The success of any project depends on efficient project management and scheduling. Managing projects is a challenge for project managers, especially when there are several projects, deadlines, and team members to coordinate.
Thankfully, project scheduling software can make the process much simpler. These tools offer a range of features to simplify project planning and execution, including Gantt charts and resource allocation.
However, choosing the one that suits your needs might be exhausting given the wide range of possibilities accessible. To assist you in making an informed choice and increase the success of your upcoming project, we will examine some best project scheduling software solutions available, delving deeply into their features. But first, let’s understand the importance of project scheduling in the project management space.
Why is project scheduling crucial in Project Management?
Project scheduling is a crucial component of project management as it helps manage time, resources, and tasks necessary to execute a project successfully.
- Time management: Project scheduling enables project managers to specify a deadline for finishing the individual tasks inside a project and the project as a whole. It aids them in anticipating delays, making backup plans, and ensuring the project is finished on schedule.
- Resource Allocation: It efficiently distributes resources, including personnel, supplies, and equipment. This guarantees that the project will move forward without delays and that resources will be accessible when needed.
- Prioritization: Project managers can arrange tasks and activities in order of priority and urgency. This guarantees that crucial activities are finished on time and that the project stays on course.
- Communication: Scheduling aids in informing stakeholders, team members, and clients of the project timetable, expectations, and milestones.
- Budgeting: Scheduling projects allow project managers to safely predict the time and resources needed to complete each task, which aids in budget planning and cost management.
In general, project scheduling plays a pivotal role in the effective planning, monitoring, and controlling of projects to ensure that it is finished on schedule, within budget, and in accordance with the project’s goals.
Features to look for in a Project Scheduling Software
These are some of the important characteristics to take into account when looking for project scheduling software:
- Task management: it should be possible to create and administrate tasks, including delegation to team members, deadline setting, and progress monitoring.
- Gantt charts: Gantt charts are graphical depictions of project schedules. The program should be able to create Gantt charts and allow for chart modification.
- Collaboration: When working on a project, collaboration tools are essential. The program should allow team members to interact, share files, and work together on projects.
- Time tracking: Time tracking capabilities are necessary for keeping track of the time spent on tasks and projects. The software should be able to track the time spent by each team member, which gives project managers reports on how much time was spent on each task.
- Reporting: Project managers should be able to monitor the state of the project, follow its advancement, and spot problems thanks to the software’s reporting features.
Now that we know the role of project scheduling software in the successful completion of projects in organizations, let’s proceed to check out the best available choices.
Monday
Monday is a full-fledged project management platform, with project scheduling being one of its many capabilities. The tool can be tailored to meet the needs of the organization and helps understand the progression of tasks along with their status.
The timeline feature of Monday lets you plan projects, lay down deadlines, assign team members, designate tasks, and establish dependencies. The software also helps re-assign tasks at a button click and track progress after collecting data from multiple boards.
Key features:
- Create summary charts and export project plans in several formats like XML, PDF, and more.
- Monday integration with Slack, Excel, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, and more.
- Kanban Boards for managing everything from projects to departments.
- Weekly checklist to organize weekly tasks and keep projects on track.
ProjectManager
As straightforward as its name, ProjectManager is a simple project scheduling software that makes creating thorough project plans and scheduling projects a breeze. You can visualize your project plans via timelines, Gantt charts, and calendars to stay on track.
The task management and time tracking features let your team see the upcoming tasks and provide real-time status updates to the stakeholders. All in all, it includes all the useful features that keep your projects progressing successfully.
Key features:
- Gantt charts, task lists, spreadsheets, Kanban boards, and project calendars to set dependencies, deadlines, and milestones and identify project phases.
- Integrates with more than 1000 business apps, including Office 365, Google, Jira, Slack, and Zapier to name a few.
- Allows the creation of visual schedules and get real-time updates.
- Online project dashboards to track resources, data, and budget in real-time.
- Timesheets to track the time spent on each task.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a sophisticated project-scheduling platform that enables businesses to stay in sync with their project schedules, track tasks and budgets, and deliver projects on time. Providing multiple intuitive views like Grid, Gantt charts, and Calendar, the team members have enough flexibility to analyze what they are working on.
Smartsheet instills collaboration among the team members by allowing the team members to share their work with access project details on the go regardless of their location. Some of the key offerings of Smartsheet are:
- Resource management to find out what team members and working on and quickly adjust allocations.
- Create a real-time system of record by attaching supporting project documentation, details, and correspondence with your project schedule and individual tasks.
- Interactive calendar view with color code to quickly identify tasks and upcoming deadlines.
- iOS and Android mobile apps let you access project plans on the go.
- Integration with apps like Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, Jira, and Salesforce.
- Project scheduling templates to help you get started.
TeamGantt
Trusted by brands like Amazon, Netflix, and Nike, TeamGantt provides everything it needs to meet deadlines, save time and deliver projects within the defined budget. This project scheduling software allows you to assign tasks, build timelines, and allow easy scheduling and building of project timelines.
The panoramic view of the project timeline lets managers view the tasks of each team member, update project schedules and assign tasks from anywhere and on any device. The baseline report lets you compare the original project plan with your current schedule to visualize progress made.
Other offerings of teamgantt include portfolio views, reports, calendars, list views, and a mobile app to manage projects on the go.
Key features:
- Drag-and-drop functionality for easy schedule creation.
- Update and check project schedules from any device.
- Collaboration features for simplifying communication.
- View workloads and team availability.
- Calendar and list view formats.
Forecast
Forecast offers an intuitive and easy-to-use platform for businesses to manage their projects, resources, and budget. Powered by AI, the smart features of this software assist you in planning and executing your projects and making data-driven decisions.
What’s unique about Forecst is its intelligent warning mechanism that helps mitigate risks when the schedule goes off track.
Key features:
- AI-powered project scheduling to make smarter decisions.
- Resource management capabilities to manage work, resources, and finances.
- Automatic in-depth business insights to back up business decisions.
- Efficient team collaboration to keep everyone in the loop.
- Project management software to plan, track and run projects and manage finances.
- Integration with popular project management and productivity tools like Asana, Github, Google Drive, Hubspot, Jira, and more.
GanttPro
GanttPro allows precise task planning and project tracking to accelerate the management process for free. The software works flawlessly for all sorts of online plans and allows task creation at a button click. The Gantt chart depicts assignments, milestones, deadlines, and dependencies in a visually appealing way.
Empowering you to track and monitor the schedule at a glance, GanttPro is a perfect choice for any scenario where project scheduling and management are a necessity.
Key features:
- Assign and manage tasks and assignments at a button click.
- Team collaboration features to improve productivity.
- Manage resources along with their workload and reallocate tasks if required.
- Export and share the project schedules with stakeholders, clients, and team members.
- Compare the current schedule progress with that of the initial plan to identify risks.
SmartTask
Brands like Pepsi, Reliance, and Hitachi, along with more than 2000 businesses, trust SmartTask for project management and scheduling. The simple yet powerful platform offers everything required to collaborate with the team members, work on the projects and keep everything organized.
The centralized dashboard is highly customizable and allows you to switch the view as a list, board, calendar, and Timeline. The extensive report creation module can be used to create charts in real time and identify potential problems.
Key features:
- Project Milestones to track the major progress of the project.
- Timeline to view and track the progress with ease and identify what you are working on at a glance.
- Autoschedule dependent tasks upon delay.
- Baseline to compare current progress with the original project plan.
- Project templates to quickly implement repetitive projects.
Clockify
Clockify is a renowned timesheet software that also bestows you the ability to manage and schedule projects and resources. It enables you to manage employees, visualize shifts and projects on a timeline, and track time spent by team members to stay in sync. You can also create and export project reports in Excel and PDF format to share with the stakeholders.
Using Clockify for project scheduling is an uncomplicated task. You need to set up projects and categorize them according to clients. After this, assign team members and start scheduling tasks. Furthermore, it is possible to add projects, set milestones, and create assignments right from the dashboard.
Key features:
- Allows you to track time, events, tasks, and project progress.
- Visualize project progress and predict project performance.
- Assignment reports for comparing scheduled vs actual project plan.
- Request and track time off.
- Clockify can easily sync with Outlook and Google Calendar
ProProfs
Cloud-based project scheduling software, ProProfs allows seamless tracking of projects and tasks and simplifies collaboration across team members. It enables the project managers to identify the progress with the Gantt chart and get reminders in Google Calendars to keep up with the deadlines.
You to re-assign tasks, monitor the progress, get instant updates, and utilize resources effectively using the project scheduling program.
Key features:
- Collaborate in real-time and create task dependencies.
- Hit deadlines and schedule projects with Google Calendar and Kanban boards.
- Achieve project milestones and track project progress with Gantt charts.
- Track time and monitor the performance of each team member.
- Generate insightful reports and export them in different formats to share with stakeholders.
Last Words
Project scheduling software lets project managers and team members complete their tasks, manage time and budget, and meet deadlines. However, it all comes down to choosing the right project-scheduling software to fulfill your business requirements. Before settling for one, review their features carefully and compare their offerings to get maximum benefit.
You may also explore some free task and project management software.
