Top 10 PMS for Remote Teams
Having trouble communicating with your remote team? Shared the wrong file to the team, and it takes 3 hours to resend to them one by one again? Your remote team misunderstands your project’s milestones and even objective? It never feels good to have these conflicts while bearing the stress of getting project done, but you can actually eliminate these issues by using the online project management software.
The rise of remote teams has led to the production of several great online project management systems to address the problems of teams facing productivity issues and the need for real-time updates. Online project management software not only breaks the barrier of distance by providing instant communication to collaborators, but also provides them a sharing environment which every teammate can get the same update, same file and same documentation.
It’s only the matter time for you to discover it, but we decided to introduce you 10 online project management software that provides tons of useful features for you such task setting and sharing, real-time updates, file sharing and even online wiki. Forget about getting into the trouble in every aspect of project management, now you only have to login on the web to access all-in-one project management system!
1. activeCollab
ActiveCollab helps collaborators through its time saving and easy-to-use features. Project leaders can set milestones for the team, add team members, assign tasks and get notified via e-mail for updates on the project. Also when replying or posting a comment, you don’t need to actually log in the system, you can reply and post comments via e-mail.
With ActiveCollab, team leaders can provide real-time updates to their contractors/clients by giving them access to the system itself. I’ve personally used this and I’ve seen that it is pretty flexible on giving users permission on what features to use.
File sharing, time tracking, invoicing, project management, and notifications, all in one place: in your web server.
2. Assembla
Assembla has a ticketing system where teams in remote places are given tasks via tickets. I’ve used this and personally, I find it a little confusing at first but after spending some time with it, I get exactly how it works. It is like one of those online forums where people talk about things, only here, the project leader is the one who controls most of the game.
There are built-in wiki to help new users navigate their way through, and Assembla encourages its users to actually read and follow instructions.
3. Basecamp
Created by 37signals, a company which believes that less is more, Basecamp focuses on communication between users to achieve optimum performance. Instead of sending e-mail to several people, users can post directly to Basecamp and let people engaged in the post, eliminating messy e-mail threads on everybody’s inbox.
When it comes to file sharing, Basecamp supports every popular file formats, ranging from word documents to images to any file type. When it comes to revisions, uploaded files with the same file name will not overwrite existing files, and the older file will be archived so that people can see what changes have been made. For uploaded images, users get to preview it first before downloading the file.
4. Central Desktop
Just like any online project management software, using Central Desktop will enable you to work anywhere as long as there’s an internet connection. It is a good thing to have a cloud-based platform to work on, eliminating clutter on your client thus keeping yourself organized.
Users can get instant time tracker, real-time web conference (which is very important for every collaboration tool), built-in instant messenger, instant document editing (like Google Docs), and many more.
Central Desktop also has a sleek Twitter-like feature where users can post status updates about their task. It also features a discussion forums for teams to discuss their ideas (which is a good thing, especially when people live in different time zones).
5. Confluence
If you’re a wiki user then Confluence will be easy for you to use. Although it is not your usual wiki, it still incorporates many similar features like content creation for all users, intelligent search, discussion and many more. File sharing is made via drag and drop. Confluence is, unlike other project management software, more focused on documentation and information sharing. For big projects, proper documentation is definitely the key to a more organized execution of things.
Like WordPress, there are also several plugins that users can install for the system, each having their own purpose. And as people say, the best feature is its ability to integrate with Microsoft Office. That, in itself, says a lot.
6. Kapost
Kapost is a publishing management software perfect for bloggers and writers in collaboration. It is a virtual news room where users can present a concept and have it approved by an editor. There are three types of users here, the editors, contributors, and subscribers. Editors can approve, assign, and reject ideas to contributors.
Kapost also has a built-in feature for payments per post, although I haven’t personally tried it, I think it is a very cool feature especially when working with a very diverse team on an output-based payment.
The thing about Kapost is that it makes its users focus more on the concepts, increasing the quality of content. It’s like a real news room where people brainstorm together.
7. Producteev
Producteev works like an online to-do list which alerts you in real-time of what’s happening via e-mail, IM, or iPhone. Team leaders can create a virtual workspace and place collaborators there, create tasks and assign them to people, add deadlines and generate productivity report.
8. Teambox
Is your inbox getting out of hand? Teambox actually solves this problem by smartly organizing projects, telling you which conversation to look at, which to prioritize, etc.
The fun part I see here is that users can post status updates, just like Facebook, except that they are telling project members about their progress. Unlike other systems, Teambox is probably one of the few softwares out there that won’t make you go searching for the help file because things are so simple and easy to understand intuitively.
9. TeamLab
TeamLab is a free management platform for small to medium-sized companies. Using TeamLab is like having a social network within your company. You can create blog posts that the entire company can see, and the platform also got other social friendly features like company-wide announcements so that no one will be left behind, polls to gather public opinion, and many others. Members can even start their own discussions on the forums, making the whole company engaged in every activity they like.
Another notable feature is its in-house chat messenger that connects every member, eliminating the use of other IMs for work’s communication.
10. Time Doctor
Time Doctor had me at dramatically reducing wasted time as in the world we are living now, time can make or break an entire company.
Its main features include an optional screenshot monitoring for remote employees (which is a little invasive, in my opinion, but will do the job), automatic generation of daily reports, keeping track of what websites and applications are used, and many other features that track every possible action of a user on his computer. I must say, if you want to be strict with every penny you pay for, Time Doctor is what you’re looking for.
From hongkiat.com
