Looking for the best project scheduling tool? We've whittled the list down to nine, they are the cream of the crop.
Project scheduling is made infinitely simpler with the right tools. Planning, budgeting and tracking projects across all the tasks and workflows that go into them involves a lot of work, and it's easy to lose track.
This is your guide to why project scheduling software is so beneficial, including an introduction to some of the best project scheduling software available today.
Project management scheduling software is the home for all project planning and tracking activities. It enables project managers to centralize all relevant information in a single platform, breaking down tasks, dependencies, and resources.
It's particularly useful for complex project scheduling with a lot of moving parts, as it allows project managers to plan and track granular tasks while also being able to visualize and share high level data with project stakeholders.
New to project scheduling? Check out these guides first:
The overall goal of using project scheduling software is two-fold - to maximize the chances of completing the project on time and on budget. These are two critical indicators of success for project managers, and it's much harder to achieve them through manual project scheduling.
Scheduling software can help you to achieve these goals in a range of ways:
There are many different project scheduling software tools to choose from, and at a glance they may all seem fairly similar. However, there are often key differences that make one project scheduling tool different from the next, and better suited for a particular use.
Runn makes it easy to quickly schedule work, draft projects, and adjust plans to see the impact it has on your overall budget, timeline, resources, and capacity. It has an easy to use resource calendar to identify people availability and allows managers to understand the demands being placed on key team members at any time.
Runn has a complete range of resource management functionality in capacity management, planning forecasting, and reporting. It also allows project managers to track progress in terms of budget and time frames, with integrated financial forecasting to make more informed decisions.
Wrike is a web-based project scheduling tool, which means users can be based remotely and don't need to be in the office to manage and track project progress. Like many of these scheduling software options, Wrike has a simple interface that allows users to efficiently manage multiple projects at the same time.
It allows project managers to utilize Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and other scheduling tools all at once, which is a huge benefit to users with multiple complex projects on the go at once.
Forecast comes with intuitive, simple project scheduling features that even team members who aren't technically minded can get the best from. Forecast's dashboard makes high level project tracking visible and understandable so stakeholders can quickly track project progress. You can also delve into more granular information about tasks, workflows, and resources if needed.
Forecast helps to make project scheduling and planning fast and painless, with AI features that can slash time spent on project scheduling and resource allocation.
ClickUp comes with all the powerful project scheduling features you need to plan projects, schedule tasks, allocate resources and track project progress. Users can also search, sort, filter and view tasks so they're all available and convenient.
ClickUp's free forever plan means there's no limit to the number of members that can sign up to an account, although - like most other scheduling software - some premium features are only available on paid accounts.
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Hive is another web-based project scheduling tool that utilizes Gantt charts and Kanban boards to make project management easier. It allows users to follow projects and tasks throughout their various stages, including resource allocation, assigning tasks, and monitoring deadlines.
In particular, Hive enables better team collaboration by being able to host and share documents so all users have access to the same level of detail if required.
Asana is an overall project management software that is often used by organizations across all teams and activities. It becomes a shared space to allow users to see, organize and assign tasks according to priorities and due dates.
Asana comes with customizable views, rules and forms, making workflow planning for specific projects easier. There are more than 50 scheduling templates to choose from, and it also has a highly rated project scheduling app for remote, on the go teams.
Teamwork is one of the most trusted project scheduling software tools available, having been used by world-leading companies such as Spotify, Netflix, PayPal, HP, and more. It has a large number of features to make producing complex project schedules simple, while its reporting capabilities allow for in-depth insights that can be easily shared with clients or stakeholders.
Teamwork has a range of customizations that allow users to design their own workflows, and its visible dashboards allow project managers to identify work that's on time and budget, or off track.
Gantt charts are widely accepted as one of the best project scheduling tools, and are commonly included in project management software. As the name suggests, GanttPRO allows users to get the most out of Gantt charts, with an intuitive interface and a range of powerful features.
GanttPRO is an in-depth project scheduling software. Projects can broken down into tasks, subtasks, dependencies and milestones, and it has the ability to add statuses, priorities, estimates, deadlines, and allocations. Multiple, flexible project views make it able to be shared and understood by different collaborators.
Workfront is a complete project management scheduling software, with the option to use it for capacity planning and resource management as well as scheduling and planning. This makes it an ideal project scheduling tool for detailed project plans or project managers who want to go beyond just entry level capabilities.
Like Forecast, Workfront is an advanced auto-scheduling software, with AI features that make project scheduling much quicker. Creating tasks and milestones, allocating resources and monitoring progress is all straightforward, which makes it ideal for a project manager with multiple projects on the go at once.
A tip for those looking for the right project scheduling software: pay attention to the difference between the free and paid version of each project scheduling tool. Many will market their advanced features, but if you're on a tight budget or don't need to have many user accounts, the free version generally withholds some functionality.
In saying that, the best software for project scheduling is often extremely affordable, especially considering how they help to save time and money in all aspects of project management. Project scheduling manually takes a lot of time and effort, and if there's an issue then you'll often have to start again from scratch.
Using project scheduling software, adjusting plans is much easier, and it's helped by being able to test the impact of different scenarios and solutions before committing to them.
To see how project scheduling software can help with your project management, start a free trial of Runn today.
