In this post you will have the opportunity to know the best free agile project management tools. Agile Project Management is a framework for managing a software development project. It has gained a lot of popularity in recent years as it works effectively to manage projects with varied complexity and scale.
Agile project management tools allow you to access the best way of creating your software. Whether you are working on your very first project or you’ve worked on hundreds of them, there are benefits to using the best project management solution. With the right tools, team members can see different parts of the project at once for a more cohesive view.
Zoho Sprints
Zoho Sprints is an agile project management tool that aims to provide an iterative and collaborative approach to work. It can be used equally well by seasoned agile practitioners as well as by teams that are starting our their journey of agile transformation.
An intuitive backlog makes it easy to plan and prioritize work items that are in the format of user stories, tasks, and bugs. Scrumban teams can also set WIP limits, sort and view progress in swimlanes, and track sprint summaries on dashboards. Incomplete work items can be moved back to the backlog or moved across other active and upcoming sprints.
The Global View helps in tracking progress across all projects. Each project gets a project dashboard that provides project managers and Scrum masters a birds-eye view of project progress. Actionable insights from velocity charts, burnup and burndown reports, and cumulative flow diagrams help teams iterate their sprint planning.
Teams get live updates about all project activities with the project feed. The Meetings module lets teams schedule sprint planning, review, and retrospective meetings. All users can log billable and non-billable hours while the global timer can be used to start a timer for any work item. The timesheet reports provide a summary of log hours distributed across parameters like duration, sprint, work item type, and user.
Issues from Jira can be imported using the built-in Jira Import wizard. Software development teams can use built-in integrations with tools like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. There is also a Marketplace that has several pre-built extensions. You can also build and sell extensions as well.
Zoho Sprints offers a free trial for 15 days (no credit card required). Zoho Sprints has one paid plan starting at $12/12 users per month billed annually. Also has a freemium version upto 5 users for 5 projects.
Pros
- Robust customization options
- Easily schedule meetings for sprint reviews and daily stand-ups
- Easily turn feed messages into a work item
Cons
- No cumulative by-project timesheets for a user
- Doesn’t integrate well with other Zoho apps
- No Kanban boards
Nutcache
Nutcache is a project management tool designed to plan, track, and manage all aspects of your project using a sophisticated toolbox of color-coded schedules, task organization queues, and data reporting. Users can organize with Agile or Scrum project management, depending on your preferences.
Use the Gantt chart to plan, track, and visually organize your tasks with easy drag-drop-and-click editing techniques. Nutcache offers tools to prioritize and focus on critical tasks: build custom workflows and attach multiple assignees to a task, break down each phase of your project, make adjustments to reschedule your tasks, and visualize project deadlines.
Integrations include Dynacom Accounting, PayPal, 2Checkout, Stripe, Authorized.Net, QuickBooks Online, Google Sign In, Google Drive, GitHub, Slack, and hundreds of other apps through Zapier.
Nutcache costs from $6/user/month with a “Pro” plan that requires 5 users.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Great time tracking functionality
- Easy to integrate new employees
Cons
- Complicated security levels for employees
- Need more third party integrations
Orangescrum
Orangescrum an agile project and a task management software with open source and a cloud version. Its main selling point is along with the agile features it provides, it also includes time, resource, and invoice management.
Orangescrum enables your team to centralize all your projects and tasks while managing resources. It helps teams to work closely together with its collaboration features such as file sharing.
This makes it a great tool for service companies that have several clients.
Agile features provided by Orangescrum:
- Scrum Board
- Sprints
- Epics
- Tasks management
Pricing: Free to $109 per month. Orangescrum also provides a self-hosted plan that has a one-time payment in the range of $259 to $4,999.
Kanbanize
Kanbanize is an agile tool centred around kanban board. It helps you organize and manage work efficiently by allowing you to see all initiatives at a glance.
One of the best functionalities in Kanbanize is that you break down a card in a kanban board into smaller chunks of cards that can then be automated to go through a series of steps. And if you are a client services company, you’ll love their time tracking functionality that will help you with your agile reports.
Agile features in Kanbanize:
- Kanban Boards
- WIP limits
- Agile reporting
Pricing: Free to $99 per month
Active Collab
Active Collab was devised as a great solution for businesses. With Active Collab you will not have to keep your clients on the sidelines anymore. You can determine what every user can see and access, keep them informed and shared what’s important. It offers project planning, allows to share files, time tracking, expense tracking, brainstorming, discussing important topic and more.
Asana
Asana is the ultimate cloud-based project and task management tool for planning, organizing, and tracking the progress of the tasks. From start to finish, Asana has the feature your team needs ㅡ from Boards to Timelines. For Agile project management, Asana track launches and iterations, simply project and sprint plans, communication with teammates.
If you are handling an Agile team or wondering if Agile can work for you, this article can help you with lots of information to handle projects. You can control your team’s work and achieve the best results.
Ravetree
Ravetree is a full-featured Agile Work Management ® software platform that includes best-in-class Agile project management, resource planning, time and expense tracking, digital asset management, and CRM.
Unlike other Agile project management tools that are built primarily for software teams, Ravetree is built for Agile organizations. This makes it especially well-suited for marketing & advertising, engineering, architecture, management consulting, legal accounting, higher education, non-profits, and government.
The Agile tools are built directly into Ravetree, without the need for 3rd party integrations or add-ons – including the ability to create Kanban and Scrum teams, epics and user stories, plan sprints, and story point sizing. Teams can easily communicate and collaborate, share files, view burndown charts and much more. Organizations that use Ravetree benefit from having a single source of truth from which they can optimize their operations and see the big picture.
One thing that sets Ravetree apart is the highly intuitive interface that allows everyone to easily find information, whether it’s project managers, executives, or team members. Ravetree also has a great support system, which has given them excellent customer support ratings.
Ravetree costs $29/user/month (with annual agreement — $39/user/month if paid month-to-month) and $20/user/month for non-profits.
Pros
- Easily track multiple projects
- Robust budgeting features
- Distinction between billable and non-billable hours
Cons
- Reporting tools are lacking
- No public API
- Home board not customizable
Nostromo
Nostromo is the new kid on the block, an all-in-one project management tool for teams who work on digital projects. With features including task management, time administration, to-do’s, reporting and analytics, and design collaboration, it’s a well-rounded Kanban board tool – like Trello on steroids!
If you’re already using Trello and are ready for a more powerful task management Kanban tool with additional functionality around time tracking and reporting out the box, Nostromo could be a good choice. Helpfully, they include a tool to import existing Trello boards and data into their tool so the onboarding process is very easy.
As a lite and simple tool with task management, team collaboration and project metrics out the box, it’s a good choice for teams that have outgrown Trello. It’s weak on integrations, with Slack being the only integration currently on offer. It’s a new tool though, so keep an eye on Nostromo as they continue to add more features and functionality.
Nostromo costs from $10/2 users/month.
Pros
- Easily import from Trello/spreadsheets
- Award-winning UX
Cons
- Few third party integrations
- Small user base, minimal online presence
Conclusion:
Agile is not just about software development. It can be applied to different fields. Not just IT. And one of these fields is project management. When it comes to agile project management there are various methods and tools to choose from, which can be confusing. Especially if you’re new to the field, or if you’re new at working with agile project management techniques.