Originally published on Medium.
A comparison between project management tools Trello, Jira and Asana.
There are hundreds of project management tools out there and choosing the right one can be daunting task. Below is a comparison of the 3 most popular PM tools to help you choose the right one for your project.
1. Trello
Company: Atlassian
Used by: Adobe, Kickstarter, National Geographic, Fender
Overview
Trello is one of the most popular lightweight project management tools out there. It's favoured by startups, small teams, temporary projects and in various other scenarios where project managers require a minimal structure to keep their projects organized.
It is also a good tool to use when introducing a team to an Agile Kanban workflow.
Pros
· Lightweight: The structure is easy to maintain and can be set up in just a few minutes.
· Intuitive interface: Team members can be on-boarded quick.
· Price: Free version is good enough if you have simple projects and lightweight processes.
Cons
· Lightweight: The flip side of being lightweight is that it is hard to provide a lot of options for customization for companies that have elaborate workflows.
· Information expires quickly: Limited activity log, search capabilities coupled with minimal labeling options make it hard to track information over a longer period.
2. Asana
Company: Asana
Used by: Yelp, Air France, Meliá Hotels, Bill & Melinda Gate
Overview
Asana was created in 2008 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and engineer Justin Rosenstein. In its early stages, Asana focused on smaller teams and has only recently started to incorporate features like “Portfolio” and “Workloads” aimed at bigger businesses.
Pros
· Strong search: Advanced search options make it easy to find tasks and files among multiple projects.
· Timeline view: Asana offers an intuitive Gantt chart type view with easy rescheduling and task dependency management.
Cons
· No multi-assign: A task can only be assigned to one person.
· Scrum and sprints: Scrum workflow with sprint tracking is supported only via third-party tools.
3. Jira
Company: Atlassian
Used by: Square, eBay, Spotify, Cisco, Airbnb
Overview
Jira is one of the most popular Project Management tools out there and is a safe choice for organizations. It is highly customizable and can be fully utilized by larger companies, which need to coordinate between multiple complex projects and have a need to customize the task workflow. Atlassian also offers Confluence which is a collaborative documentation tool which integrates nicely with Jira. For seamless communication and tech development, other third-party tools such as Slack and GitHub, can also be integrated. For smaller teams or temporary projects, there are more lightweight and cheaper tools out there.
Pros
· Highly customizable: Workflow tools allow you to tailor Jira to the way your company operates.
· Multiple integrations: An open marketplace provides a lot of integrations with other popular tools like GitHub, Microsoft Teams, Outlook etc.
· Kanban, scrum and sprints: Kanban boards and scrum workflow with sprint tracking is supported out of the box.
Cons
· Long setup time: The large amount of customization available means that it takes longer for the user to set everything up and to train others on how to use the tool.
· Complex interface: Managing roles, boards, issues can feel clunky and the tool is not as intuitive as it could be.
Conclusion
Different projects require different tools. The decision to choose depends on your project needs and personal preference, as every tool has its own set of advantages in particular situations.
However, the 3 most popular tools covered in this article can be grouped into three categories:
Trello: Lightweight. If your company needs a tool that is easy to set up and start using. A perfect tool for those who need a Kanban board.
Asana: Midweight. Fit for most traditional projects of medium complexity.
Jira: Heavyweight. A tool made with Agile software development in mind. It provides Kanban and Scrum boards and is highly customizable.
Top comments (1)
Jira's UI is very slow to navigate, often confusing for non technical users and even technical users almost never manage to all use the same view of a given set of tasks. You need almost an entire document outlining exactly what to use and what not to use for each team using Jira. Every team that I have seen use Asana results in only engineers using it and everyone else on the team avoiding it.
I love Asana.
Trello is nice also.