:

1. Quality of the Audio – Light on the background noise, and very few problems throughout our many calls.
2. Quality of the Video – Consistent video
3. Chat functionality- an easy to use chat if you need to share links to drive folders or URLS
4. Recordable – Users are able to download the entire conference (with Audio + Video) for later reference or to share if people weren’t present.
5. Screen sharing – Zoom also allows users to share screens, great for large conference calls.
6. Up to 100 video people on a call

Negatives:

1. Cost. Zoom is relatively cheap if you use the service every day, or @ least on a consistent pattern, or if you’re not paying for it 🙂

2nd Place: Skype

In second place is Skype, but it seems as though Microsoft is making Skype a priority once again and the feature set & price is starting to improve. Most people in the US have a skype account (even if they barely use it) but it’s much more popular across the world. Skype was the first VOIP startup and defined the category, but has been pretty light on its extra features.

Positives:

1. Best Video & Sound Quality
2. Popular – Most people already have it installed on their computer, so there’s rarely a messy installation process.
3. Mobile – Skype has both iOS and Android apps, allowing you to continue (or begin) your call through your phone.
4. Price – Free!  Skype recently made their group calls free
5. Screen Sharing – Skype has the capability to share your calls w/ others.

Negatives:

1. App Based – Skype is a desktop application, so even though most people have it already installed, there’s some friction to getting a call started.
2. Limit on Group size – Like Hangouts, there’s a limit of 10 people per call.

Overall, Skype is an awesome option, but there were some things that are better suited for large teams / conferences with Zoom. Interestingly, Skype is creating a feature that ‘instant translates’ your language into another if you’re speaking w/ someone from a different country.  We can’t wait to use that!

3rd Place: Google Hangouts

Our 3rd place finisher, Google Hangouts, is also the most convenient. Google Hangouts has great audio & video, but is very inconsistent w/ quality. We’ve had calls that were flawless from start to finish, but also seem to be asking each other ‘Can you hear me” for a minute (of wasted time) at the start of about one third of our calls (Quick Tip = We find that taking your headset out & plugging it back in usually fixes this). Although Hangouts is more reliable when headsets aren’t used, audio quality suffers.

Hangouts does have many features, such as chat, sharing a screen & inviting people via a phone number.  There’s also some fun features that allow you to add faces and mustaches (for example) w/ their Draw feature.

Positives:

1. Web Based
2. Mobile App
3. Screen Share
4. Extra Features

Negatives:

1. Quality w/ Volume – The biggest flaw of Google Hangouts is that the quality of both the audio and video diminishes w/ the # of people on the call, and we routinely see people that drop off.
2. There’s a max of 10 people on a Group Video Call. 

Hence, the stability most of the time and the convenience factor (it’s a total web application, nothing needs to be installed) makes Hangouts our 3rd place.

 Honorable Mention: AnyMeeting

We recently tried AnyMeeting which has a lot of good features, but is ultimately lacking in elite quality of audio. Anymeeting has 2 options, free (ad-supported) and paid, but if you can put up w/ the ads, the free version should be all you need.

Positives:

1. Free – Ad supported version allows you to do almost everything you need.
2. Up to 200! users on a call
3. Features – ScreenSharing, chats, custom surveys, etc.

Negatives:

1. Quality – Not the best
2. Inverted camera – This is nitpicky, but all the other services use the same angle, and this really throws me off 😛

Overall, if AnyMeeting invested more into the sound quality and made the actual video screen sizes larger, this could compete w/ any of our Top 3.

Best Video Conferencing for Small Teams

1st Place: Google Hangouts

Hangouts is the winner because the primary negative isn’t a factor (audio & video quality diminishing w/  the # of people). The convenience factor of most people having Gmail, or having gmail as their work email, outweighs the quality of Skype. It’s very easy to schedule a calendar invite (through google calendar) and then use that link for everyone.

2nd Place: Skype

In a close second, Skype’s superior quality shines once again. We can safely assume that small teams have each other’s skype names, and can continue using their skype ‘group’ for calls & to hold all their chats. 

Overall, it’s hard for us to really recommend any other services simply because of the convenience, quality, features, and lack of negatives of Skype + Hangouts.

Best “Cost Sensitive” Video Conferencing Solutions

We understand that startups, small businesses, and individuals typically like to save their resources (aka $$) for other essentials, when ‘free’ services are available. However, the services on the following list shouldn’t be looked at as inferior as to the other options. Rather, we think that the features list + the free aspects still make these excellent options for users in the need for video conferencing solutions.

Tie for 1st Place: Skype

Skype is once again a winner because of it’s premier quality, popularity, and features.  For most situations, skype’s product suite is a perfect fit

Tie for 1st Place: AnyMeeting

AnyMeeting is a very close second to skype because it has almost every feature a user would need to host large scale conference calls (up to 200), have good quality team calls / chats or to share screens.  While the ads can be somewhat annoying after awhile, the ability to have 200 people for an unlimited time is an extremely great value and makes up for any shortcomings.

3rd Place: Google Hangouts

Hangouts is in 3rd place because the quality does not compete w/ Anymeeting, nor their features w/ AnyMeeting. The convenience of Hangouts is always a huge plus, but we can assume that those who are cost-sensitive don’t mind taking one extra step to get a feature they need or have a problem with ads.

Best Video Conferencing for “1 on 1” Meetings

1 on 1’s, or just quick chats between two people are definitely the most common type of video call or chat, but really come down to two things: convenience & speed. Sometimes a quick 5 minute call is infinitely better than a 20 minute email, but it’s obviously based on the situation.  For this review, we’ve assumed that the two users speak to each other frequently.

1st Place: Hangouts

This is the only category where we find that Hangouts is a clear #1 and shines above the rest.  Most of the quick 1on1’s we have are the result of a miscommunication through chatting, either on Slack or Hangouts, and it’s incredibly easy to stop chatting and just ask “hey, want to have a quick call to figure this out?”, & press the video call. However, one big drawback of Hangouts Calls is that all chats during the call are not saved. We’re not sure why this feature isn’t updated, but we’re sure google is on it 🙂

2nd Place: Skype

The consistently awesome Skype jumps into the #2 spot here, simply because our common chat situation which we explained in our Hangouts review.  However, if you typically have Skype open on your desktop, and don’t use hangouts, then we suggest Skype as your #1. 

3rd Place: Built-in Service

Our #3 might be a head scratcher to some, but it all is based around our main criteria for greatness in this category, convenience & speed. We’ve decided to not select one application, but a few that are built into some very popular other services.

1. Hipchat – If you only use Hipchat as your communication tool, then you’ll love how quickly you’ll be able to do a Hipchat Video.   The quality is average, but it’s acceptable for 10 minute calls and under.  The only drawback is that it’s only available w/ their premium package.
2. Facetime – We’ve only used Facetime a handful of times, mostly when one of our other tools aren’t working.  Facetime should be getting more popular since Apple has worked it into Yosemite (their new Operating System Version) and people are just getting the hang of it.  The biggest positive is that many people have Macbook’s for work (in the tech world) as well as an iphone.  However, the biggest drawback is that it’s not available for those without Apple products.
3. Slack– TBD – Slack recently acquired screenhero, which we’ve used a few times in the past.  We currently use Slack as our main chat application, and can safely assume that the integration w/  screenhero will make video calls seamless.  Slack might move up in the charts soon, but only time will tell!

Overall Winner 

Google Hangouts! There are many different use cases for having a video chat, but the convenience, cost, quality, and built-in functionality of Hangouts makes it the best overall choice for teams both big and small. We did consider Skype because of their superior quality for video and audio, but Skype didn’t have the overall feature set of Hangouts.

We do expect that this list will change over time, so please let us know what you think of our rankings!