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!

Ever wonder what can help you ignore those pesky distractions and help you hunker down with your work at home? Well, research shows that putting on your trusty headphones might do the trick. While many of us need complete silence in order to work productively, putting on the right type of music may help you reach the finish line.

However, finding the “right type” of music can be tricky. There are different types of work out there, which call for different kinds of music. We explored a number of studies on the connections between work productivity and music. Throughout these studies, two distinct styles of work continued to pop up: tedious work and creative work. We summarized some important findings to help you reach that harmonious sweet spot between work and music.

Music for Tedious Tasks

Some work may not always call for significant brain power and it’s during these times when the music you love can come in handy.

In 2005, Teresa Lesiuk of University of Windsor released a study that focused on the effects of music on work productivity. Data was collected from 56 software designers who reported how music affected their work in their respective work environments during a five week period.

“Results indicated that state positive affect and quality-of-work were lowest with no music, while time-on-task was longest when music was removed. Narrative responses revealed the value of music listening for positive mood change and enhanced perception on design while working” said Lesiuk.

Her findings support that listening to music you like improves your mood and morale, which can increase your productivity. The music serves as a healthy distraction for when you are slogging through paperwork. So if you see your inbox is chalked full with new emails, by all means, crank it to 11.

Suggestions

Before you play your music of choice, make sure it is something that you already know. Listening to a new song, whether it is good or bad may distract you from completing your work. In other words, familiarity is the key here. If you are dying to listen to that new song by your favorite artist, use that desire as a reward and motivate yourself by listening to their earlier songs while working.

Music for Creativity

On the other end of the spectrum there’s creative work. Creative work requires a specific kind of music.  Clearly, you don’t want music that will be distracting to your creative process, but sound can still be a creative stimulus for your brain.  An effective medium between total silence and loud rhythmic music is soft, ambient music.

A study published in 2012 shows how ambient noise can help people with creativity. Through five experiments they observed the exact number of decibels when ambient noise and music can be beneficial to workers and their creativity.

The authors summarized, “Results from five experiments demonstrate that a moderate (70 dB) versus low (50 dB) level of ambient noise enhances performance on creative tasks and increases the buying likelihood of innovative products.”

The sounds arouse the brain, which leads to creativity. It acts as a constant stimulant for your brain, which then makes other noises, like your dishwasher, not as distracting. But, if the music or noise is too loud it can distract you, inhibiting the creative process.

The authors said “A high level of noise (85 dB), on the other hand, hurts creavity.”

Suggestions

So if you are trying to get some magic on paper, artists like Aphex Twin or Brian Eno can be of great service to help you focus. They both have albums with select “Ambient Works” on them, so they are safe bets. Or try listening to nature’s music or some white noise since these will provide the same effect. 

What to Avoid

Ever been really focused on a speaker then all of a sudden your attention drifts to the people behind talking about their weekend plans?   Imagine this scenario, but with John Lennon singing in your ear. We’ve looked at to how music can be helpful when working, but there are still times when music may not be so helpful, overall.

Generally, you should avoid music with lyrics if you are working on something that is demanding. Lyrics have the tendency to grab our attention and prevent us from fully focusing on the task at hand. A recent study done in 2012 looked at the effects of music with lyrics and without lyrics on 102 participants’ concentration. They found that music with lyrics negatively affected the participants’ concentration.

Additionally, music can also be a hindrance when trying to learn something new. There’s a reason why teachers don’t blast metal when trying to teach business calc. It has the same effect of multi-tasking. You cannot give 100 percent of your attention to one thing if you are also focused on something else.

Summary

If you find yourself not being able to focus for whatever reason, try listening to music and see what is best for you. But, keep in mind that some music can be more harmful than good.

Suggestions to keep in mind:

If you find yourself losing steam, try playing music that you think will help you get through your work. If you end up air playing air guitar, then you might want to find something else.

When trying to come up with ideas for your next project give ambient music or ambient sounds a try. Songza is a great site that provides a wide array of music and sounds based on the activities you’re doing, including streams like white noise and “In a Quiet Park.”

Try to avoid music with lyrics, since they prove to be distracting. Especially if something calls for your undivided attention.

And if you find that music is just too distracting, then stick with silence since that is what works for you. In the end, it’s all about what helps you get your work done well and efficiently. 

A recent study by AccountTemps of 2,100 CFO’s across the US said 35% of their companies have increased remote work opportunities in the last three years, but only 3% have decreased the number of opportunities.

Employees like the flexibility of working remotely, but employers are also seeing a variety of benefits. The study revealed that the 35 % of the executives surveyed see higher employee morale and greater retention rates as the primary advantages of offering remote-work options, and 28 percent said the best aspect is an increase in productivity by eliminating commute time.

Other benefits employers cite include the ability to save money on office space and gaining access to a broader talent pool when hiring.

Bill Driscoll, a district president of Accountemps, recently said in a statement “Although telecommuting isn’t suitable for every role, it can be a powerful incentive for employees who want greater flexibility. It offers other advantages to businesses, such as greater productivity, cost savings on office space, the ability to tap into talent in different geographical areas and time zones, and more around-the-clock client service.”

Accountemps offered several tips for employers thinking about setting up a remote workforce:

Security:  Since Employees will be working from home, Employers need to make sure that all confidential and important documents and information is secure from the home office.  Each company will have their own requirements for this, but employers must create some security baseline.

Promote it!:  Working remotely is a HUGE plus for many employees, even if it’s just a day or two a week.  Companies need to promote their remote opportunities  (full remote or part-time) to increase the scope of their talent pool

Communication: Setting up proper communication channels is a must for remote workers.  There are plenty of video conferencing, business focused chat tools, + normal email & phone calls that allow this, but it’s something that needs to be normalized ASAP for new employees.

Guidelines: Employers must set guidelines on how employees must work from home.  This is highly dependent on the job, but could require the employee to track their time, to have a few calls w/ their manager, or whatever makes the most sense for their environment.

Expectations:  Employers need to clearly explain expectations for remote workers, so employees don’t view it as ‘day off’ from their normal schedule.  Ideally, since there’s much less of a commute time and less distraction, employees should exceed their normal work capacity on these days.  However, all this needs to be communicated to the employee.

Overall, we at Remote Nation see this as just another set of hard data that proves remote working is on the rise and provides tangible benefits to both employees and employers.

Please let us know what you think of this article in the comments!

While working on products and client work is certainly fun, a lot of the value that I’ve gained from being a software developer is community. Engineers love to share their knowledge, opinions and skills with the world. They not only do this out of generosity but they do this to learn, for infamy and to shape the future technical path of the community they give back to.

For the past two years I’ve been involved in several local user groups. I’ve started them, I’ve organized them, I’ve spoken at them. Up until recently I lived in Burlington, Vermont (Vermont’s largest city). Burlington, being the home of several colleges and startups, has quite a few active users groups: Burlington Ruby, Burlington Web Applications Group, PHP Users Group, Functional Programming Users Group, etc. Unfortunately not everyone lives near a city or town with such an active developer community. Never fear though! Modern technology can help you find and partake in a community whether it be near or far.

While face to face human interaction is quite nice, with technologies like Skype and Google Hangout, it’s not always necessary. In fact I’ve had the interesting experience of attending the Boston Ruby Group from the comfort of Vermont. I managed to be involved in an entirely different developer community without having to travel.

The Boston Ruby Group recently started inviting remote attendees and even speakers using Google Hangout and it actually works quite well. Myself and few other Vermont locals were able to not only treat ourselves to a completely new speaker line up but were able to interact with the attendees in Boston as well.

I don’t think that these types of interactions can completely replace the feeling of face to face meetups but they’re certainly great if that’s all you have access to. I encourage more user groups across the country to take advantage of these technologies. Not only can it expand your list of possible speakers but it can give back to those in community need.

I’m also currently organizing the Burlington Ruby Conference along with four others and yet we’ve met in person only once. We’ve been employing Google Hangout to do weekly ‘SCRUM’ meetings, so far with much success. Google Hangout is a fantastic tool for remote communication and can be applied to so many different things. I hope to have a future retrospective about planning a Ruby conference without any or very little in person face time.

You may live in remote Alaska, Nebraska or Vermont but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find other developers to interact with. So go forth and find a community home no matter where it is.