Effective team management is an art that comes down to leadership
Here are some of the top challenges of most teams:
⢠Employee performance: Setting and following the right KPIs
⢠Team communication: With a globally distributed team, itâs easy for important messages to fall through the cracks
⢠Collaboration and task management: Assigning and staying on top of tasks and projects requires the right set of tools in a remote set up
⢠Workload: Itâs crucial to keep remote employee capacity, availability, and overtime in mind to avoid burnout
⢠Building trust: Managers need to find ways to ensure that the team members bond well with each other despite the physical distance
But good news! Team collaboration tools, productivity tools, task management software, and status update tools can help your team stay organized and more productive in 2022
Use the recommended team management tools below to add structure to the chaos
Use it for: Team Project Management Software
ClickUp is one of the popular team management apps for productivity and project management. It helps remote teams manage workflow in a more efficient and collaborative manner. It offers all the important features to enhance productivity such as task management, project/time tracking, Gantt charts, collaboration, recurring tasks, and more
⢠Ability to customize the tool to infinite use cases
What People Say About ClickUp
âClickUp is awesome! I donât know how I worked without it before. If you have a small team, ClickUp is the best way to collaborate on large and small projects. The free version is excellent and offers everything you need. If you are a larger company, you may go to upgrade for additional features, but regardless you will be satisfied because itâs a life-saving software for my team.â - TrustRadius
Use it for: Team Project Management Software
Asana offers the best of both worlds. It gives you a kanban board and a listview depending on what you prefer. You can either assign your team members to cards (kanban board) or assign tasks (list projects). Whatever option you choose, you get features such as attachments, sub-tasks, labels, descriptions, and comments to add to your tasks
You can also mark certain tasks as milestones, define dependencies, and add deadlines to your tasks. To further enhance team communication, Asana offers a âConversationâ section where you can post updates and discuss the progress of the tasks. It also has a âFilesâ section that stores all your attachments that are added to the tasks for easy access
⢠Offers both kanban and list view as part of the project management tool
⢠Can add milestones, define dependencies, and add deadlines to your tasks for multiple projects
⢠Offers a âFilesâ section that stores all your attachments for easy access
What People Say About Asana
âWhat I like the most, when it comes to team collaboration in Asana, is the task assignment function as we can simply assign tasks to each other and combined with Slack integration we immediately get notified about that in Slack as well. That way we really improved task tracking and execution. One thing that I find very useful is that Asana enables both list view and Kanban view, as later is especially appreciated by some of my coworkers.â - Capterra
Use it for: Meeting Management Software
Fellow.app is a meeting note software that helps teams gather to build a collaborative environment with productive team meetings and meaningful 1:1s. By tracking meeting notes in a software, teams can easily share the meeting agendas to record decisions and build great meeting habits
By tracking action items in Fellow, your team will be kept organized and held accountable. Managers can also give, request or gather real-time feedback from your team with the instant feedback feature. The expert meeting template gallery is filled with agenda examples for you to use in all forms of meetings, including expert-approved templates and different one-on-one meeting templates
⢠Track objectives and goals throughout the quarter
⢠Use the meeting template gallery for all forms of meetings
⢠Request or gather real-time feedback from your team
What People Say About Fellow
"The ability to have Fellow built in to Google has been a game changer. From being able to add an agenda topic prior to a meeting, to taking meeting notes and assigning actionables while in a meeting, and collaborating with other attendees, we are able to remember and prioritize tasks a lot easier. As a lead I also love being able to easily ask for feedback on my reports as well as tailor our 1:1s based on the pre-made templates, or create my own. I have used Fellow for many years now and am pleased with the amount of effort put in to adding meaningful features and updates." - G2
⢠Custom-priced plans are also available
Use it for: Team Project Management Software
Trello is one of the most popular and well-known free project management software solutions. It follows a âcards" system in a kanban board. Assign tasks or âcardsâ and then track their progress as they move their cards to appropriate sections. Trello allows you to set a step-by-step process of how a task is supposed to move from inception to completion
Check out some real Trello board examples in this post
Your team can create as many columns as they like and make the process as detailed as possible. For example, if youâre launching a marketing campaign, then you can add columns such as âIdeation,â âTo-Do,â âUpdates,â âLaunch,â and âCompleted.â
You can organize your projects and cards by adding tags, attaching files, and defining deadlines. Use it as a collaboration tool, and track your progress and also get a comprehensive view of how the work is progressing
What People Say About Trello
âOut of all the work-related applications that we've tried, Trello is one that has really stuck. We're huge Trello users and I love it's easy to use interface. The best thing about Trello is how it's structured - mainly incorporating boards and cards as the foundation of its system. The raw simplicity of creating cards and dragging them across boards to indicate progress is a brilliant way to organize work. On top of this, Trello comes with a giant array of add-ons and extra features (paid and free) that are designed to help users with various tasks.â - G2
Use it for: Team Communication
Slack is a real-time mobile and desktop app that helps you streamline team communication. You can create private and public channels, send direct messages, files, plan and discuss your projects in a seamless way
The app allows you to send notes, files, documents, videos, photos, feedback, audio messages, or anything you need to communicate effectively. You can pin important messages for easy access for all your colleagues
⢠The â/remindâ command allows you to send out reminders to your team members
⢠Real-time communication app to discuss and plan your projects
⢠Create private and public channels to engage and communicate with users company-wide
What People Say About Slack
âOur entire company is on Slack, which is great since we have employees located in different countries. I particularly like the sense of transparency it gives to our organization: We have a lot of different channels for business areas (marketing, engineering, etc) but they're all open for other employees to join and see what's being discussed.â - TrustRadius
⢠Free for small teams trying out Slack for an unlimited period of time
Use it for: Team Meetings & Team Communication
Microsoft Teams is a great collaborative tool and team management software. It provides a true chat-based hub for seamless teamwork and collaboration. Itâs a straightforward and user-friendly tool that requires little to no set. You can have a real-time conversation on chat or do a video call and screen sharing--all from one platform
⢠One platform for all kinds of communication (chat and video)
What People Say About Microsoft Teams
âMicrosoft Teams has become our organization's global collaboration platform. It addresses the need to work together - esp now that everyone is socially distant. We use it for text, meeting management, and video calls on a daily basis. File sharing has some use as does the Planner function, but these are still shared with other applications as well.â - TrustRadius
Use it for: Team Video Meetings
The video conferencing app, Zoom, gained immense popularity in 2020 when the world was forced to adopt remote work. Itâs one of the most widely-used web conferencing platforms and team management apps for remote companies. Zoom has an easy to use interface that supports audio/video calls, chats, and interactive features such as reactions
What People Say About Zoom
âZoom has been the most interactive and user-friendly video conferencing and chat software that I've used so far. Zoom is widely integrable with most calendar apps and makes it easy for you to schedule meetings with your clients and invite others to screen sharing sessions. We use it across the organization. We use Zoom internally for chat purposes, we love the client zoom app and all its functions.â - TrustRadius
Use it for: Team Meetings and Screen Recording
Loom takes team communication and screen sharing a notch up. It turns non-productive meetings into productive hours. Loom users can record their screens, generate a custom URL for every video recording and share it with their team members for easy access
⢠One of the best screen recording apps available
What People Say About Loom
âI love how easy it is to record help videos, troubleshooting videos, and demos with Loom! I also love that I can simply share the URL with someone, and they can watch the recording instantly. I know some other software requires you to login with your account or with a password in order to access the recording, but with Loom you do not need anything other than a browser to see the recording!â - G2
Use it for: Time Tracking
Toggl is a time tracking team management software that makes it incredibly easy for you to manage remote teams. You can plan projects, assign tasks, and collaborate effectively with your team across different time zones. It integrates easily with all your popular team management apps such as Slack, Asana, G-Suite, and more
⢠Seamless integration with all the popular apps (Slack, G-Suite, etc.)
What People Say About Toggl
âWe use Toggl to track time per customer for ongoing projects. We track actual hours spent on a project compared to the estimated hours for many reasons. This allows us to make intelligent decisions on future bids and allows us to demonstrate to clients how their hours are being spent and the value in those hours.â - TrustRadius
⢠Free for up to 5 users
Use it for: Time Tracking
Clockify is a free team time management app with some wonderful features. It helps you track which team member is working on what, track their process and overall productivity level across weeks
It has a simple interface where you can add unlimited users to unlimited projects. Assign tasks, set timelines, and let your team members track their progress and time spent on each task as they complete their assignments
One of the key highlights of this tool is its dashboard--as a project lead, you can see the weekly breakdown of your teamâs tasks, and know who worked on what and who was most active during the week
Use it for: Time Tracking
Harvest is an online time tracking and team management software. Itâs a great tool for remote teams to track time and generate professional looking invoices. You can use the tool to communicate with your clients and update time/data on your weekly timesheet in a seamless manner
What People Say About Harvest
âIt just works. Creating an offer, turning it into an invoice, setting everything up it just works easy. In contrast with many software you can use for invoicing, Harvest doesn't try to do it all, it just keeps things simple. Probably too simple at times, but I never ran into any issues as we have straightforward product & services lines to add to our invoices.â - Capterra
Use it for: Team Communication
For a remote team, Twist is a great communication app. It helps you organize your conversations by storing important information, points, and comments in subjects within threads.
Twist is more or less similar to Slack wherein it offers features such as creating specific channels, sharing files, photos, videos, audio messages, and more. The only difference between the two team management apps is Slack offers real-time communication, whereas, Twist offers a slower, more contextual approach to conversations
This makes it easy for your remote team members to check-in on specific threads and gets up to speed on topics that are most relevant to them
⢠The Inbox feature allows you to track new updates
What People Say About Twist
âTwist is based around threads which is great. It really helps keep conversations focused and on task. No other software has thread support quite like Twist. If your team is looking for the best thread support then Twist is a good choice.â - G2
Use it for: Performance Management
15Five helps you establish consistent and standardized processes to support the development of your team. It gives team leaders the resources to manage their teams and stay on top of tasks and improves employee engagement
⢠Generate higher-levels of performance with insights on motivation
⢠Support the development of your best employees
What People Say About 15Five
â15Five is a great tool for interacting with remote team members. With not being able to interact on a daily basis, 15Five helps keep us in the know about the overall "temperature" of each employee. It's a great way to build community and boost morale, even from a distance. This provides a platform to raise concerns/challenges we are facing so we can connect to resolve any issue.â - TrustRadius
⢠Plus - $14 per person per month
Use it for: Knowledge Management
Notion is a knowledge management and collaboration app that not only helps you streamline your tasks and notes but also offers a unique office Wikis feature to detail your companyâs values, cultures, and rules. Itâs a great resource for new hires to understand company workflows, as well as notes on vacations, PTO, reimbursement, and Healthcare information. Read more on how to build a good company wiki
Along with most other task and project management features such as a kanban board, adding files to your to-dos, and more, Notion also allows you to manage customer relationships through the appâs CRM features
⢠Kanban board and lists to manage your tasks and projects
What People Say About Notion:
âNotion is absolutely brimming with useful features and is the Swiss army knife of note-taking applications. The overall software is so minimalistic and intuitive to use that I personally learnt it within a few days I find that the simple and uncluttered UI helps clear my mind and focus on the current task. The data management is superb with extensive sorting, classification and customization features for the spreadsheet and database functions.â - Capterra
Use it for: Knowledge Management
Tettra is an internal knowledge base team management software. It allows you to document all your important processes, policies, and procedures in one centralized place
⢠Integrates with Google Drive, GitHub, Zapier, and more
What People Say About Tettra
âExcellent, fast customer support (in hours) - Easy to set up, configure and use - Simple design makes it easy to navigate for new employees - Constantly adding new features - Integration with Slack makes looking up information easily. - Very reasonable pricing for what you get (makes Tettra an easy choice - Capterra
⢠Starting - Free for the first five users
Use it for: Company intranet
The names says it all: Simpplr is an intranet and company management software with a user experience that's easy to navigate. It operates as a digital newsroom for your colleagues to share work progress and events. Users can access a people directory and feed for social interaction, enhancing employee engagement. You can manage it directly, with little to no need for IT support
What people say about Simpplr:
"Simpplr is exceptionally visually appealing. It makes it very easy to for users to see and find what they are looking for. The customization of the homepage and the variety of styles you can use for the sites make creating sites and spaces for employees easy. I can't say enough good things about its user-friendly interface. The implentation process was very smooth with a dedicated and organized implmentation specialist available to us for Q&A as well as leading us through weekly milestones and checklists." -- G2
Use it for: Company intranet
Workplace by Facebook essentially operates like your personal Facebook feed, but with a dashboard connected to your coworkers to serve as corporate intranet
Share live videos, comment on each other's work progress, and send private messages to keep your team members in the loop. A bonus feature is a shared knowledge library for employees to find resources in one central location
What People Say about Workplace by Facebook
"Workplace by Facebook has ensured/promoted collaboration as it gets better and better with increased use. This combines group discussion instant messaging which accomplishes this
The chat feature allows users to come up with real-time responses while project groups lead to the development of more relevant conversations." -- G2
Use it for: Dev Management
Jira Work Management helps teams establish structured workflows to streamline all their work processes
You can manage your tasks with the calendar view and ensure youâre meeting all deadlines. This way, you donât have to pull an all-nighter a day before the client meeting!
What People Say about Jira
"Jira allows for good organization, setup, reporting and so on for companies interacting with internal users or external users. Regarding hitting integrations, you need to know some of the backend things but its pretty formidable and available to users on both sides of the coin
It is currently a bit frustrating to move tickets and sometimes when you change status items - they break or there is so much detail to add that sometimes things just get missed- like users, problems, etc." -- G2
Jira has a free plan, and paid plans start at $7/user per month
If you need a Jira alternative, check out this list
Did we miss your favorite tool in this article? Suggest it here!
What Is the Best Team Management Software for Your Team?
When it comes to choosing the best team management software, thereâs obviously not one option
Youâll have to build your team management tech stack carefully and deliberately. As a leader, understand the needs and dynamics of your team and then come up with solutions and tools that best suit their needs. This way youâll know that youâre addressing the right challenges and every team member is on the same page.