Collaborative Project Management (CPM) is a project management methodology that is more flexible and transparent than other traditional project management disciplines. It was developed as a result of growing dissatisfaction with the traditional methodology of work breakdown structure (WBS). Like WBS, CPM organizes and prioritizes all project tasks, but CPM uses the inputs and outputs of the project’s product to determine priorities. With CPM, team members can see all project tasks at one time, and understand the development of the product as it evolves.
Collaborative project management is essentially an online method of communication, meeting, sharing and collaborating with other individuals on projects. Tools like the ones below allow managers to share schedules with other individuals in the company for updates or changes to projects based on due dates or time restraints.
Infinity — An Infinitely Flexible, All-In-One Project Management Software
Description
Forgive us for putting ourselves first, but we really are proud of Infinity’s capabilities. Its flexible structure allows you to tailor your workspace to your actual workflow, be it a small personal project or a multi-team enterprise project. Infinity works great for freelance projects, marketing or software development project management, and dozens of other use cases.
You can organize items within your workspace into folders, subfolders, and tabs. There are 15+ attributes to add to your items, such as date, labels, text, checkboxes, formulas, and attachments. Infinity lets you build customizable frameworks and processes using an unlimited number of boards within your workspace and structuring each board to follow your data flow.
Are you looking to organize your e-commerce orders by date in a calendar view? Want to group your employees by department? Infinity project management software offers multiple views—including Table, Columns, List, Calendar, Gantt, and Form—that allow you to see your data from a different angle, as well as filter, group, and customize options to display it in a way that makes the most sense.
“Infinity is like the photoshop of project management. There’s so many ways to customize your workflow that fits your needs specifically. The price lured me into investigating the platform and the customization got me to sign up to check it out.” – Benjamin A.
The Zapier integration lets you connect Infinity to over 2,000 other apps, including Gmail. Infinity also integrates with Clockify, which enables you to track time spent on tasks within Infinity, review timesheets, and create reports. The Trello integration allows you to import all your data from Trello within seconds.
If you’re handling big data projects, Infinity has plans that start from 50 GB and go up to 5,000 GB. We use Digital Ocean servers located in the US and industry-leading Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosting infrastructure.
INFINITY TIP: Use Infinity templates to break down your projects into smaller tasks, assign them to the right people, set due dates, and keep track of everyone’s progress.
Infinity also comes with various ready-made project management templates that save you time and effort while building your project pipeline. Check them out here:
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Asana — A Cloud-Based Project Management Software for Teams
Image Source: asana.com
Description
Asana is a project tracking tool great for startups, small and medium businesses, and enterprises. This cloud-based software offers a shared workspace for teams to assign tasks, track progress, and message team members.
There are multiple views in Asana: list, timeline, and board view. Having the freedom to change views makes it easier to track tasks the way you want to. However, Asana does lack other views that many tools on this list offer within their features. There is also no customer management, which is why you should reconsider Asana if you plan to use it in your Sales department.
If you want to use Asana for personal tasks, the basic plan is free and great for simple projects such as to-do lists. However, the strong point of Asana is in its team collaboration features, which is why most freelancers and individuals won’t benefit from this project management software as much as teams.
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Jira — A Software Development Project Management Tool
Image Source: atlassian.com/software/jira
Description
Since Jira was primarily designed for software development, it doesn’t come as a surprise that it is mostly used for IT project management. Its interface is made to accommodate the agile development approach, providing a Kanban-style overview of tasks.
Jira is an agile project management software great for Scrum, Kanban, and hybrid agile models. It enables teams to assign tasks, track individual and team progress, as well as identify and solve issues and blockers within the workflow. One of the greatest downsides of this software is the lack of an in-app Gantt chart, but there are several Gannt plugins you can download in the Atlassian Marketplace.
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Basecamp — A Project Tracking Tool for Productivity and Communication
Image Source: basecamp.com
Description
Basecamp is a project management software with a focus on productivity and teamwork. It offers tools like message boards, to-dos, schedules, docs, file storage, real-time group chat, and automatic check-in questions.
Basecamp excels at offering innovative features that are unique to this tool. For instance, it has a team member chat room called Campfire, where coworkers can message each other and share files. Basecamp has its bespoke view called Hill Charts that is a step up from Gannt charts providing another dimension. The purpose of Hill Charts is to anticipate problems before they occur and provide a better estimate of the status of a project.
While Basecamp does a great job at being a productivity tool, its project management abilities are somewhat limited. Some features standard for project management are not included in the software but can be added via third-party integrations.
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Hive
Hive is a comprehensive, all-in-one project and campaign management tool — the only tool you need to open in the morning to get your work done. Hive takes project management to the next level with native chat, native email, over 1,000 integrations and flexible project views, which include Gantt, Kanban, calendar, portfolio and table view.
The building blocks of Hive are action cards, which exist inside of larger projects. Inside these action cards, teams can upload files, provide feedback with proofing and approvals, tag each other, or provide general commentary. Teams at all-star companies like Starbucks, Comcast, and Google work in Hive, which is why it’s on the list of best project management softwares. Learn more about all of Hive’s features here.
Cost: Free 14-day trial with plans starting at $12 per user, per month. Sign up for a free trial here.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a cloud-based tool with lots of features for individuals, project managers or even marketing teams that enables collaboration on tasks. Some of the features include to-do lists for tasks, which can be assigned to different users, and tasks that the system will automatically follow up on when the due date lapses.
It also has a real-time group chat feature and a tool that enables the client to view the progress of the project. As with the majority of services on this list, Basecamp can also be integrated with other products for reporting, analysis, and time tracking, among other features. Aside from its cloud-based solution, Basecamp can be integrated with iOS, Android, Mac, and PC.
Cost: Basecamp’s personal package is free for personal use. Business plans start at $99 monthly for unlimited users and projects.
Comparison: Learn about Hive as a Basecamp alternative
Workfront
Workfront is a highly customizable tool that helps users to manage their projects, which is why it’s one of our picks for best project management software. Features include setting up priorities for tasks, assigning them to specific team members, managing an entire project, and reviewing its progress. Besides automating the whole workflow, this top project management software also provides a centralized platform for digital collaboration and integration with various other services.
Workfront also delivers powerful tool integrations to help your team take their tech stack to the next level.
Cost: Workfront has four pricing plans — you must request a quote for each plan.
monday.com
First on our list of best online collaboration tools is the multi-awarded communication and collaboration platform monday.com. This easy-to-use, yet highly-intuitive solution is designed to sync all data in a single hub while enabling agents and team members to come up with critical decisions. Its popularity is reflected by the fact that it ranks first in our 20 best online project management tools list.
A key software functionality is contribution streamlining, which helps boost the performance of all teams and departments. Its system collates and displays progress information in a manner that is both easy-to-understand and logical. This allows all team members to track all common operations and projects. You can use all the features for free for a period of time to see if the software matches your needs.
Try out monday.com with their free trialVISIT WEBSITEFREE TRIAL
Likewise, it ensures that users get the needed incentives to make contributions to assignments and tasks, even those not directly related to their company roles. Its interface is built to support collaboration, using social networks and other channels. Everyone on the team can add comments, ask questions, and even start discussions on any task. This easy-to-use program does not demand intensive training even for novice users.
monday.com is available in a variety of pricing schemes. For its plans for five users, prices start from as low as $49/month (Basic plan) to $99/month (Pro plan), while its Enterprise plan is by quote.
Conclusion
Collaborative Project Management (CPM) is the process of managing multiple project teams simultaneously. A PM (Project Manager) can work on a single project team by managing a single project. However, when a PM takes on multiple project teams, there is a huge disadvantage of not having consistent processes in business management.