Task & Project Management App Guide

Task & Project ManagementAPP GUIDE

by Julя R$

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INTRODUCTION

MAKING A CHOICE

The App Positioning ModelI was inspired to write this guide from my own inability to stick to a task management platform for more than a few months. I always had excuses. I’d blame it on a lack of features, integrations and de-sign, but the real problem was my approach to picking the right one in the first place.

Forget specific features. Focus on what types of workflows your tools needs to support to maximize efficiency. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it must support your daily workflows.

I love decision-making models, especially the Eisenhower Ma-trix for time management and the Brand Positioning Model for product positioning.

For our purposes, I’ve hacked the Brand Positioning Model (pic-tured right) to compare features and functions of six of my favorite project/task management tools.

I have personally used all of them at one point or another. Some I currently use–like OmniFocus (for my personal projects & tasks), Po-dio (for client collaboration) and Clear (for my quick errand lists).

Please Note: The position of the apps within the matrix is based on my experience and personal use of the platforms. I didn’t count and weigh every feature and functionality for each application and tally a score. So, it’s not an exact science, but it does represent what I believe to be a rough, but fair representation for each.

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To prove that we have a too many choices, here is a list of 92 popu-lar task management platforms that you could choose from. Even the simple act of researching, vetting and choosing one that fits your needs is overwhelming.

It doesn’t stop there. You have to sign-up, fill it up, organize it and keep it updated, daily.

It isn’t until hours of time invested that you realize you’ve stopped using it. All the time you spent researching, learning and keeping it updated goes to waste once you stop opening it everyday.

There are many reasons this happens:

• It has too many features and functionality you don’t need

• It doesn’t have all the features and functionality you do need

• It’s hard to use or poorly designed (so you don’t enjoy using it)

• The entire process feels unnecessary and redundant

Yet the hard truth is–using any system is better than nothing. If you want to productive and successful, you have to proactively man-age your work.

The Paradox of ChoiceThe Paradox of Choice by psychologist Barry Schwartz explains why the plethora of of apps to choose from makes us ultimately un-satisfied with the choices we make.

How we ChooseBarry Schwartz suggests the following steps to help us make good decisions:

• Figure out your goal(s). Ask the question “what do I want?”

• Evaluate the importance of each goal.

• Array the options.

• Evaluate how likely each of the options is to meet your goals.

• Pick the winning option.

Taking Barry’s advice, we should evaluate the strengths and weak-nesses of any new tool we are considering by asking “what do I want it to help me accomplish?”

Mapping the variables on a decision matrix helps you think about what you want the most. This helps strengthen your resolve and confidence that you’ve picked the right one. If you believe it’s the best choice for you, it’s way more likely you will keep at it.

The best system is the one you can stick to and use everyday. I hope this guide provides you with a different way of thinking about choosing and sticking to the tools that are best for you.

INTRODUCTION

HOW TO DECIDE

1 Quickly capture your thoughts and ideas and process them into actionable to-do items.

OmniFocus

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YOU ARE SOMEONE WHO

• Is looking for a hardcore personal task management system that allows you to strictly implement David Allen’s GTD® (Getting Things Done) System

• Considers yourself a highly organized person and would benefit from having a platform with robust features support-ing the GTD® process of capturing, or-ganizing, managing and reviewing pro-jects and tasks

YOU’RE NOT SOMEONE WHO

• Must collaborate heavily with others (employees, co-workers, partners, cli-ents, etc.) on a single platform

• Is a well experienced task/project man-agement superuser (because this plat-form requires quite a bit of upfront setup, daily input and weekly review to get the most out of it)

• Has only a few projects and tasks to manage

YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO

• Organize overarching projects and goals into actionable to-dos

• Associate specific goals and tasks with short and/or long term projects

• Assign Contexts to task (like a specific location, application or tool which is re-quired in order to take action on the task

• Consistently Review the progress of your projects, update their priority and re-prioritize based on bandwidth

YOU WOULD GEEK OUT OVER

• A perfect GTD® digital system that syncs you updates across all your de-vices (Mac, iPhone & iPad)

• Using Siri to capture tasks and get location-based alerts pushed to your de-vices

• A Forecast snapshot of your day and/or week

OmniGroup

Features

Tutorials

Pricing

2 Work the way you want to. Get your work done on with your co-workers and clients on a social platform that you are in control of, instead of the other way around.

Podio

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YOU ARE SOMEONE WHO

• Works mostly remotely with small team, medium sized company or several cli-ents and partners who you need to col-laborate with on a daily basis

• Is juggling several teams and depart-ments to manage all the various details, due dates and tasks associated with vari-ous projects and deliverables

• Wants to be able to heavily customize workspaces to fit teams and depart-ment’s unique needs

YOU’RE NOT A PERSON WHO

• Is looking for a simple, quick to set-up, lightweight and out-of-the-box system

• Only needs to manage and organize a few projects and tasks

• Works wih teams, clients or partners that don’t have the bandwidth, interest or patience for a dynamic project man-agement system

YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO

• Have private workspaces where only certain employee’s, partners or clients can access and collaborate within

• Better manage CRM, marketing, IT sup-port, recruiting and HR teams via pri-vate workspaces that can be custom-ized to fit their specific workflow

• Instant message and video chat with colleagues within the interface

YOU WOULD GEEK OUT OVER

• Customizing your own apps to fit the projects and workflows of your team (without any technical skills required)

• Empowering everyone to work the way they want to

• Integrating w/ Google, Sharefile, Drop-box, Evernote, Box, SkyDrive, Sugar-Sync, Zendesk, Campaign Monitor, ect.

• Creating custom integrations using webhooks and the API

About

Features

Tutorials

Pricing

3 Get your ideas, projects and tasks organized quickly. It’s incredibly easy to use, intuitive and collaborative. Just enough features and functionality to make it robust, but not too much to make it hard to set up and maintain.

Trello

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YOU ARE A PERSON WHO

• Is a fan of the Personal Kanban method because you like to visualize your current workload and limit your view of work-in-progress

• Works best when you can see a pro-ject’s to-do, doing and done tasks in one place

• Benefits from a clean, simply designed column-view of your projects tasks

• Works alone or with small to medium sized teams

YOU’RE NOT A PERSON WHO

• Is not distracted or overwhelmed view-ing all of your tasks on a single page

• Believes in the GTD® method of organi-zation (the Personal Kanban methodol-ogy is different in several key ways)

• Manages very complex projects and tasks

YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO

• Translate your love of index cards, sticky notes and whiteboards to a digital sys-tem where you can easily order and re-order project tasks in a single interface

• Visually separate all your different pro-jects and their associated tasks

• Easily add collaborators allowing them to contribute to specific projects and tasks

YOU WOULD GEEK OUT OVER

• How minimal it is compared to the other apps but still has key features like: file uploading, commenting, sharing, ect

• Easily moving around tasks by simply dragging and dropping them some-where else (similar to how you could with a physical sticky note)

• Adding pictures to task cards, giving a bit of visual design to your tasks

About

Features

Tutorial

Pricing

4 Simple yet powerful. Track everything from grocery shopping to long-term travel plans. Create and share to-do lists for all of the projects in your life.

Wunderlist

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YOU ARE A PERSON WHO

• Has been managing your to-do list with pen and paper but wants more func-tionality, design and portability

• Have your own private to-do’s but also need to share and collaborate on pro-jects and tasks with others

• Likes a clean, simple interface with un-obtrusive advanced features and func-tionality

YOU’RE NOT A PERSON WHO

• Needs a robust team collaboration plat-form

• Is a project manager that must dili-gently hold individuals accountable with reports and project timelines

• Has used simple project/task manage-ment systems and is looking for some-thing with more advanced features and functionality to manage not just tasks but very complex projects as well

YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO

• Manage straightforward projects and associated tasks in a clean, well-designed interface

• Auto-sync updates you’ve made on a task or project across many other de-vices

YOU WOULD GEEK OUT OVER

• A clean and simple interface with the ability to customize the look and feel

• To-do check lists within individual tasks

• A Gmail Add to Wunderlist button which adds the content of emails as a task

• Integration with: Amazon, ASOS, Etsy, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia and Hacker News (who have incorporated Add to Wunderlist buttons on their site)

• The ability to dictate your to-dos (*only available on Chrome)

About

Features

Tutorial

Pricing

5 Helps you get things done with your friends in a simple & elegant way. It's free, simple & fun.

Any.DO

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YOU ARE A PERSON WHO

• Want’s a simple, primarily mobile task/project management system

• Likes a quick, drag and drop system to plan and organize your day

• Chrome is your main browser and you are comfortable with (and frequently use) Chrome-based toolbar extensions

• Uses Gmail and and manage email via your Chrome browser

• Is an iPhone or Android mobile user

YOU’RE NOT A PERSON WHO

• Needs a feature-rich project manage-ment and team collaboration platform

• Would like to manage your projects and tasks with a native desktop app

• Has complex projects, timelines, deliv-erables and workflows

YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO

• Quickly enter and organize your cur-rent, upcoming and someday tasks

• Easily add and share tasks from within your email (*gmail only)

• Have your tasks integrate with your Google Calendar

• Sync tasks you’ve added via the mo-bile app to your Chrome browser exten-sion (*iphone and android only)

YOU WOULD GEEK OUT OVER

• Predictive task adding

• Customizing how you want to receive your reminders by date, time and loca-tion

• Syncing with their companion app (Cal), which integrates your Any.DO tasks into your calendar

• Shaking your Any.Do iPhone app to clear the day’s finished tasks

About

Features

Tutorials

Pricing

6 Is built to make it really easy to stay productive. No clutter, no obstacles, just you, your tasks and an intuitive drag and drop design.

Clear

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YOU ARE A PERSON WHO

• Is a Mac, iPhone and iPad user

• Likes to maintain a simple list of things to do

• Doesn’t need advanced features and functionalities that most of the other task/project management platforms have

• Loves well-executed interaction design, that are based on gestures

YOU’RE NOT A PERSON WHO

• Is a Windows or Android user

• Needs more functionality than a simple to-do list

• Doesn’t use iCloud to sync updates you make within apps on your iPhone and iPad

YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO

• Quickly create multiple tasks in a row

• Sort items by priority, with important items highlighted at the top

• Move tasks up or down to change its pri-ority by simply tapping and dragging

• Use iCloud to sync task list updates made on your iPhone, iPad and Mac

YOU WOULD GEEK OUT OVER

• The wonderful simplicity of the app’s form and function

• The vibrant and beautiful color palettes

• Swiping left or right to complete or de-lete a task

• The Mac app’s keyboard shortcuts

• The “shake phone” feature to undo your previous action

About

iOS App

Mac App

Company

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