How We Review and Test Project Management Software

Project management systems should support businesses in improving their rate of successful project delivery through core features that help them:

• plan project timelines and milestones
• assign and manage tasks
• manage the project budget and resources
• collaborate with all contributors
• easily monitor, visualize, and share progress data.

They should be easy for teams to use, adopt and integrate into their existing workflows, have plenty of available support options to avoid project disruption, be completely up to code when it comes to data security, and encourage (not limit) business growth and scalability. All of the above is considered in our rigorous testing process – more on this below.

Our Testing Criteria for Project Management

To ensure fairness and impartiality in our testing, we evaluate all project management software on the exact same extensive set of testing criteria so we can clearly illuminate their relative strengths and weaknesses and make helpful comparisons between large numbers of different products on the market.

Our seven key areas of investigation when testing and researching project management are:

1. Features and functionality – evaluating the presence and quality of core project management features
2. Usability and Reliability – evaluating the user interface, learning curve, and responsiveness of the platforms
3. Compatibility and Integrations – evaluating the compatibility with third-party apps, software, and hardware
4. Customer Support – evaluating the available customer support options offered by the software provider, and the quality of their service
5. Scalability and Future-Proofing – evaluating the scalability of the software to accommodate business growth
6. Security – a thorough security analysis to identify any vulnerabilities and ensure the protection of sensitive data
7. Cost and Pricing – assessing the product’s value for money in terms of features vs average plan price

We’ll explain more about why and how we test in these areas below. Our testing process includes:

• Hands-on software testing, scoring, and evaluation
• Review documentation and video tutorials
• Focus group interviews with software users
• Third-party reviews and user forums

1. Features and functionality – evaluating the presence and quality of core project management features

Why we test features and functionality: The core functionality across most project management software will be similar, which can make these platforms difficult to compare when simply reading reviews. However, the breadth and quality of the feature sets is what can really set the platforms apart from each other, impact the ROI and value they offer, and make them more or less relevant to different types of businesses.

How we test features and functionality: We’ve focused on the features that are most important to users of project management software and ran them through our intricate testing framework to get the clearest possible picture of how they compare to one another in terms of feature offering.

• Task management – consider how easy it is to set up, assign, automate, update, and track the progress of individual project tasks and subtasks as well as the number of different task progress views (Gantt, Kanban, Calendar, etc.)
• Project and workflow creation – looks at the number of pre-set project templates, the level of template customization available, how easily you can automate workflows, and how many different project views there are (burndown charts, calendar view, etc.)
• Project collaboration features – advantages are given to platforms offering instant messaging functionality, real-time group brainstorming features, commenting features, file sharing, and curation of project contributors.
• Project dashboards and data visualization – takes into account the number and quality of pre-built reporting and data dashboards, the level of dashboard customization available, and the breadth of different report views (burndown, heatmaps, etc.)
• Budget management tools – evaluates features for budget creation, cost allocation, expense tracking, Actual vs Budget reporting, cost performance analysis features, budget adjustability and forecasting.
• Resource management tools – considers how well the platform is set up for resource allocation, planning and scheduling and its features for workload balancing, availability tracking, and resource scenario planning.
• Mobile app – the first step is to check if the software offers a mobile app, then to check its compatibility with different mobile operating systems, its notification settings, and the usability of the software within the app on mobile devices.

2. Usability & Reliability – evaluating the user interface, learning curve, and responsiveness of the platforms

Why we test usability and reliability: Teams will never work efficiently when using a software that’s not user friendly and reliable. As the heart of a business’s project work, a project management software with low usability and reliability could slow teams down, which undermines the main benefit of using one. Adoption, implementation, and training will all be much easier with a product that’s intuitive and highly usable than one that’s not.

How we test usability and reliability: We use the software in real-life scenarios to evaluate the platform’s visual design, navigation, response and loading times (especially for bigger, more complex projects), accessibility across different devices, and its onboarding process. We also collect quantitative data on how intuitive the interface is by rating how straightforward it is to complete core project management tasks such as setting up projects, creating timelines, creating reports, and creating and updating tasks.

3. Compatibility and Integrations –  evaluating the compatibility with commonly used third-party apps, software, and hardware

Why we test compatibility and integrations: We do this to make sure it will be possible (even better: easy, seamless) for businesses to integrate this software into their existing software ecosystem by connecting it with the other applications and software they are  already using. This results in maximized data accuracy and efficiency across all activity, and minimizes information silos, disjointed reports, and disruption during implementation which can make it harder for the team to adopt and appreciate.

How we test compatibility and integration: We test its functionality across different devices (desktop, mobile, tablet) and mobile operating systems (namely iOS and Android) to see if it offers consistently good performance across all of them. We collect quantitative data on the number of third party applications it can integrate with as well as qualitative data on how well it functions with the most popular and most used software such as CRMs, ERPs, communication platforms and file storage services. We note how easy it is to connect with printers and scanners for hard copies of projects and reports.

4. Scalability and Future-Proofing – evaluating the scalability of the software to accommodate business growth

Why we test scalability and future-proofing: The software a business uses should never be a limiter of its growth. It’s important to assess through testing the extent to which the software will accommodate the size and complexity of project work the business hopes to be doing in 5+ years without them having to upgrade to unrealistic enterprise-level plans. The risk of not considering this is that they will either stunt their project work, or need to spend time, money, and effort changing platforms in a few years time.

How we test scalability and future-proofing: We look at the limitations of the software at different price points and for plans beneath high-tier enterprise level; the most common limitations being the number of projects, tasks, users / seats, reports / dashboards, number of integrations (3rd party), storage space, customizations, guest accesses, and collaboration tools. We also consider how quickly the lower–tier plans can access software updates, how often the software updates, and how often it adds new integrations.

5. Customer Support – evaluating the customer support options and the quality of service

Why we test customer support: We test customer support to make sure the software will not be an unnecessary blocker to project progress when users encounter glitches, downtime, or are stuck due to lack of product knowledge. Especially for the discipline of project management – which is entirely focused on sticking to timelines and delivery milestones – businesses need to know they won’t be set back by even a matter of hours, which is the risk if the right support is not available when software issues arise.

How we test customer support: We combine quantitative data about the number of support channels available, average response times, and average resolution times with quantitative data about the quality of the service, which we make sure to test out with our own support requests. We award extra points if the provider offers phone support and 24/7 live support (we look less favorably on ones which only offer ticket-based support systems).

6. Security – a thorough security analysis to identify any vulnerabilities and ensure the protection of sensitive data

Why we test security: This is to ensure there is no chance of the software a business is using opening them up to security vulnerabilities, breaches, financial penalties, or damages to brand reputation.

How we test security: We check the software used encryption, user requirements such as 2-factor authentication and user permissions, available compliance reports and certificates (GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA), and the processes the provider has in place to address data breaches (do they have disaster recovery plans set up?). We also check if the platforms allow you to securely export and delete data.

7. Cost and Pricing – assessing the product’s value for money in terms of features vs average plan price

Why we test cost and pricing: Any business, including solo or freelance ventures, will care about the bottom line. Any software is an expense, and it’s important for businesses to know they’re not eating into the ROI a software should bring their company by overpaying for it. We try to give the fairest assessment of not just how cheap or expensive each product is, but how much value it offers for their price point in terms of features.

How we test cost and pricing: We do calculations to weigh the plan prices against the quality and breadth of features to answer the question, “does it offer better or worse value for money than its competitors?”. Other factors include whether or not it offers a free plan, free trial, or a money-back guarantee window. We do our due diligence on checking for hidden fees and costs, and we evaluate how the range of price points it offers businesses (as well as how the prices compare to equivalent plans for competitor software).