Smaller teams do not need the bloated project management tools and even there is a need to have a much leaner (and cheaper) products than what 37 signals of the world offer.
Today, we share two very cool webapps that offer superbly simplified mechanism for teams to manage tasks/projects on an ongoing basis.
CoHuman
The Coolness: CoHuman is a super simple task management tool that enables you to add team members, assign tasks , delegate, prioritize tasks etc. The service is integrated with Google Apps calendar and works seamlessly well.
Pluses
– Well thought-out features. CoHuman is a good attempt to replicate real-life project management functions. For example, the moment your team member completes a task, you can pat their back with a ‘Yay’.
– Good view of team members’ task/priorities: Go to a colleagues’ user panel to see their tasks in order of priority (you can only see Tasks you have the right to see of course).
– Task pane, which is superbly done : You can assign dependencies/add comments etc
– Google Docs Integration: Personally, a favorite feature. That is, attach, share and locate Google docs from within Cohuman.
– Easy mechanism to share tasks/assign owners/assign dependencies.
– Reply to task emails are recorded as comments in the task pane.
– You can define expected time of any task and mark it against the actual time – i.e. track productivity of team members.
– A whole lot of useful project management features (archives/files/blocking etc) that are useful from project management perspective.
– Officially CoHuman has an iphone app and an unofficial Android app.
What’s Missing?
– There is too much of noise in activity stream. The activity stream has each and every minute details of one’s activity on the site – i.e. when did you open the task, whom was it assigned to etc etc.
– Speed. The product is heavy and slow to use.
– Dashboard: There has to be 1 dashboard view of all the projects and ‘activities for the day’. And this dashboard cannot fit in the current pane view. I strongly urge the team to think about ‘Dashboard’ view.
Asana
URL: http://www.asana.com
Started by ex-Facebook cofounder, Asana takes a very fresh approach to task management.
Pluses:
– Very fast. Sleek and helps you stay focused. Asana is actually super fast and ensures that you keep main thing the main thing.
– The mobile site is very well done. No need to download/install apps.
– Keyboard shortcuts are very helpful. You just get used to these shortcuts once you start using them. Improves product stickiness.
– Like any project management product, you can define milestones/add followers to any task and importantly, create the team in loop. All done beautifully.
– Permalinks everywhere: every task has a permalink and you can simply share this with other team members.
– Tag items across projects: Tags items with descriptions for searching, organizing, or even converting into a new project.
Asana boasts of very thoughtful features and user experience as opposed to most of the other web-based project management tools.
What’s Missing?
– No way to add timing against tasks. And that’s why integration with Google Calendar is namesake.
– No concept of timezone. So if you are in India (like me), you will receive your ToDO mail for the day by evening 6 PM! Is that cool? Surely not.
– The mobile site, though awesomely done misses out on few important features – like one cannot assign task to another team member.
– Where is the dashboard view?
Both Asana and CoHuman miss out on one important functionality – i.e. of dashboard view (across all projects). In both systems, your view (as project manager/owner) is limited to projects and doesn’t span across all the projects – that is, dashboard view is limited to projects, but not across projects which I think is simply wrong.
As far as pricing is concerned, Asana is free while CoHuman comes in freemium variant. In terms of features, these two are simply brilliant products with very well thought out features and I recommend startups/small teams to give these a spin and share your feedback.
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