While some companies may not stay remote only forever once COVID is over, there is guaranteed to be more flexibility when it comes to how teams work.
And as far as we see it… remote work isn’t going anywhere.
Because of this, some people have had a harder time adjusting than others, especially when it comes to productivity while collaborating with teams.
According to recent team management studies, 97% of employees and directors believe that the lack of alignment and organized communication within team environment impacts the end goal of projects and tasks.
Team management is a critical component to success for modern-day teams as well-organized teams complete tasks and projects quicker and more efficiently due to an increase in communication and organization.
In this article, we’ll be discussing the top team management tools of 2020 to increase productivity for your company, whether you’re remote for good, or just for now.
- Monday.com
Monday.com is an efficient collaboration and team management platform for teams of all sizes. Their environment provides workflow and task management features as well as the ability to facilitate collaboration and management between team members.
Monday’s platform is built around the functions of boards and pipelines. The former allows different teams within a company (Ex: Creative, Marketing, Development) to list out their daily or weekly tasks and tag members involved in those tasks. Additionally, individual team members can also establish their own boards to utilize as functional to-do lists.
Pipelines allow team members to easily organize payment and campaign tracking information, for example, into easily manageable pipelines. This is also a great feature for marketing and sales teams to use while managing and nurturing leads. Monday provides customizable turnkey templates for boards and pipelines to kickstart your team management process.
Monday’s Top Team Management Features:
- Advanced scheduling features for tasks and projects
- Live commenting on boards and tasks
- Tag individual team members or whole teams
- Receive updates and notifications through Email
- Integrations with other tools such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Pipedrive
- Personal and public Boards
- Customizable widgets for tracking progress and goals
- Visual calendars for teams outlining tasks and projects
Available for: Web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android
2. Slack
Slack is a communication platform that primarily allows for management of all team communications. You have the ability to send direct messages between members, create locked and public channels dedicated to various topics and departments (HR, Company Culture, Marketing Team, etc), and communicate with your team in real-time. This is particularly valuable for teams with remote workers as conversations can easily be picked up at any point.
In terms of workflow communication, Slack allows you to send feedback, notes, files, photos, videos, audio messages, comments on projects, or anything else you want to communicate directly to the person you need — you’re also able to pin important messages and attachments in each channel to make them more visible. This is also a good place to attach any resources or documents team members may use frequently.
Additionally, Slack allows you to send push notifications to an entire team, or alternatively use the “@User” prompt in order to notify particular users within a channel.
Slack’s Top Team Management Features:
- Real-time communication
- Individual and group discussions through multiple channels
- Create, customize and hide channels
- File upload
- Search all channels or specific channels for files or messages
- Establish notifications for tasks and project creation as well as status updates
- Setting reminders across activities typed
- Voice and video calls integrated within the platform
- Pin up to 100 files and messages
- Customizable sidebar
Available for: Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android
3. Asana
Asana is a popular team and task management tool that continues to specialize in the field of project management.
You’re able to customize task management and your team workflow by organizing and prioritizing activities according to the requirements of your projects and tasks, as well as the size of your teams.
Additionally, teams collaborate seamlessly through comments on tasks, liking tasks, assigning tasks, monitoring live projects and the progress of individual team members. You’re also given a centralized view on teams through ‘My Dashboard’, as an easy way to view all projects and teams from a top-level POV.
Asana’s Top Team Management Features:
- Activity feed for centralized updates on workflow and team activities
- Task assignment, liking, My Tasks list and Focus Mode
- Multiple workspaces for handling multiple teams in parallel
- View team members’ tasks and priorities
- Real-time updates for teams on tasks and projects
- Customizable team calendars and layout views
- Automatic updates to team members’ inbox
- Notifications and reminders for individual members as well as full teams
- Templates for meeting minutes
Available for: Web, iOS, Android
4. Basecamp
Basecamp is an all-in-one team management software specializing in the vast collaboration abilities it lends to its users along with its project management features.
There are channels available for task assignment, real-time chat with groups and individual team members, document sharing, as well as automatically generated reports which can be customized. Asana allows users to stay on track with project progress individually and stay in sync as teams.
Additionally, teams receive notifications on all updates through a feature called Check-in Questions. This allows team members to provide status updates on a daily level regarding active projects, without having to arrange time-consuming meetings.
Basecamp keeps your team productive and projects streamlined without the hassle of incorporating multiple tools.
Basecamp’s Top Team Management Features:
- Creation of Teams and Groups
- Real-time messaging with individuals or in groups
- Conversational workflow embedded in tasks
- Document sharing and management
- Dedicated forums for specific teams or topics
- Shared timeline to view activities cross-company for projects
- Ability to track hours employees spend on projects
- Customizable team calendars
- Single view to oversee tasks from multiple assignees
- RSS Feed Integration
Available for: Web, iOS, Android, Mac, PC
5. Trello
Trello is a Kanban styled team management application and web platform.
You’re able to assign team members to various cards (tasks). Progress on tasks are tracked as team members move their cards across workflow columns:
- Backlog — for ideas your team is still discussing whether to pursue
- To-do — for the tasks your team has on the agenda for future dates
- In progress — for tasks your team is currently working on
- Done — for tasks your team has finished
However, you can add as many columns as you like, and define their names to fit the desired workflow of your team.
For example, if you’re a marketing team working towards a product launch, you can add columns that fit that workflow, such as “Content Created”, “Updates Created”, “Launch Tasks”, and “Completed”.
With Trello, you’re able to organize your cards and various team boards through tags, attach files to any task, as well as simplify your task completion process.
Trello’s Top Team Management Features:
- Team organization with tags, labels, and categories
- In-line editing
- Checklists within cards, with a progress meter
- Easy uploading of files and attachments to cards
- Real-time communication through comments
- Archives of card records (e.g. comments and changes)
- Deadline reminders
- Email notifications
Available for: Web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac
Conclusion
Effective team management is a critical component of success for teams of all sizes and industries. Utilizing team management platforms and applications like the ones discussed above can greatly increase not only the productivity of your team but your overall workflows and the ways you internally communicate.
operations & marketing. cofounder @hoo.be / @ImMakingADifference
