Project management for IT professionals: the best tools in 2024

When it comes to project management for IT teams and professionals, finding a project management tool that suits your team’s needs is essential, whether you’re a big company, a startup just getting established, or an IT agency. Whether organizing issues and tickets, managing tasks, or planning sprints, IT teams have unique needs–from preparing projects on time for clients to providing end-user support and everything in between. 

Cut out the guesswork–read on to hear more about some of the top project management tools designed with the needs of IT teams in mind. 

Top 7 Project Management Tools for IT Teams

Zenhub: Best all-around pick 

Jira: Best for ticketing

Trello: Best for Kanaban-style organization 

Microsoft Project: Best for Microsoft users

Smartsheet: Best for Excel-experienced teams

GitHub Projects: Best free option

Basecamp: Best For team collaboration 

1. Zenhub: Best all-around pick

Zenhub is a project management solution that provides IT teams with the robust features they need–without the overhead. AI-powered features streamline daily processes while capturing essential data points. Real-time roadmaps make it easy to stay accountable for project goals while gaining context about work trends. 

Why consider Zenhub 

Power-packed AI features help Zenhub stand out as an excellent overall pick for IT teams that want to keep processes lean and automated without sacrificing essential features like project status tracking, AI-powered sprint reviews, agile reporting, roadmaps, and more. Features focusing on project data accuracy, such as native GitHub integration, AI-generated labeling and AI acceptance criteria, and powerful automation tools, ensure that teams uncover blockers faster while hitting internal and external targets. 

The added bonus of automatically generated reports helps teams identify trends and areas for improvement with no additional workload, so your team can focus its energy on essential work. 

Key features

• AI-powered issue creation: Generate issues faster with AI-generated acceptance criteria and auto-tagging, saving you valuable time. 
• Auto-generated Agile reports: Automatically generate various Agile reports, including sprint reports (burndown charts), control charts, velocity charts, and more. Get instant GitHub metrics and compare your team’s performance with the top 100 GitHub repositories.
• GitHub integration: Zenhub’s GitHub integration enables your team to use your already existing GitHub issues across Zenhub, eliminating the need to duplicate work and making onboarding in Zenhub a breeze. 

2. Jira: Best for reporting

Jira is one of the oldest names in project management, especially when it comes to meeting the needs of IT teams. While Jira’s adaptable Agile features, issue tracking, and bug tracking capabilities appeal to many users, IT teams can benefit most from its support ticketing and custom reporting features.

Why consider Jira

Jira excels in customization, offering flexible workflows, custom fields, and issue types tailored to your team’s processes. Its adaptable ticketing system and integrations with tools like Jira Service Management provide a comprehensive and evolving solution for IT teams. However, Jira is best for teams with the resources to employ a dedicated Jira administrator, as customizations in Jira can become complex. 

Key features

Dependency management: Quickly spot bottlenecks and potential issues before they cause barriers in your team’s workflow with dependency management features for all project boards. 

Custom reporting: Jira allows users to create custom dashboards, filtering data by project, issue type, status, assignee, and many other fields to generate reports that suit a team’s specific requirements.

Layered permissions: Various levels of permission access help set up workflows to keep the team moving while ensuring that everyone has the appropriate level of access to boards, templates, and processes. 

3. Trello: Best for Kanban-style organization

Kanban boards are essential for most teams because they can visually highlight project status and convey updates quickly. Instead of displaying information in list form, Trello stands out as an easy-to-use and highly visual project management solution for IT teams. 

Why consider Trello

While it lacks some of the more advanced features other solutions offer, like time tracking and advanced reporting, the beauty of Trello lies in its’ simplicity–with the main draw being its’ Kanban-focused layout. Trello is an appealing pick for IT teams that want a basic solution that has some capability to adapt through 3rd party integrations. 

Key features

Atlassian integrations: Love Trello but don’t want to eliminate your Jira ticketing capabilities? Seamless integration connects Trello to various platforms, including Atlassian products. 

Activity log: IT teams working asynchronously or in parallel can leave instant updates under specific task cards to update other team members on changes and updates. 

Templates: IT-specific templates, as well as hundreds of other ready-made templates for team management, stand-up meetings, and more. 

4. Best for Microsoft users: Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is comprehensive project management software with advanced scheduling, resource management, and reporting features. As one might expect, it integrates well with Microsoft essentials such as Outlook, Microsoft Power BI, and more, making it a convenient choice for IT teams that already rely on Microsoft platforms. 

Why consider Microsoft Project

While some users can find it overly complex and even clunky, its budgeting capabilities, advanced Gantt charts, and integration options make it worth mentioning for IT teams, especially those that already utilize Microsoft projects or frequently work with non-technical teams. 

Key features

Detailed reporting: IT teams looking for more granular insights into team efficiency, project progression, and other metrics can utilize various unique and powerful reporting features.

Integration options: Microsoft Project offers a variety of integrations to help expand functionality and connect with other tools in your tech stack. 

Budget capabilities: Users can document project-specific and broader team project constraints to keep resources in check. 

5. Smart Sheet: Best for Excel-experienced teams

One of the biggest challenges teams face while transitioning into project management software is the learning curve while your team adapts, which can be time-intensive and inconvenient. Smartsheet meets IT teams in the middle of familiarity and capability, blending a familiar spreadsheet-style layout with more advanced PM features.

Why consider Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a streamlined, user-friendly solution for IT teams that need project management, task tracking, and collaboration features within a familiar interface. An added emphasis on customizable features helps IT teams create custom workflows and systems. 

Key features

Custom WorkApps: Users can create custom apps within the Smartsheet interface to meet team-specific needs, from reporting to meeting facilitation and more.

Portfolio management: Larger IT teams can benefit from portfolio management tools, which allow them to monitor stats across multiple projects and examine specific metrics more closely. 

Work insights: Specific work insights provide a deeper peak into what’s working well on your team and what needs improvement—from ticket response times to project work and more. 

6. GitHub Projects: Best free option

GitHub Projects is a built-in project management tool for managing planned work within GitHub. As an existing feature in GitHub, users can strategically plan project work based on real-time updates that automatically sync to work updates across the solution without spending on another solution.

Why consider GitHub Projects

While GitHub Projects doesn’t offer any of the flashy features and extensive project capabilities of other top picks, it’s a solid choice for small teams that rely on GitHub and don’t want to have to onboard an entirely new system. 

Key Features

Issue tracking: Your team can track individual issues as they pass through the project lifecycle, making it easy to monitor progress.

Kanban boards: The power of a simple Kanban board view makes it easier to visualize task status. 

General project management: Basic project planning features, such as task assignments and due dates, are supported. 

7. Basecamp: Best for team collaboration

Designed to respond to overly complex PM solutions, Basecamp is a user-friendly project and portfolio management system focused on team collaboration and simple checklist-style to-do lists. 

Why consider Basecamp

If your team is looking to consolidate your tech stack, particularly regarding collaboration, Basecamp is a great pick as it has numerous collaborative features. For IT teams managing numerous external clients or projects, the portfolio views make it easy to keep track of things at a high level. 

Key features

Instant chat: Basecamp has built-in real-time messaging for individuals and groups, so you can relay questions instantly without tracking them across the office (or across your tech stack into a third-party app). 

Mission Control: The Mission Control view uniquely offers the ability to visually highlight a project’s key stats, like progress toward completion, in one dashboard view. 

Flexible views: Gantt, Kanban, checklist, and timeline views are just a few of the flexible project views Basecamp offers, giving IT teams some flexibility in optimizing and tracking work. 

Conclusion

When you’re staring down a list of project management solutions for your IT team, it can be intimidating to narrow your options down–and that’s where we can help. Book a free demo with us today to explore your team’s best options, take a look at our features up close, and get an idea of how Zenhub can function as part of your organization.