Modern workforce is going remote. Currently, around 70 percent of people are working remotely globally at least once a week. Nearly 100 percent of remote workers are hoping that they would be able to work remotely for the rest of their working life. For many remote teams and projects, communication and remote project management tools are critical for the workflow and success of projects.
Coordinating workflows can get tricky, when your team is sprinkled around the world. The clients, however, are expecting your team to deliver projects on time. When you have the best remote project management tools to work with, processes run smoothly and effectively.
In this article, we are having a look at project management tools for remote work and how remote projects in general should be managed. With the steps mentioned here you are able to manage your remote projects easily.
Howspace is the only tool that is created purely remote facilitation in mind. Its a comprehensive management tool where worskpaces are super easy to create. Howspace is easily scalable and its responsive software is browser-based. The number of users of workspaces is not limited. Participation rates range from 80 to 95 %!
Viima is an amazing innovation platform that lets you gather and collect ideas from your team members, customers and even stakeholders. It’s designed to make refining and developing ideas within different groups easier. It also helps you to analyze processes and eliminate bottlenecks effectively.
With Monday you can manage basically everything in one workspace. It helps you and your team to plan, track and deliver your best work yet. Setting up Monday is easy and thanks to hundreds of customizable templates, everything goes smoothly from the start. You can integrate Monday with many other tools.
Wrike is an excellent project management tool loved by users around the world. It comes with multiple features, cutting-edge AI and machine learning and a powerful automation engine. As a new feature you’ll find web content proofing, which helps you to deliver your best work. Wrike has four plans: check them out and decide which would suit you the best.
Clickup is an excellent collaboration tool suitable for all kinds of industries, brands and companies. With Clickup you can take advantage of its various features that help with communication, collaboration, task assignment and project management. You can use Clickup as a notepad, too! There are four great and flexible plans that you can choose from: find the best one for your needs and start working.
Moqups is a great tool for creating and collaborating on mockups, prototypes, diagrams and wireframes. You and your team can work in real-time! This is a simple, smart and fast all-in-one online design platform that adapts easily to your workflow. Being a streamlined web app, Mockups provides you with a flexible ecosystem of tools that makes projects run smoothly. It’s simple, smart and fast. Try it!
Slack is one of the best business messaging and project management tools, especially if you are looking for a very straight-forward app and workspace. As a cool feature users are able to add outside partners to their work spaces, which makes collaborating easier and smoother. There are four different packages to choose from – all very affordable. Slack digital collaboration tools has an intuitive interface that is perfect also for new users.
Infinity offers you a wide selection of simple templates to organize your work processes. It is an excellent tool for road mapping, organizing launches and managing various kinds of tasks. In other words, it’s a comprehensive tool for digital collaboration and project management. With Infinity you can organize hundreds of things by using media galleries, software overview, CRM, social media & content marketing plans, various digital resources etc.
What do we look for in remote project management tools? Here’s a little summary of the evaluation criteria we are using:
When we evaluate the tools for remote project management , we take into consideration four main features. These are the user interface, usability, integration options and pricing: is the tool worth the money that you are using?
When your team is working remotely, the user interface needs to be attractive but also easy to use from everyone’s point of view. The usability in general is super important: remote teams typically don’t have any kind of in-house support to help with technical issues. Because of this we expect a remote project management tool to include things such as video tutorials, live chat, webinars, Q&A sections etc.
When it comes to integration, it’s very important that the tools are easily connected with other software and apps. This is because for instance with remote teams of freelancers, each member can already be using other tools. If these can be easily integrated for the tool you are choosing for your project, it makes everything run faster.
is an excellent remote project management tool that is actually designed for facilitating in particular. It is, however, suitable for many kinds of remote projects, as it inspires co-creation and boosts engagement.
Howspace is a digital collaboration tool that helps you to combine effective social learning with your processes and development initiatives. For organizational development Howspace is one of the most powerful platforms out there. It makes it possible for every team member to get involved with every step of the process. The tool has various cool features and new stuff is being added on a quite the regular basis.
Viima is a project management tool for remote work that makes innovation easier. Viima offers you and your team an all-in-one platform that’s designed to turn your ideas into innovations. The innovation process is made effortless.
With Viima project management tool you are able to gather ideas from your team members, customers and even stakeholders. Viima makes it easier to develop and refine your ideas in a collaborative way. It also provides you with tools for prioritizing ideas, and also helps you to choose the right ones that should be progressed. In addition, Viima makes it easier to analyze the innovation process and to eliminate bottlenecks.
Wrike is a project management platform that is ideal for remote work. It’s cloud-based platform enables you to build things like custom dashboards and workflows. Wrike doesn’t do only that, but in addition you can implement a work-flow automation designed specifically to your team’s needs. The progress reports are easy to share with team members, customers and stakeholders.
Monday.com is one of the best tools out there! Its design is colourful and the platform itself is very user-friendly. You are able to plan, track and deliver projects with cool templates that are perfectly customizable. The platform offers you a chance to use maps, calendars, timelines, kanban boards and much more!
Repetitive tasks can be fully automated, which makes many administrative tasks much faster and easier
Slack is a simple but yet very powerful tool for remote project management. It enables you and your team members to communicate in real-time chats and channels. The Slack working spaces are easy to create and start using, even without any prior experience of project management tools. The intuitive interface is perfect for all team members.
With the Infinity remote project management tool, you are able to organize hundreds of tasks. You can use dynamic media galleries, CRM, social media and content marketing plans, various digital resources and much more. This tool for remote project management has a wide selection of templates that you can organize as you wish.
When you need a remote project management tool for creating and collaborating on mockups, Moqups is the one you should definitely go with. This tool is a great option for creating mockups, diagrams, wireframes and prototypes. Everything happens in real time, which makes remote projects run smoothly.
This simple, all-in-one online design tool is smart and fast. It adapts to your team’s workflow effortlessly. Moqups offers you a flexible selection of tools with affordable prices.
Google Drive is one of the most comprehensive cloud base storage systems that allows you to work in real-time with your team. It is excellent for smaller companies and projects, since it can be used free of charge (at least to some extent) and the simple tools are easy to use.
However, when you use Google Drive as a remote project management tool, the workflow can be tricky to track. This is why, for all bigger projects, we’d recommend you to go with more extensive tools.
Project Manager is a tool for remote project management that we discovered only recently. It offers you and your team a great, collaborative solution that can adapt to different methods and changes in schedules and plans.
It has Gantt chart tools that make it easy to plan, create and follow schedules. Kanban cards with a drag-and-drop feature are also simple and fast.
Teamwork is yet another great project management tool for remote work, that we’ve had the pleasure of trying out over the past couple of months. In our opinion it, too, is a very comprehensive tool for collaborative work within remote teams. With Teamwork you are able to create tasks and projects. You can also comment on tasks and share files.
The time tracking feature is amazing, and the report building is made easy. On the other hand, sometimes moving or adjusting milestones can be a bit difficult. Also, we would like to see more integration options with CRM tools.
If you are considering or already managing a remote project and team, you might already be familiar with the positive and the negative sides of it. Compared to traditional project management, remote project management is beneficial in various ways. It can lower your operation costs by reducing the need for office space and rents, and improve the work/life balance of your team members.
One of the most important benefits of remote project management is, however, the possibilities it offers to attract top talents around the world. You can hire people from everywhere, no matter the geographical location. Here the importance of remote project management tools play a vital role.
Managing teams and projects that are located in different places can be challenging. Sometimes it can get harder to stay on top of deadlines and even simple tasks. For many it seems like it’s very hard to keep the team on the same page: what is going on, what still needs to be done and so on.
When your team members are not in the same location, you don’t have that many regular meetings or lunch breaks. Without a proper office environment, it can be hard for people to follow what is going on right now and with what the team members might need help with.
By using the best remote project management tools, you can avoid many obstacles. These tools let you take better control of the communication and operations of your team. A proper remote project management tool helps you to keep everyone working almost as they would actually be in the same location and office.
There are some core ingredients that you need to have in order for delivering successful projects with your remote teams. Some of these factors are for instance:
Before you choose the best remote project management tool for your team and organization, you need to plan the project in detail. The better you know what needs to be done and how, the more suitable project management tool for remote work you end up choosing. At least in an ideal case.
Typically, simple projects can be managed with a little effort, but on the other hand more complex projects usually have a lot of moving particles. In this sense it is clever to plan the project and give every team member a clear rundown of the specs before you start the actual work.
When you are making the team members part of the project from as early a stage as possible, you are making everyone feel more involved. This will also help you and your team members to be on the same page from the start. Also, it makes it possible for you to set your expectations for each member in a very early stage.
Ask yourself these questions, before choosing the tools for remote project management:
Using a remote project management tool it’s possible for you to assign tasks to team members accordingly. Depending on the settings and the software, each team member can also create and edit different tasks. This helps everyone in the team to get a clear picture of where you are at and what needs to be done next. These remote project management tools make it easier to spot bottlenecks and make needed changes.
Tools for remote project management can include various features and to many of them, new features are added on a regular basis. These features can be for instance about
Majority, if not all of the remote project management tools that our team recommends, have both paid and free options. Typically free remote project management tools are, however, for a test-drive. This means that you can get up to 30 days of free usage and after that, if you wish to continue using the tool, you need to pick a suitable, paid plan.
There are of course completely free remote project management tool options out there. Those are for instance Google Docs, which was already mentioned earlier. With Google Sheets you are able to create simple ways to monitor processes, but in all honesty, these won’t work in the long run – especially if your team or organization starts growing.
It’s also good to remember that not all remote project management tools need to be expensive or complete sets with various kinds of features. Instead, sometimes even a Google Docs/Skype combination is enough.
What’s particularly great about these simple tools is that they are living documents. Everyone with an invitation or a link can make changes according to the settings that you provide them with. If and when something needs to be fixed, everyone can also see the changes and fixes in real time. Google Docs for instance allows you to add tags and comments: this way the team members get notified.
Once you have chosen the best project management tool for remote work and have the plan ready, it’s time to bring your team together. Many of the tools we recommend provide you with virtual meeting rooms. If the tool has these features, great. If not, you can use tools such as Google Hangouts, Teams or Zoom.
If the remote project management tools that you have chosen are not something that your team members are already used to, organize a virtual meeting. Here you can all meet up and discuss the project, plus get to know the digital collaboration tools more closely. All the tools related to your project would be good to be easy to use for everyone from the very first day you start working.
Remote project management tools are now in their place and your team is ready to start using them. Great! After you have kicked off the project, you need to manage the daily tasks to make sure that the project runs as smoothly as possible.
Project management tools for remote work are typically versatile. They enable you to keep track of things like deadlines, deliverables, budgets and even every hour there is to bill. Tools keep everyone on the same page easily. Managers are not going over their budgets that often and on the other hand no one can say they didn’t know when a certain task was due.
In our experience combining multiple remote project management tools is very common and many times recommended. However, some organizations, teams and projects might even get messy if there’s too many different tools being used at the same time. If you decide to go ahead with multiple tools, make sure that there’s one that is the most important one.
Here’s some of the tools for remote project management that we can recommend
When you have a remote team and projects to manage, it requires laying a new foundation and guidelines for each project. You as a remote project manager need to gather detailed specs for the project, send out invitations to kickoff meetings and track how the project is progressing. Even though your team might be in different locations around the world, you still need to get everyone to come together.
The path to a successful remote project is easier, when you choose the right kinds of remote project management tools. With the right tools you are able to deliver projects on time, no matter where your team members are working from.
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