Essential Features of Project Management Software
Modern project management software must include core capabilities for planning, executing, and reporting on work. This includes multiple views of work breakdowns, resource management, strong integration capabilities, security, and automation and AI. These tools provide structured environments for managing complex projects and distributed teams.
Look for these essential capabilities when evaluating project management platforms:
- Portfolio Views: Organizations managing multiple projects need organization-level visibility. These dashboards track the health and progress of all strategic initiatives in one place.
- Work Breakdown and Views: Multiple views such as Gantt charts for timeline visualization and Kanban boards provide project-level visibility, improve workflow management, and help break large projects into manageable tasks.
- Collaboration: Centralized collaboration platforms provide a single source of truth with all contextual information, discussions, feedback, and updates. They also enable effective document management, file sharing, version control, and access control.
- Resource Management: Resource management features can help map capacity, allocate teams and workers, avoid conflicting schedules, match roles to skills, and forecast availability. Being able to see who’s working on what and whether they have capacity for additional work can prevent burnout and make teams more effective.
- Integration Framework: Strong integration capabilities with pre-built connectors and robust APIs allow your project management platform to connect with essential business systems such as CRM or finance software.
- Security and Governance: Enterprise organizations need granular permissions, single sign-on (SSO), and compliance with standards such as SOC 2 and HIPAA to ensure data security.
- Automation: Workflow automation reduces manual tasks such as sending reminders or updating project statuses, ensuring consistency and accuracy while freeing your team to focus on strategic or creative work.
- AI Capabilities: AI can offer strategic and predictive insights to create more intelligent work management processes. For example, the Smartsheet Knowledge Graph maps the relationships and connections between projects, people, and processes across an organization to provide more valuable recommendations and assistance.
Explore a curated list of the best enterprise project management software to find powerful solutions for large-scale scheduling, resource allocation, and portfolio management.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a cloud-based intelligent work management platform that combines the familiar interface of spreadsheets with powerful project management capabilities, enabling teams to plan, track, automate, and report on work at scale.
Smartsheet Features:
- Dynamic Views: Switch between grid, Gantt, calendar, and Kanban views to see work the way you prefer. The Smartsheet Control Center can help you visualize and structure several projects at once with consistency.
- AI-Powered Insights: Get predictive analytics and recommendations to optimize your workflows, generate formulas and summaries, and forecast trends. Automate both simple and multistep workflows, and use plain language to filter your data.
- Enterprise Security: Meet compliance requirements with SOC 2, HIPAA, and other certifications.
- Resource Management by Smartsheet: Plan capacity, avoid conflict, predict availability, and allocate resources across your entire portfolio.
- Automation Builder: Replace manual tasks with flexible, automated workflows. Use a template or create custom workflows using triggers.
- Real-Time Dashboards: Build executive-level visibility into project health, resource allocation, and portfolio performance so that you can track progress and make data-driven decisions quickly.
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Smartsheet works best for organizations managing complex projects that require cross-functional collaboration and enterprise-grade security. Its scalability allows it to handle everything from simple task tracking to complex portfolio management. Key strengths of this platform include its ability to standardize processes across teams while giving each group the flexibility to work their way, combined with AI-powered capabilities that help optimize workflows, flag risks, and provide intelligent predictive insights.
Adobe Workfront
Adobe Workfront is an enterprise work management platform that helps manage creative workflows at scale by connecting strategic planning to execution across complex portfolios, and connecting daily work to business objectives.
Adobe Workfront Features:
- Strategic Planning: Connect daily work to strategic objectives and visualize how initiatives align with organizational goals.
- Scenario Planning: Model different resource allocation scenarios at the enterprise level to make informed decisions about capacity and scheduling and to avoid conflicts.
- Enterprise Resource Management: Allocate team capacity across complex portfolios and balance workload at the organizational level.
- Adobe Creative Cloud Integration: Streamline creative workflows with deep integration into Adobe’s design and content creation tools.
- Customizable Workflows: Design approval processes, forms, templates, automations, dashboards, and workflows that match your organization’s governance requirements and can be customized to individual users.
- Cross-Departmental Visibility: Maintain executive-level visibility into work happening across departments using a centralized hub that captures everything from daily tasks to strategic initiatives.
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Adobe Workfront helps large enterprises move from strategic planning to execution across multiple departments and portfolios. Enterprise marketing teams rely on it to manage creative workflows while IT organizations use it to balance capacity across strategic initiatives. Integration with Adobe Creative Cloud streamlines creative production workflows, scenario planning capabilities help executives make informed decisions about resource allocation, and cross-departmental visibility ensures strategic alignment on business goals throughout large organizations.
Airtable
Airtable is a hybrid spreadsheet-database platform that allows users to store and organize information in relational databases with customizable views without requiring any coding knowledge.
Airtable Features:
- Flexible Database Structure: Create custom fields for different types of data and link related records to build relational databases without technical expertise.
- Multiple Views: Switch between grid, calendar, Kanban, gallery, and form views to visualize data according to the requirements of specific workflows.
- Custom Field Types: Use specialized fields such as attachments, check boxes, ratings, and formulas to record information more specifically.
- Automation Builder: Set up workflows that trigger based on data changes, such as updating statuses, activating handoffs, and sending notifications, to reduce manual processes and avoid miscommunication.
- Integration Ecosystem: Connect with hundreds of business applications through third-party services to centralize data across your tech stack.
- Collaborative Workspaces: Share databases with team members to enable real-time collaboration while maintaining data integrity through permissions control.
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Airtable works best for teams managing data-driven projects that require custom database structures and flexible information organization. It can be used for editorial calendars, data repositories, inventory tracking, process management, and more. It structures information clearly by linking related records and creating custom field types, combined with multiple view options that let you visualize data as grids, calendars, Kanban boards, or galleries depending on your workflow needs.
Asana
Asana is a work management platform that helps teams orchestrate their work, from daily tasks to strategic initiatives, by connecting individual assignments to company goals and providing clarity on who’s doing what by when.
Asana Features:
- Multiple Project Views: Switch between lists, boards, timelines, and calendars to visualize work the way your team prefers.
- Goal Tracking: Connect daily tasks to strategic company objectives and track progress toward organizational goals.
- Workflow Automation: Build custom rules that automate routine tasks and keep projects moving without manual intervention.
- Portfolio Management: Get executive visibility into multiple projects and track progress across your entire organization.
- Task Dependencies: Map relationships between tasks to understand how delays impact project timelines.
- Collaborative Workspaces: Keep conversations, files, and updates connected to the work they relate to.
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Asana helps cross-functional teams connect daily tasks to strategic company goals. It provides clarity to marketing, operations, and product teams on tasks, task owners, timelines, and how individual work contributes to larger organizational objectives. Key strengths include its intuitive interface, and on the paid version, the goal-tracking features help teams stay aligned on priorities and measure progress toward strategic initiatives.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a communication-focused work management platform that helps small teams organize projects, reduce email overload, and collaborate with clients through message boards, to-do lists, and centralized file storage.
Basecamp Features:
- Message Boards: Organize project discussions by topic to keep conversations focused and searchable.
- To-Do Lists: Create lists and subtasks, assigning task owners and timelines to keep work moving forward and maintain accountability.
- Schedules and Calendars: Track all your project dates, deadlines, and milestones pulled from your to-do lists in one place.
- File Storage: Centralize each project’s documents and assets to maintain a single source of truth and ensure that all information is accessible.
- Hill Charts: Visualize project progress by tracking certainty rather than task completion. Categorize work as either uphill or downhill to predict where bottlenecks might arise and how much time is likely to be spent on different sections of a project.
- Client Access: Give clients selective visibility into project progress and collaborate with external stakeholders while maintaining privacy.
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Basecamp works best for small businesses and teams or larger organizations that require simple project management features. The platform excels at streamlining communication by centralizing project discussions, files, and tasks. Key strengths include an intuitive interface, message boards that organize conversations by topic, and Hill Charts that provide unique progress visualization based on the nature of the tasks rather than completion.
ClickUp
ClickUp is an all-in-one work management platform that consolidates tasks, documents, goals, and communication into a single customizable workspace, helping tech-savvy teams replace multiple productivity tools with one comprehensive solution.
ClickUp Features:
- Multiple Project Views: Visualize work across lists, boards, timelines, Gantt charts, calendars, maps, and more according to your team’s preferences.
- Centralized Workspace: Consolidate tasks, documents, whiteboards, goals, and communication in a single platform.
- Extensive Customization: Customize task statuses, specific data fields, and workflows to match your organization’s processes and requirements.
- Built-In Collaboration Tools: Create native documents and whiteboards for collaborating, brainstorming, and communicating without switching tools.
- Goal Tracking: Connect daily work to strategic objectives and break down goals into smaller tasks while tracking overall progress.
- Workload Management: Visualize team capacity and balance work distribution across projects.
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ClickUp works best for tech-savvy teams wanting to consolidate multiple productivity tools into a single, comprehensive platform. It uses an all-in-one approach, so teams don’t have to use different tools for different tasks, documents, or processes. Key strengths include the extensive customization options and multiple project views that let teams configure workflows to match their requirements and work styles. The platform allows teams to simplify their tech stack while maintaining powerful functionality.
Jira Software
Jira is a flexible project management platform. Its software product Jira Software is built specifically for software development teams, providing specialized tools for sprint planning, issue tracking, and backlog management that help engineering teams improve quality and efficiency.
Jira Features:
- Scrum and Kanban Boards: Manage sprints and visualize work in progress with flexible boards designed for development teams using the Agile methodology.
- Sprint Planning and Tracking: Plan sprints, iterations, estimate story points, refine backlogs, and track velocity to improve team performance over time.
- Issue and Bug Tracking: Use customizable workflows to move issues or bugs from creation to resolution.
- Backlog Management: Organize and prioritize backlog items to ensure teams are working on the right tasks at the right time.
- Advanced Reporting: Access burndown charts, velocity reports, and custom dashboards that provide visibility into team performance.
- Developer Tool Integration: Connect seamlessly with GitHub, Bitbucket, and other development tools to centralize your workflow.
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Jira Software is most appropriate for software engineering and product development teams practicing Agile methodologies. The platform serves as the industry standard for organizations building software products, providing specialized tools for software development teams to plan sprints, track bugs, and ship releases efficiently. Key strengths include detailed reporting, integration with developer tools, and Agile boards that support both Scrum and Kanban workflows.
Monday.com
Monday.com is a visual work operating system that helps teams manage complex projects through customizable workflows, colorful boards, and automation.
Monday.com Features:
- Visual Work OS: Build custom workflows with a colorful interface minus the need for coding.
- Multiple Project Views: Switch between Kanban, timeline, calendar, and chart views depending on your plan to visualize workflows in the way that works best for your team.
- Automation Recipes: Eliminate repetitive tasks with pre-built automation templates that keep work moving.
- Customizable Dashboards: Create a personalized view of your data to track project status and analyze key metrics.
- Integration Ecosystem: Connect seamlessly with tools such as Slack, Teams, Jira, and Salesforce to centralize work across your tech stack.
- Collaborative Workspaces: Keep teams aligned with shared boards, updates, and real-time collaboration features.
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Monday.com is suitable for creative, marketing, and sales teams that prioritize visual project management and need flexible workflows. Key strengths of this platform include its colorful, engaging interface; low-code engine; and visual dashboards that provide instant visibility into project status, helping teams stay aligned and make faster decisions.
Notion
Notion is a flexible all-in-one workspace that combines project tracking with knowledge management, helping teams build custom systems by connecting documents, databases, and tasks in a unified platform that adapts to their specific workflow needs.
Notion Features:
- Block-Based Page System: Build custom workspaces by combining different content blocks such as text, databases, calendars, and boards on interconnected pages.
- Flexible Databases: Create relational databases that link information across pages to organize projects, tasks, and knowledge in custom structures.
- Multiple Content Views: Switch between table, board, calendar, gallery, and list views to visualize information the way your team prefers.
- Knowledge Management: Combine wikis, documentation, and project tracking in one workspace to centralize team knowledge and work.
- Template Library: Access thousands of community-created templates to jump-start your workspace setup and learn best practices.
- Collaborative Workspaces: Share pages with team members and collaborate in real time on documents, databases, and project plans.
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Notion works best for teams building custom workspaces that combine knowledge management with project tracking. It helps with documentation and editorial planning, as well as building product roadmaps. Startups can use it as an all-in-one operating system for their entire organization. Key strengths include customizable digital workspaces and relational databases that connect information across pages to create sophisticated knowledge management systems. The platform serves as a repository for team knowledge and a flexible project tracker.
Teamwork
Teamwork is a project management platform designed for agencies and professional services firms, combining client collaboration, time tracking, and billing capabilities to help teams manage the complete lifecycle of client-facing projects.
Teamwork Features:
- Project Planning: Map task relationships and dependencies to visualize workflows and sequencing.
- Time Tracking: Track billable hours natively and generate invoices directly from project time entries to streamline billing.
- Resource Management: Allocate team capacity across client projects and visualize workload to prevent bottlenecks.
- Profitability Tracking: Monitor project budgets, costs, and margins to ensure client work remains profitable.
- Client Collaboration Portals: Give clients restricted visibility into tasks, comments, files, and project progress so they can review deliverables and provide feedback.
- Integrated Financial Management: Connect project delivery with billing and invoicing on higher tiers to manage the complete client lifecycle.
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Teamwork is appropriate for agencies, consulting firms, and professional services organizations managing client-facing projects that require integrated time tracking and billing. It can manage creative workflows while tracking profitability and balancing resource allocation. Key strengths include the integration of project management with financial operations and client collaboration portals that provide transparency without exposing internal team discussions.
Trello
Trello is a visual project management tool that organizes tasks into boards, lists, and cards to help track projects and assign responsibilities. It acts like a digital whiteboard for hybrid teams, allowing them to collaborate and attach files to cards.
Trello Features:
- Kanban Board System: Organize work visually using boards, lists, and cards that you can drag and drop to show progress.
- Simple Task Management: Create cards for individual tasks with checklists, due dates, labels, and file attachments.
- Collaborative Boards: Share boards with team members and assign tasks to keep everyone aligned on project status.
- Mobile Access: Manage projects on the go with full-featured iOS and Android apps.
- Templates: Get started quickly with pre-built board templates for common project types and workflows.
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Trello offers simple visual tracking and an intuitive, user-friendly Kanban board system for individuals, small teams, and anyone new to project management. Key strengths include the drag-and-drop interface that simplifies organizing work and the visual nature of boards that provides clarity on task statuses across the project.
Wrike
Wrike is a work management platform that combines project planning, resource management, collaboration, and workflow automation. It helps marketing agencies and professional services firms track projects and improve communication and productivity.
Wrike Features:
- Dynamic Gantt Charts: Build detailed project timelines with dependencies and critical path visualization.
- Built-In Proofing: Review and approve creative assets directly in the platform with markup and version control.
- Custom Approval Workflows: Design multistage approval processes that match your organization’s requirements.
- Resource Management: Allocate team capacity and track workload across projects to prevent bottlenecks.
- Time Tracking: Monitor project hours and costs to keep work profitable and within budget.
- Advanced Reporting: Create customizable dashboards and reports that provide visibility into project health and team performance.
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Wrike works best for marketing agencies, professional services firms, and enterprise teams managing complex projects and reviewing and approving creative assets. Key strengths include the built-in proofing tools that streamline creative reviews, and the resource management capabilities that help teams balance workload and deliver projects on time and within budget.
Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is a comprehensive project management platform that is part of Zoho’s larger suite of business software. It provides small and midsize businesses with essential planning, tracking, and collaboration tools at affordable rates.
Zoho Projects Features:
- Visual Tools: Visualize project schedules and tasks with Gantt charts, timelines, and Kanban boards. Set up dependencies and track the critical path.
- Task Management: Create and assign tasks and deadlines, track subtasks, and assign task owners.
- Time Tracking: Log billable and nonbillable hours within projects to create timesheets and monitor resource utilization. This allows for effective reporting and approval.
- Issue Tracking: Track and resolve project issues with customizable workflows.
- Collaboration Tools: Keep teams aligned with forums, chat, and document sharing that connects conversations to project context.
- Wide Integration: Connect seamlessly with the entire Zoho ecosystem, including Zoho CRM and Zoho Books, as well as other applications to centralize business operations.
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Zoho Projects offers small and midsize businesses comprehensive project management features at affordable rates, especially organizations already using the Zoho ecosystem. The platform delivers essential capabilities for planning, tracking, and collaborating on projects without the complexity or cost of enterprise solutions. Key strengths include its affordability and its seamless integration with other Zoho applications such as CRM and Books to create a unified business management system. It also offers solid core features such as Gantt charts, time tracking, and issue management, providing robust functionality without enterprise-level investment.
Project Management Software Comparison Table
This comparison table helps you evaluate key capabilities across the top project management platforms. Use it to see which tools offer the features most important to your organization.
Vendor | Portfolio Management | Resource Planning | Reporting | Integrations | AI Features | Security / Compliance |
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Vendor | ||||||
| Smartsheet | Advanced portfolio dashboards | Dynamic workload allocation | Customizable reports & summaries | Broad app & system integrations | Predictive automation & insights | Enterprise-grade encryption & controls |
| Airtable | Linked project databases | Flexible assignment tracking | Customizable visual reports | Extensive app integrations | Emerging AI field suggestions | Standard encryption |
| Asana | Multiproject overviews / Portfolios | Task allocation, timeline views | Goal & progress reports | Wide app integrations | Smart task automation | Role-based access control |
| Basecamp | No traditional PPM tools | Basic time tracking | Message-based summaries | Limited native integrations | No built-in AI features but can be added | Basic privacy settings |
| ClickUp | Goal-based portfolio tracking | Time & workload tracking | Custom dashboards | Native & 3rd party integrations | AI writing & task suggestions | Standard data protection |
| Jira Project | Roadmap & release tracking | Sprint-level assignment | Advanced issue analytics | Deep developer tool integrations | Smart issue recommendations | Strong enterprise security |
| Monday.com | Program-level tracking boards | Simple workload views | Visual performance reports | Broad business app integrations | Workflow automation | SOC 2 compliance |
| Notion | Manual portfolio setup | No resource tools | Embedded table summaries | API & app connections | Notion AI writing assistant | Industry-standard encryption |
| Teamwork | Client project grouping | Capacity & workload tracking | Time & cost reports | Several app integrations | AI task summaries | AI assistant (summaries, formula help) |
| Trello | Card & board linking | Timeline, workload & dashboard views | Activity summaries | Multiple 3rd party integrations | Card-level automation | Basic security features |
| Workfront | Enterprise portfolio controls | Capacity & demand planning | Custom executive dashboards | Adobe & enterprise integrations | Resource forecasting | Robust enterprise-grade security |
| Wrike | Real-time portfolio analytics | Workload balancing | Advanced visual dashboards | Standard app integrations | AI risk & deadline prediction | ISO 27001 compliance |
| Zoho Projects | Cross-project views | Timesheet & workload tracking | Custom visual reports | Broad Zoho & 3rd party integrations | Workflow automation | Secure data centers |
Start your project management journey by learning the basics of project management and demystifying the five phases of project management. Once you understand the fundamentals, you can explore various project management strategies to enhance your work.
How to Choose the Best Project Management Software
Selecting project management software requires a structured evaluation process to align platform capabilities with your organization’s needs, team size, and project complexity. Start by defining your evaluation framework, then establishing your criteria and test scenarios. Make sure you ask the right questions to both vendors and internal teams.
Follow this systematic approach to make an informed decision.
- Define an Evaluation Framework
Start by understanding what problems you need to solve. Lay out your business goals and identify the key pain points in your current processes. Document your current workflows and identify where bottlenecks occur. Understanding these challenges helps you evaluate how well each platform addresses your specific needs.
Once you’ve identified your pain points, you can list out your requirements. Gather input from all stakeholders, including project managers, team members, and executive leadership. This creates a clear picture of what success looks like for your organization. Then set up a process for researching and comparing different software.
- Establish Evaluation Criteria and Test Scenarios
Use your requirements to build a list of must-have and nice-to-have features. These serve as checkpoints across areas such as resource management, reporting depth, and integration capabilities. Create realistic test scenarios that reflect your team’s daily workflows.
This allows you to thoroughly and realistically assess each tool when applied to your specific project challenges. Focus on scenarios that represent your most common and most complex work. Consider factors such as team size, project types, collaboration needs, and integration requirements.
- Prepare Questions for Vendors and Teams
The right questions for potential vendors is essential to help you see past a platform’s marketing messages to understand what it actually delivers and how it will advance your organizational goals. Asking your teams the right questions is important because they use the tool regularly and their input is essential. How well your teams work with your new project management software will define the platform’s success within your organization.
Essential vendor questions include the following:
- What does your product roadmap look like, and how are you incorporating AI capabilities?
- What security certifications and compliance standards do you meet?
- What does a typical implementation timeline look like, and what support do you provide?
How does your platform integrate with our existing tools and systems? Key internal questions include the following:
- What are the biggest pain points and bottlenecks in our current workflow?
- Which existing tools do we absolutely need this software to integrate with?
- What is our team’s technical skill level, and how much training will be required?
- What is our budget, and who will be responsible for administering the platform?
Suggested Evaluation Steps and Timeline
Structure your evaluation to prevent the process from dragging on indefinitely. Consult all stakeholders to set up a clear, realistic timeline that gives teams enough time for thorough evaluation without losing momentum.
Break the selection process down into manageable phases and deadlines — this can include initial research and vendor identification, a pilot program to test the most promising software on real projects, and feedback sessions from different teams and departments. Leave time to collect and analyze feedback, fill out scorecards, secure executive approval, and conduct any negotiations before finalizing the contract.
Remember that the goal is finding the best fit for your organization, not the perfect solution.
To help you prepare for tomorrow, review comprehensive project management resources and look ahead by exploring the potential impact and challenges in the future of project management.
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Best Project Management Software FAQs
Cloud-based platforms such as Smartsheet, Asana, and Monday.com work best for remote teams because they provide real-time collaboration, mobile access, and communication tools that keep distributed teams connected and aligned on project progress.
Fortune 500 companies typically use enterprise-grade platforms such as Smartsheet, Microsoft Project, Adobe Workfront, and Wrike because these tools provide the security, scalability, and governance features required for large-scale operations and complex project portfolios.
Yes, many platforms such as Smartsheet offer scalable solutions that work for both small businesses and large enterprises, though small businesses might start with simpler tools such as Trello or Basecamp and upgrade as they grow.
You need project management software if your team struggles with missed deadlines, unclear task ownership, poor communication, tracking project progress, or managing multiple projects simultaneously without losing visibility into priorities and resources.
Project management software focuses on specific projects with defined start and end dates, while work management software handles ongoing operational work, strategic initiatives, and day-to-day tasks and processes. Smartsheet supports both project management and work management, making it a versatile tool. The right project management software transforms how your team collaborates and delivers results.
Disclaimer: The information found in this comparison article is sourced from vendor websites, community boards, and some third-party user reviews. AI tools were used to help conduct research.