??? Using Project Management Tools

These days, there are so many project management tools on the market, and with all the advertising they get, a lot of companies end up investing in them. But the million-dollar question is: do we always get the most out of these tools?

I’m afraid the answer is often no. Just like with many Apple products, these tools come packed with features and uses, but often we don’t fully leverage them, paying a lot of money only to use about 10% of what they can actually do.

The first project management tool I ever used was Trello, mainly to set up Kanban boards. Then, I had a manager who loved using Asana but never really followed through with projects on the platform. Later, I started exploring Asana’s features properly, moved on to Coda, then Jira, and eventually the ever-popular Monday.

Let’s take a quick look at some of these tools and some of their features that of course are not all of them, but for marketers could be useful to highligh:

Asana

Asana is useful tool for project management that offers different views—like lists, boards, and timelines—to help teams structure their work flexibly.

It also lets teams view project portfolios so everyone can collectively check the status and progress of each project. Tools like Gantt charts help visualize the team’s workload and deadlines, while other features can detect conflicts in the scheduling of deadlines.

With Asana, you can automate routines for specific types of tasks that follow similar steps, saving teams time on repetitive work. Also, it integrates with other tools like Slack, Teams, and Zoom, among others.

Trello

Trello is a simple, flexible, and free tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to help teams organize and prioritize projects. While it doesn’t have as many advanced features as some other tools, its simplicity makes it accessible for all team members.

One of Trello’s key strengths is its Kanban boards. It allows you to create cards to kick off projects, stories, or tasks, each of which can include checklists, due dates, category labels, and attachments.

Trello also supports notifications and team collaboration, so you can tag team members on relevant tasks. Another great feature is the “Email-to-Board” function, which lets you create cards by simply sending an email.

Like Asana, Trello offers automation options to streamline routine tasks and integrations with tools like Google Drive, Slack, and more.

Jira

I must say, this is a robust platform—ideal for teams that need constant interaction with product development. It’s one of my personal favorites.

Jira is designed especially for managing projects using agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban. It supports backlog management, allows teams to create and prioritize epics, stories and tasks, and for product teams also bugs.

Additionally, Jira integrates well with platforms like Confluence, which is a huge plus for documentation. This is probably my favorite part, as it helps us provide context for each project, making it easier to understand where we’re at in the project timeline.

Automation is also key here, helping to manage routine tasks. And since this tool is so robust, it’s well-suited for managing large-scale projects that involve multiple teams.

For more experienced project managers, Jira is fantastic because it allows you to monitor sprint progress and make adjustments as needed. You can access real-time reports like burndown charts (showing the amount of work left in a sprint), velocity charts (tracking work completed in past sprints), and sprint reports (summarizing completed and pending tasks).

Of course, maybe for marketers is too much, but if you work side by side with product team its so useful so you can track every single stage of the app development, and also you can follow all improvements are in progress and how it could interact with another projects live or in progress from another teams.?

Monday

This tool is incredibly helpful for simplifying project work, tasks, and routine workflows, making it all easy and intuitive.

Monday lets you create boards that work well for project management, allowing you to set up a backlog, in progress, completed, etc. These boards are customizable, letting you assign priorities, team members, deadlines, and track progress through each project phase.

The communication tools are a standout—team members can be assigned to tasks, tagged in comments, and more. The notifications are also very useful, although they can get a bit overwhelming depending on your settings. Still, it’s great to be notified every time there’s an update on a project.

Automations here are once again a fantastic way to optimize team workflows and avoid manual task creation. For project leaders, it’s a valuable tool for tracking how much time each team member is spending on each project.

Coda

Coda is a popular choice for project management, here each document can include tables, formulas, interactive buttons, and automations. Think of it as a blend between Google Docs and an Excel spreadsheet, but with tons of added functionality, like templates.

Unlike traditional spreadsheets, Coda’s tables are more like databases that can be customized and linked across the document. So, just like the other platforms, you can create backlogs, set up task prioritization, automate workflows, and more.

As you can see, there are plenty of tools out there to help us organize our teams and make the most of our talents. But these tools aren’t just helpful because they’re popular or well-marketed—they’re effective because they’re built with a certain project mindset.

There’s no point in having powerful tools if our approach is still the traditional “to-do list”.

On a final note: even if you work in marketing, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received in my career was to take a project management course. The skills I learned changed how I approach projects, making the entire process more effective.

I hope you found this article helpful, and if you get the chance to use any of these tools, I hope you make the most of them.

Have a great week! ??