Whether you are talking about productivity at the workplace or trying to organize a team or plan a vacation, or getting everyone at the office to work on the projects and priorities, you will get many project management systems that can be of great help.

For years, project management as a practice is taking the success of projects to a new level and the project management tools & software are the way to natural progression.

To truly benefit from a project management system you need to not only know how to use it but also be cautious when picking one for yourself. In this article, we look at some of the unique features of the best project management software systems that make project management effective.

What is a Project Management System?

Project Management System as a Software

A Project Management System (or PMS) is a software tool that helps you organize, manage, and track your projects.

The first thing to understand about a PMS is that it’s not just one thing—it’s a whole system of tools, procedures, processes, and other features all built into the same software platform. This is why it can be so helpful for people who are involved in multiple projects at once or who have a lot going on in their lives outside of work.

5 Best Project Management System with Special features in 2023

1. ProofHub

ProofHub is a cloud-based project management and team collaboration software that helps you to manage your projects by keeping everything in one place. So you can focus on what matters most – your work. 

ProofHub is an all-in-one platform for managing projects, teams, and tasks. It has features such as time tracking, task boards, Gantt charts, document collaboration, and version control. All these tools come with powerful reporting capabilities so that you can track efficiency across your organization. 

This software also offers real-time notifications to team members via email or mobile push notifications when an important event occurs (e.g., a member joins or leaves the project). 

Additionally, ProofHub integrates with third party apps like Google Drive & Dropbox which makes it easy to collaborate on documents related to your projects. In addition to this feature set there are several other unique capabilities such as “Project Collaboration” where users can share files within groups/projects and comment on them in real time without having access rights;  “Time Tracking” where users can keep track of their work hours using stopwatches or timers instead of manual input; “Team Management” where managers have access rights over each member’s profile including their roles within teams so they know what everyone does at any given moment.”

Top features

1) Task Management

Task management is the most important aspect of project management. It’s the tool that you use to keep track of all your projects and tasks, so that you can stay on top of everything. With Task Management, you can:

• Create task lists with easy-to-use checklists
• View and add details for each task.
• Comment on any step of a task (or multiple steps at once).
• Set reminders for yourself or others on specific dates and times.
• Tag tasks with keywords so that they are easier to find later on.

2) Time Tracking

ProofHub’s time tracking feature is one of its best-kept secrets. You can use it to track the time you spend on tasks and projects, emails, calls and so much more. This is an extremely powerful feature that helps you track your work hours and bill clients accordingly.

3) Project Scheduling

You can schedule tasks and projects at the same time. A schedule is a list of all your tasks and projects, organized by date and time. When you create a task, it will automatically be added to your schedule. You can view your entire project over the course of days, weeks, or months in one place!

When you drag and drop a task into its appropriate spot on the calendar, ProofHub automatically calculates its due date according to other events scheduled for that day. You can also set due dates manually for each task if needed by clicking on the “Set Due Date” button from the Task Details page, which will appear after creating a new task.

4) Communication 

Communication is a crucial part of project management, and ProofHub makes it easy to communicate with your teammates. You can send messages to all team members or individual team members, add comments to tasks and files, and share files with clients, anyone, or multiple people in just one click.

5) Reporting

ProofHub’s reporting feature allows you to create detailed reports that provide a clear picture of how the resources are being utilized, what is the progress of the project, and streamline the data you need for a specific set of milestones.

Reports are available in the dashboard and project page. Reports can be exported to PDF, which is handy because they can be viewed offline. The reports are available for the whole team and can be filtered by date, user, or project and task.

6) Gantt Chart

Reports are available in the dashboard and project page. Reports can be exported to PDF, which is handy because they can be viewed offline. The reports are available for the whole team and can be filtered by date, user, or project and task.

Pricing: The Ultimate Control plan, with all basic and premium features, is priced at $89 month/flat, when billed annually. 

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is a project management software for teams. It’s a web-based tool that helps you organize projects, manage schedules and reports, assign tasks and delegate work to team members.

Basecamp may seem overwhelming at first glance but don’t worry—it’s simple to use. As soon as you open Basecamp, it offers you several pre-built templates that help guide you through setting up your first project 

Top Features

• Message boards, schedules, to-do lists 
• Document and file storage 
• Easy-to-use and simple interface 
• Tag team members easily

Pricing: The Business plan starts at $99 per month/flat.

3. Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-based project management software that helps teams to collaborate. It offers a very active and engaging community of users, which makes it excellent for team collaboration.

Wrike is available on all major platforms, including web browsers, mobile devices and tablets as well as desktop computers. 

Top Features

• Tasks and milestones can be synchronized to Google, iCalendar, and Outlook calendars
• Gantt charts help create visual timelines 
• Helps you to turn strategy into an actionable plan 
• Provide accurate and up-to-date info to clients

Pricing: The professional plan starts at  $9.80 per user/month, when billed annually.

4. Asana

Asana is a cloud-based task management software, collaboration platform for teams and tools for managing projects and tasks. Asana is also a project management tool, system or software that helps you to organize your team’s workload efficiently.

Asana allows you to keep track of all your tasks in one place so you can focus on the work at hand rather than spending time hunting down emails or other documents that contain incomplete information. It has been designed with the user experience in mind – simple but powerful enough to manage complex projects with hundreds of moving parts.

Top Features

• The free tool offers a basic dashboard and search 
• Group tasks into sections or columns in a list or board project 
• Notify employees using a personalized inbox  
• Gantt style view of how projects fit together 
• Schedule and prioritize tasks on a special Asana calendar 
• Generate detailed Progress reports

Pricing: The premium plan starts at  $9.99 per user/month.

5. Clickup 

ClickUp is a project management software that helps you and your team work together better. It’s simple, intuitive and easy to use. You can create boards for each project or task that you need to manage, and organize them into lists. For example, you could have a board for each client, with all of their tasks organized into lists under it.

Each task has its own ‘task list’ where you can keep track of the progress each member of your team has made on it so far. There are also built-in notifications that let everyone know when they need to check in on something – like when a task needs their attention or when an important milestone has been reached. 

Top Features

• Customize the workflow with stages to keep people on the same page. 
• Create spaces to organize work with customized features, workflows, and tags. 
• Add time estimates for automatic scheduling. 
• Control what others can see and what they can do. 
• Make goals and track their success.

Pricing: Unlimited plan will cost you about $5 per user/month, when billed annually

Benefits of project management system

Project management software is a tool that helps companies manage resources, goals and deadlines. It can be used to coordinate various activities, teams and projects. These systems have specific features that make them suitable for managing different types of projects – whether they’re small, large or worldwide in scope.

• Simpler communication

The project management system allows you to easily communicate with team members and other stakeholders. It can help you send messages, assign tasks, and keep track of progress.

It also lets you create a document library where all important documents are stored, including meeting minutes, status reports, action items, and more. That way, if someone needs something from the past, it’s easy for them to find it in one place.

• Better visibility

You’re probably wondering, “How is this possible?”

In simple terms, project management software helps teams see the bigger picture. Teams can see what is happening in other teams and how their work fits into the overall project.

They are able to get an understanding of what each team member is working on at any given time (and who has the most work). The result: everyone feels more connected and more accountable for their own roles in achieving success for the project as a whole.

• Increased speed

A project management system can give you a bird’s eye view of the entire project, helping you to identify bottlenecks and areas where resources are being overused. This allows you to make adjustments as necessary, ensuring that each team member is working efficiently and effectively.

Team members can be in constant touch with one another through chat rooms or email. This makes it easy for them to share information quickly and efficiently—no more complicated back-and-forth emails! 

You’ll also be able to see what everyone is working on in real time (via an online dashboard), so if someone needs help or assistance with their tasks, you’ll know about it right away—saving both time and money from any miscommunications down the road.

• More control over process

As a project manager, you have the power to:

• Know what’s going on in your projects. With a PMS, you can track and manage every aspect of your projects from start to finish.
• Control the resources in your project. By tracking resource allocation and cost against work packages, you’ll always know how much money is being spent on any given task or activity.
• Control over budgeting and forecasting for future projects. It’s easy to see how much money will be needed for future tasks when they’re already laid out before us as part of an existing process.
• Control over progress reports and performance metrics that tell us whether our team is hitting their goals or falling behind schedule (or both!). You’ll also have access to regular updates from team members so that everyone stays abreast of what’s happening with each other at all times—and if there are problems brewing underfoot, they’ll surface early enough that it won’t be too late by then!
• Control over risk management strategies through pre-determined processes like root cause analyses (RCAs). RCAs allow us as managers not only take control over risks but also evaluate them after they’ve happened so we know exactly why something went wrong–because sometimes just knowing about something isn’t enough; it has been proven repeatedly through scientific studies.”

Types of Project Management Systems

Project management is a process that is used to help achieve a goal. It can be applied to any type of project, but it is typically used to plan and execute projects that take longer than one year. There are several types of management systems for projects, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Project planning: This type of system focuses on creating an environment where employees can work together effectively in order to make sure that the organization’s goals are met. It focuses on helping employees understand how they can make their own contributions toward achieving those goals.

Project control: This type of system provides structure for managing projects by providing guidelines for setting budgets and deadlines, as well as monitoring progress during execution phases. 

Project management information: This type of system focuses on collecting data about how well individual teams are performing so that managers can make informed decisions about how best to allocate resources or improve processes for future projects.

Techniques and methodology: These systems focus on developing specific techniques or methodologies for managing specific types of projects; for example, software development projects may use Agile methodologies while construction companies might use Waterfall methodologies.

Choosing A Project Management System with Key Features

You probably cannot afford to make a mistake when choosing the best project management system. As a project manager, you need to prepare a project plan, define the scope of projects, and schedule everything in the tool. So, it’s important to select a project management system wisely.

Let’s find out the essential features that a system should possess to make project management effective.

1. Risk management

A risk is any uncertain condition that might affect your project. There is no particular project without risks. From the start to the stages of development, there is a chance for unforeseen situations to emerge and leave big impacts on the project. Therefore, project managers use the process of risk management to minimize any potential problems that may impact a project’s timeline. Your system should be able to identify and manage risks in the project plan and calculate all risks in advance.

2. Resource management

Resource allocation planning is the process that describes what type of resource is needed and at what time that is critical for resource management. So, it is convenient to use a tool that offers resource management. For every project, resource management is an integral part that will make aware of the whole project cost and other related things. Therefore, it becomes really convenient to have a resource management function on a project management tool to calculate expenditures and distribute well the tasks along.

Example: Mavenlink offers solutions for resource planning, collaboration, and financial management.

3. Dependencies, milestones, and critical path

It is quite common to dig into a project where the tasks are connected to each other, like the 2nd task may be connected to the 10th task. In these cases, tasks cannot be done separately from each other. It is fair enough to have a system where you can define all the development stages of a project along with, task dependencies. Also, setting milestones to mark specific points in a project will make sure if your project is moving in the right direction.

Example: Gantt charts

4. Ease of use

Ease of use is a priority requirement for project managers who unquestionably have to juggle numerous projects and people at the same time. They generally don’t like using tools that can be difficult to use and drain the resources of small businesses. A project management system should be easily accessible to employees using multiple devices, it should have a minimalistic design with a simple drag-and-drop interface, easy functionality, and smooth maintenance and support.

5. Third-party integrations

With teams depending on a project management system every day, it makes sense that your tool should be able to synchronize data with other apps. An integrated suite offers functionalities that are relevant to various businesses for various purposes. This is one easy and direct way to take your project management to another level. Project managers should look for a  project management system with integration support for popular appss like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box. All of the top picks like ProofHub include integrations with Google Drive, Dropbox, FreshBooks, and many more.

6. Agile workflow system

Agile is a methodology of project management, which is among the most popular methods of managing projects. According to the Project Management Institute and its Pulse of the Profession 2015: Capturing the Value of Project Management 2015:

• 75% of highly agile organizations met their goals/business intent
• 65% finished on time
• 67% finished within budget

It is clear that agile organizations grow faster than non-agile. An Agile project management tool will maintain smooth workflow, ensure better transparency, bring agility and flexibility, and help teams to be more productive.

Poorly managed tasks? Try the all new Workflows and boards in ProofHub to get it all done efficiently.

7. Using boards to manage projects

Project management boards are the decision-makers that will be helpful in connecting people who are working on the project. It focuses on the status of tasks, by which the task can be moved through different stages of the project. The teams working on projects can track what’s in-progress at a glance and, manage projects in a visual way. Boards in a project management system like ProofHub will help sustain a steady flow of tasks in a sequential manner, thus speeding up the process of task delivery.

8. Effective time tracking

More and more managers are longing for time tracking as an important feature for better planning, accurate time estimation, and working with great precision on project tasks. A project management system with a time tracking tool will improve the way projects move forward.

9. Customizable workflows

Every team has to work using different techniques and tools because one-size doesn’t fit all. Customization is the way for modern teams to work effectively. According to the team’s needs, a system should be flexible enough to adapt to a unique process that tracks work progression. Custom workflows in a project management system will track work progress accurately. It becomes easy to know who is working on what and which stage of the workflow it’s in for easy monitoring.

10. Native mobile app

Project managers are often on the go, in meetings, or running errands. Nobody wants to limit themselves to laptops. Mobile apps are becoming the need to stay in the loop every minute. Project management mobile app is a comfortable way to keep track of tasks, milestones, and deadlines.

11. Collaborate easily

Collaboration is a big part of project management, and when you’re using a project management system, it should be easier for you to collaborate on all the projects. The system should allow you to share documents, files, status, timelines, and tasks easily and quickly with a large number of people.  Discussions and chat should be easily done with respect to both remote and in-house teams.

12. Delegate tasks easily

When you’re managing a group of people, it’s good to delegate tasks to each individual to ensure the successful completion of the project. Your project management system should let you easily assign tasks across all team members. You can assign roles to each person in the team and provide them access to the relevant task information.

You do not have time to waste? If you want a tool that drastically improves the work with everything you need for project management, may we suggest ProofHub? Try it for free!

The Bottom Line

At present, several project management systems are available that you can use to manage your projects. Depending on the size of your business and your team, you can make use of more specialized project management features. However, we recommend ProofHub for you as it’s the best project management system that teams of any size, any industry, and any department can use to handle multiple projects simultaneously. It can definitely help you get your projects back under control.

FAQ

Vartika Kashyap

Vartika Kashyap is the Chief Marketing Officer at ProofHub and has been one of the LinkedIn Top Voices in 2018. Her articles are inspired by office situations and work-related events. She likes to write about productivity, team building, work culture, leadership, entrepreneurship among others and contributing to a better workplace is what makes her click.

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