If you’re a project manager, you need to know about the best free agile project management software. More and more organizations are turning to agile methodologies to help them deliver products on time and within budget. The problem is that too many companies believe the hype and start running their projects using tools that aren’t designed to run agile projects.
If you’ve ever worked with a project management tool, you probably know how expensive they can be. If you’re running a project with a limited budget, the price tag of these software products may prove too much to handle. We all love freemium products but when your budget is limited, free doesn’t always mean free. In this guide we will look at some of the best free agile project management tools available.
Visual Paradigm
Description
Visual Paradigm is a solid cross-platform project management tool for IT companies. The innovative platform enables software developers to build smart apps quicker, better, and at a lower cost.
Main features
- Visual Paradigm offers uml tools to draw all types of UML 2.x diagrams.
- Software development projects will benefit from using UeXceler. This agile development methodology includes theory, principles, and helpful agile tools (like user story map, Affinity Table, UX design tools like storyboards, wireframes, etc.)
- Model the database with the help of Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) and ORM Diagram. The platform enables you to draw them.
- Model process with Business process diagram, Data flow diagram, Event-driven process chain diagram, Process map diagram, and Organization Chart.
- Access relational database in an object-relational approach when you write the code. Visual Paradigm generates an object-relational mapping layer that incorporates the following features – transaction support, pluggable cache layer, connection pool, and customizable SQL statement.
- Use team collaboration support to model VPository or VP Teamwork Server technologies.
- Speed up the writing software specification with Doc. Composer. It offers a variety of customizable documents templates.
Pricing
Starting from $6 per month. Free 30-day trial available.
GitScrum
GitScrum is an agile software for freelancers, startups, agencies, and small businesses. It offers two ways of organizing tasks via Board and Gantt Chart views. GitScrum Boards provides a visual overview of tasks as cards within a Kanban board while the Gantt Chart lets you track task progress in a timeline.
Since sprints are the essential part of an agile framework, it’s nice to see GitScrum providing the Sprints feature for easier organization of each sprint. You can define sprint deliverables and track time spent on tasks and overall progress. The burndown chart measures the number of done items in each sprint, and you can assign points to each task based on its difficulty.
User stories are another key part of agile development, describing a goal from the user’s perspective. GitScrum lets you create user stories and tasks within each story to gain better clarity of the goal your team is trying to achieve.
If you’re looking to motivate your teams to become more productive, check out GitScrum’s Rock Star Team—a gamified performance tracking tool. Personalized leaderboards let you recognize and reward those who have worked the hardest and inspire others to get on top.
Key Features
- Board
- Gantt Chart
- Time Tracking
- Sprints
- User Stories
- Mind Mapping
- Integrations
- Task Checklist
- Templates
- Discussions
- Rock Star Team
- Documents
- Form2Task
Pricing
GitScrum currently offers three types of lifetime deals starting at $49 for a Freelancer account.
Github Project Management
Your development team is most likely already using Github to host and collaborate on source code. With Github project management, your team can manage, track, and fix issues too.
By linking issues with pull requests and code commits, your team members can track updates in your project without complicating your workflow. And if you associate an issue with a pull request, it will automatically close when the pull request is merged.
Agile features in Github Project Management:
- Board
- Labels
- Issue linking to pull requests
- Setup a custom workflow in minutes
Pricing: Free to $25 per month for 5 users
Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is a project planning tool for software development teams. It is built to keep your agile team on track to hit their sprint goals. It’s sprint planning guides you with breaking down and prioritizing projects into manageable, actionable chunks for your team to keep the momentum going.
With a view of your team’s work, Pivotal Tracker ensures everyone in your team has a real-time, single source of truth.
Agile features in Pivotal Tracker:
- Stories
- Estimation
- Backlog
- Iterations
- Velocity chart
Pricing: Free to $250 per month
Wrike
Effective project management is all about making instant changes where needed in order to save up on costs and increase the revenues. Wrike is ideal for centralizing and connecting multiple projects and spiking up your team’s efficiency. It gets a lot of bad rep for its utilitarian interface, but just like with teamweek’s tool, setting up your project tasks will be a walk in the park. Although Wrike is up to date with their releases and enhancements, their mobile versions get a bit of a lag in the process. This might frustrate if you expect to see changes on your mobile devices at the same time as they happen on your desktop.
Forecast.app
Forecast is perfect for agile teams, as it ensures optimal project deliveries through an adaptive work process and workflow automation to save project managers time and maintain visibility on projects, tasks, and milestones.
The platform uses AI to help make estimates, so you can effectively plan for a more accurate view of your sprint capacity and monitor velocity. Everything is in one place so you can reduce the amount of rework and improve efficiency while grooming the backlog, planning the sprint, tracking progress and velocity, and discerning where processes can be improved.
Forecast also integrates with the tools your developers love, such as Azure DevOps, GitHub, GitLab, as well as two-way sync with Jira, so you can collaborate with ease and deliver value faster.
Forecast is currently used in 40+ countries worldwide, by agencies, consulting companies, and enterprises. Paid plans start at $29/user/month. Forecast has a 14-day free trial.
Pros
- Predictive tasks for spreadsheets
- Great UI
- Includes resource management
- Good for RFP processes
Cons
- Additional fee for onboarding/training
- Higher learning curve than some other tools
- Caters more to agencies
Kintone
Kintone is an all-in-one project management platform that allows managers to track, prioritize, and review their team’s tasks for any given project workflow, no matter how complex. This highly-customizable platform gives you the power to create a tailored project management solution using its drag-and-drop interface built for non-coders. Quickly design the workflows you want, then review tasks that move through it in seconds.
Kintone’s customization features include the ability to create automated reminders, filter tasks or project phases by data field or team member to generate custom reports or dashboard views, and automate handoffs between team members for multi-step workflows. You can also view, edit, and update workflows from the platform’s mobile or desktop applications, so oversight doesn’t stop when you leave your desk.
One of the Kintone’s most valuable features is its built-in communication channels. These chat tools allow you to discuss projects with your team directly in the database, meaning your conversations and data stay connected. Open the record, see what was discussed. You can also create “spaces” for conversation organized by topic, team, project, or department. The best part is these spaces stay visible to everyone, so teammates who miss a discussion can come back later and catch up on what’s been said.
Kintone’s project management tool also features integrations including: Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Dropbox, Salesforce, Hubspot, and many more through Zapier.
Kintone costs from $24/user/month with a minimum requirement of 5 users. They offer a 30-day free trial and discounted prices for NGOs and educators.
Conclusion:
These days, managers have a lot of resources at their disposal for creating better teams and maximizing project efficiency. Not only can they rely on the expertise and experience of their team members and experts in the industry, but also software solutions to make sure that projects run smoothly and assure success. One such solution is an agile project management tool.