Creative project planning tools

Otherwise, use all the experience you and people on your team have for the best, most thorough schedule. Interconnecting tasks means looking into what you need to do — and in which order you need to do them.

Is there a task that you cannot finish before others are done? In successful creative project planning, these are called dependent tasks. You need to mark them — and the tasks before them need to gain on importance. Finally, you need to think about the resources you have. Also, think about your team members and what they can do. Then, you can explore various equipment or software you can use!

Managing these well will make or break your project! However, this is no time to panic! Everybody can do perfect project planning, as long as they have two things! These are empathy and good communication skills. Usually, you are doing it for the people, so you already have some empathy there! What you need to realize is that successful creative project planning is not typing out numbers , though. Understanding who the members of your team are, what makes them tick and how you can get the most out of them will do wonders for your project!

So just turn that empathy to the maximum and dive into it! Project Insight is an enterprise web-based project planning tool with powerful features in a simple user interface. This project planning tool is entirely web-based. Due to this, it is accessible by teams to access from anywhere at any time. A good feature of Project Insight is that it is customizable allowing users to create custom fields, items, and workflows. Users can also customize form labels with a preferred theme without additional coding.

Hansoft is an agile project management and one of the top online project planning tools that facilitate teams for both short-term and long-term projects. It has a swift user interface that can be altered to expedite workflows and processes. It also provides a single backlog for users to assess, prioritize, and customize other entities. The great thing about this tool is that you can adopt a single method or combine two or more project management approaches for your project.

Teamwork makes it to the list of our best project planning tools due to the core modules focused on project management specifically project planning. Some of the core features such as Gantt charts, time tracking with a desktop timer that usable both on Windows and Linux versions, milestones monitoring, and task management along with a clean and sophisticated interface make this tool a winner. Teamwork also comes with Teamwork Desk and Teamwork Chat, which are easily integrated with Teamwork projects.

This gives you a wholesome experience in one place avoiding the need to make multiple subscriptions or purchases with entirely different tools. With Teamwork Desk, as a module that facilitates you in managing inbound communication, measure traffic channels, team productivity, as well as customer satisfaction. Teamwork project facilitates documentation through a project notebook system that helps you keep notes, format them, and export out.

Moreover, you can carry out project coordination and team communication through Teamwork Chat, which is a communication tool as an alternative to Slack. Teamwork Chat is a free app that lets you mobile chat, search for conversations, and attach files. Recommended for freelancers, consultants, and small businesses, Avaza is one of the best project planning tools, especially, if you are not concerned with multiple features but instead want a tool with focused modules and smooth workability.

You can break down your work into manageable tasks with to-do lists, timeframes, or workflows. Avaza lets you even plan work for your entire week with a start and end the day. Project estimation and managing payments are a critical part of project planning.

With Avaza you can manage and organize projects from submitting a quote to the client to accepting payment.

Create and send detailed estimates for projects to corresponding clients, which can then be converted into projects with a single click. Once the project starts, you can keep making communication with clients timely and efficient through the Questions tab. ProProfs Project is a top project planning tool that helps you create a project schedule and accomplish tasks like a pro. It is an excellent solution for budget management and resource management.

With this tool, you can assign tasks to the team members, set start dates and end dates, analyze project performance, and monitor task progress. You can also spell out dependencies, highlighting tasks or milestones that rely on completing other tasks. ProProfs Project comes with a suite of advanced features that help increase efficiency and improve team collaboration. These visual representations allow you to view milestones and meet deadlines faster. Allthings is another one of our simple yet powerful among project planning tools.

Easily create lists, customize them, and share them with the team. This tool easily incorporates elements of Agile project management by letting you customize your lists into backlogs and setting sprints.

You can tag tasks with categories and monitor the tasks by group or status through the Kanban board view. With its powerful search feature, you can search for various elements and even have the option to save searches in the form of customized sub-boards that highlight specific parts of your project. Ringcentral Glip is another cloud-based project planning tool and enables collaboration that comes with an easy to use interface and robust feature list.

You can create and assign tasks, share files, schedule project deadlines, and track project progress. This service also encourages and facilitates team communication through conversations and file sharing. You can keep notes and make use of the calendar to schedule work. Glip also comes with features such as contact management, link extraction, configurable email and push notifications, progress tracking, link extraction, contact management and screen sharing for training or meetings.

These teams include: Advertising agencies Branding agencies Web design agencies Marketing agencies Creative consultants Common creative agency management workflows Agency workflows are often simple. Some of the common workflows include: Plan project schedules. Capture, organize and prioritize project ideas and requirements.

Track project tasks as they move from to-do to done. Collaborate, discuss, and share files with other team members to complete tasks. Keep track of milestones and other critical project dates. Plan and track team availability and workload. Plan, allocate, and manage team resources. Toggl Plan Toggl Plan is a simple yet flexible project management tool. Toggl Plan also has these features in addition to those mentioned above: Share a read-only timeline view.

Recurring tasks. Time tracking with the Toggl Track integration. Favorite projects and quick search for easy access. Role-based access control. Is Toggl Plan right for you? Asana Asana is a popular tool among large and complex teams.

Additional features include: Workflow automation rules. Accept customer or internal requests via forms. Integrations for all popular tools. Is Asana right for you? Workamajig Workamajig is an all-in-one creative team management software for large-scale agencies.

For project management, Workamajig has a robust set of features. Also, you can track conversations and file attachments as well as review and manage approvals. You also get the below features in Workamajig: Project finance and accounting.

Keep track of project invoices and expenses. Time-tracking with forecasting reports. Is Workamajig right for you? Nifty When it comes to features, Nifty has a lot to offer. Nifty also supports inbuilt time tracking with detailed reports.

Additional features in Nifty include: Project dashboards. Schedule and workload overviews. Project portfolio management. Is Nifty right for you? ProProfs Project Proprofs is an easy-to-use, online project management tool. Proprofs Projects comes with the following additional features: Recurring tasks. Timeline reports for each task.

Native apps for Windows, Mac, and mobile. Is ProProfs Project right for you? Trello Trello is a simple Kanban-based project management tool with automated workflows. Additional features in Trello include: Customize board backgrounds and stickers. Store unlimited files with up to MB per file. Pre-made board templates. Organize task boards into collections. Role-based permissions. Is Trello right for you? Finally, the workload view helps you manage team workloads. Additional features the come with the Pro plan include: Track time spent on tasks.

Automate workflows. Project dashboards for up to 10 projects. Guest access. Cons No timeline feature to translate ideas into plans. Gitmind GitMind is a free brainstorming tool. The tool lets you create mindmaps, flow charts, organizational charts, UML diagrams, swimlanes, and analysis charts. It consists of an exhaustive template library, with over templates for mindmaps alone. Cons Limited set of features compared to other tools on this list. Pricing Gitmind is completely free tool. Gantt Chart and Timeline Tools Gantt charts play an important role when planning a project.

Features Create color-coded project timelines with milestones. Bulk import tasks using a CSV file. Duplicate tasks with one click. Easily drag and drop tasks to accommodate plan changes. Drag task endpoints to change start and end dates. Zoom in on a week, month, quarter, or year to see all planned tasks.

Share a read-only view of the timeline with clients and stakeholders. Assign a task to multiple team members. Features Automatically reschedules a plan whenever you change the date of a task. Powerful user trail and auditing. Track every activity and change in the project made by anyone in the team.

And, revert the changes if necessary. Powerful filter and bulk edit features let you make changes to projects quickly. Asana Asana is a familiar name in the list of top online planning tools.

Features Import tasks on the timeline using a CSV file. Get all updated in a centralized communication inbox. Set up automation rules for common task activities. Asana integrates with over third-party apps.

Cons Complex, confusing user interface. Pricing The timeline view is not available in the free plan. Here are three tools that can help you plan your resources better. Understand what each team member is working on across projects. Add team members to multiple teams. Automatically syncs changes across project timelines and boards. Cons Only tracks people resources. Use this tool to allocate resources such as rooms and resources. Customizable working days and work hours.

Teamup Teamup is different than other work planning tools on this list. Features Get a visual view of who is working on what in the team calendar. Create sub-calendars for people, tools, and other resources. Organize calendars in folders for easy management. Can become cluttered for large and hierarchical teams. Pricing The free plan is useful for small teams and allows up to eight sub-calendars.

Agile Planning Tools Agile is a popular methodology among software teams. Features Easy drag and drop user interface to visually manage tasks. Collaborate on tasks via comments and file attachments. Improve delivery quality by adding a checklist to the task.

Classify and filter tasks using color-coded tags. PlanningPoker Planning Poker is a sprint estimation tool for agile projects. Cons Other than sprint planning, the tool has very little to offer. Pricing The tool is free for up to five users.