Top 5 Agile Project Management Software Tools

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Agile project management software has become essential for organizations of all sizes that work on midsize to larger, more complex projects. An agile software solution should be able to handle all of the project details while reporting progress instantly. With a wide range of options available, selecting the most suitable tool can be daunting. 

Some tools focus solely on agile project management, while others offer it as just one of their feature sets or versions. This review offers a comprehensive analysis of leading agile project management tools, providing insights into their features, advantages, disadvantages, and pricing plans, so that you can make an informed decision for your agile organization.

Our PickBest ForPricing Starts At


Try Zoho Sprints
Best Feature-Rich Solution for Agile Teams15-day free trial • $1/user/month

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Try Wrike
Best for Medium to Large TeamsFree to try •  $9.80/user/month

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Try Jira Software 
Best for Software Development CompaniesFree to try • $7.75/user/month

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monday dev large logo.

Try monday dev
Best for Scalable Business14-day free trial •  $9/seat/month

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ProjectManager logo.

Try ProjectManager
Best for Distributed Workforces30-day free trial • $13/user/month

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Methodology

To provide a comprehensive list of viable options for agile project management software, I researched the typical needs of organizations and determined the most crucial features and capabilities for midsize and large companies and teams. We considered software from 15 different vendors and curated a shortlist of five options based on our past experience and testing. We evaluated and compared their top features, pricing plans, advantages, disadvantages, and any unique factors that distinguished them from other solutions or made them stand out.

To ensure a well-informed recommendation, we used a variety of reliable sources, including product websites, industry reviews, customer feedback and testimonials, and professional group discussions on social media platforms like LinkedIn. We watched informative how-to videos and demos, perused insightful blogs, and considered previous knowledge and experience working with some of these tools in the field. We conversed with professionals in agile project management to gather valuable insights and enrich the research process. By employing this comprehensive approach, each software review provides detailed information and a well-researched recommendation for you to consider.

Our Picks: Top Agile Project Management Software

zoho sprints logo.

Best Feature-Rich Solution

Zoho Sprints is an agile project management tool designed to promote an iterative and collaborative approach to work. It offers a range of features tailored to meet the needs of agile teams, so they can plan, track, and deliver projects effectively. One of the highlights of Zoho Sprints is its intuitive user interface, which simplifies project management tasks and allows teams to focus on their core objectives. It provides a visual and interactive Kanban board that allows for easy project tracking and prioritization, ensuring that teams stay organized and on top of their tasks. With features like backlog management, user story mapping, and sprint planning, Zoho Sprints empowers teams to plan their work efficiently and deliver projects on time.

Zoho Sprints backlog view

Zoho Sprints Key Features

Zoho Sprints is a powerful tool specifically designed to meet the needs of agile teams, offering a range of features that enable efficient planning, tracking, and delivery of projects. With its intuitive interface, collaborative capabilities, and seamless integrations, Zoho Sprints empowers teams to stay organized, communicate effectively, and achieve their project goals with ease. Whether you are an experienced agile practitioner or new to the methodology, Zoho Sprints provides the necessary tools to boost productivity, enhance collaboration, and drive successful project outcomes. Discover these top features that power Zoho Sprints so you can take your agile project management to the next level.

  • Kanban board – Zoho Sprints’ Kanban boards provide agile project managers with a powerful visual tool to streamline their project workflow, prioritize tasks, and track progress in real time. Unlike some competitors, Zoho Sprints offers a highly customizable Kanban board that allows teams to tailor the columns, swimlanes, and labels to fit their specific project needs, providing a flexible and intuitive interface for efficient project management.
  • Backlog management – Zoho Sprints’ robust backlog management feature empowers agile project managers by providing a comprehensive and flexible platform to plan and prioritize work. With its user-friendly interface and the ability to assign story points, estimate effort, and set priorities, Zoho Sprints enables project managers to effectively groom and refine the backlog, ensuring that the team stays focused on delivering the most valuable features and enhancements. Compared to its competitors, Zoho Sprints offers a seamless and integrated approach to backlog management, combining ease of use with powerful customization options, allowing agile project managers to optimize their planning and prioritization processes.
  • Collaboration and integration – Zoho Sprints excels in its collaboration and integration features, enabling agile project managers to foster effective communication and coordination among team members. With real-time updates, notifications, and seamless integrations with popular collaboration tools like Slack and GitHub, Zoho Sprints ensures that project managers can easily keep everyone informed, streamline communication, and leverage existing workflows. Compared to its competitors, Zoho Sprints offers a seamless and consolidated platform for collaboration and integration, eliminating the need for juggling multiple tools and enhancing productivity and efficiency in agile project management.

Zoho Sprints Pros & Cons

Pros
Cons
User-friendly interfaceSteep learning curve for new users
Agile-specific featuresLimited advanced features
Real-time collaboration and information sharingIntegration limitations
Customization options and flexibilityCustomization constraints
Insightful project performance reporting and analyticsSubscription-based pricing model not suitable for all budgets and organizations

Why We Picked Zoho Sprints for Best Feature-Rich Option

We strongly recommend considering Zoho Sprints as a go-to tool for managing agile teams and iterative workflows. Zoho Sprints has consistently proven in user reviews and feedback to be a powerful and reliable solution that enhances team collaboration, streamlines project management processes, and drives successful project outcomes.

With its intuitive user interface and robust feature set, Zoho Sprints stands out as a top choice. Users have praised the customizable nature of its Kanban boards, which can be tailored to specific project needs, creating seamless workflow management.

Zoho Sprints’ backlog management capabilities have received positive acclaim from agile project managers who appreciate its flexibility in creating and managing user stories, epics, and tasks. The ability to assign story points, estimate effort, and set priorities helps teams focus on delivering the most valuable features and enhancements.

In terms of collaboration, Zoho Sprints excels with its real-time updates, notifications, and integrations with popular tools like Slack and GitHub. And its reporting and analytics features support data-driven decisions, finding issues quickly, and tracking progress using comprehensive reports and visualizations, contributing to continuous improvement and project success.

We really like that Zoho Sprints is an agile-only platform that agile project managers and scrum masters will find intuitive, collaborative, and insightful for all sizes of teams and any combination of work that requires an agile workflow and plan.

wrike logo.

Best for Medium to Large Teams

Wrike is a best-in-class project management tool specially designed to boost the performance of medium to large project teams by providing an efficient, collaborative environment for project planning, tracking, and execution. Wrike’s user-friendly interface and robust features cater to the complexity of larger project management workflows, making the processes smoother and more productive.

From task management and resource allocation to real-time collaboration and reporting, Wrike provides a centralized platform for medium to large project teams to efficiently organize and execute their projects. Its intuitive and customizable interface gives project managers the power to tailor the tool to address the distinct challenges faced by medium to larger-sized projects, creating seamless coordination, communication, and successful project delivery across teams.\

Wrike product release plan example

Wrike Key Features

Wrike offers several top features that can be tailored for agile project managers and teams, making it an ideal project management tool for development projects. Some of its key features, like customizable Kanban boards and task management, allow agile project managers to plan and track projects, ensuring smooth workflow and collaboration within their teams. These top three features will help any agile team looking for a solid solution to incorporate into their team and workflow landscape.

  • Customizable Kanban boards – Wrike’s customizable Kanban boards allow agile project managers to tailor their boards according to their unique project needs and team workflows. This customization allows for a seamless adaptation to different agile methodologies, making Wrike a versatile tool that can be easily adapted to fit the specific requirements of agile teams, setting it apart from competitors with rigid board structures.
  • Agile task management – Wrike’s agile task management features offer agile project managers the ability to easily create, assign, and track tasks within a collaborative environment. With real-time updates and seamless communication, Wrike enables agile teams to effectively manage their tasks, maintain transparency, and adapt to changing project needs. This provides an advantage over competitors with less robust and collaborative task management capabilities.
  • Agile reporting and analytics – Wrike’s agile reporting and analytics features provide agile project managers with valuable insights into project performance, resource utilization, and team productivity. Its customizable reports and visualizations enable project managers to make data-driven decisions, identify bottlenecks, and optimize project execution, surpassing the competition by offering comprehensive and actionable analytics for continuous improvement.

Wrike Pros & Cons

Pros
Cons
Visual project planning with drag-and-drop editorComplexity for simple projects
Single platform for all project and business needsUser interface can look slightly cluttered due to abundance of features
Advanced reporting and analyticsLimited customization in some areas
Customizable agile workflowsLimited mobile app and project tracking features
Collaborative task management

Why We Picked Wrike as Best for Medium and Large Teams

Based on extensive real-world observations and positive feedback from agile project managers, Wrike emerges as a leading project management solution for agile workflows and efforts. Its intuitive interface, collaborative features, robust task management capabilities, and seamless integration options give Scrum Masters the upper hand when it comes to project success. 

With Wrike, you can scale work across teams while you set priorities and align your team to work faster and smarter. While Wrike is not designed to be specific to agile teams and doesn’t have a dedicated agile product, the system is so robust and feature-rich that it can handle any agile project detail. It even has pre-built templates that can be used for agile development projects, offers automations to save valuable time, and integrates with many popular tools you may already be using to make work even easier.


Read our Wrike review


jira logo.

Best for Software Development Companies

Jira is a renowned agile project management software that has gained significant popularity among teams using Atlassian products and practicing agile methodologies. One of its standout features is its robust issue-tracking system, which allows teams to create, prioritize, and track tasks in detail. With customizable workflows and agile boards, Jira helps teams visualize their work and easily manage project progress. It offers a wide range of agile-focused features, such as Scrum and Kanban boards, backlog management, sprint planning, and release management.

Jira provides a comprehensive solution for agile project management, empowering teams to effectively plan, track, and deliver projects in an agile environment.

Jira Software’s agile dashboard

Jira’s Key Features

Jira stands out as a top choice for agile project managers and scrum masters, with an extensive list of features that make it possible for agile teams to work iteratively and continuously improve their agile processes. These top three features are a must-see for any team looking to support their existing agile framework.

  • Scrum boards – Jira offers powerful Scrum boards that allow Scrum Masters to visualize and manage the flow of work during sprints. These boards provide a clear overview of user stories, tasks, and subtasks, facilitating effective sprint planning, backlog management, and progress tracking. Scrum Masters can easily drag and drop items between different columns, such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done,” ensuring transparency and collaboration within the Scrum team.
  • Sprint planning and tracking – Jira provides dedicated sprint planning and tracking features, making it an invaluable tool for Scrum Masters. With Jira’s sprint planning functionality, they can create and organize sprint backlogs, estimate story points, and assign tasks to team members. During the sprint, Scrum Masters can track the progress of tasks, monitor burndown charts, and visualize team velocity, allowing them to identify bottlenecks, adjust priorities, and keep the team on track toward sprint goals.
  • Agile reporting and metrics – Jira offers robust reporting and metrics capabilities that provide valuable insights to Scrum teams. They can access various reports, such as burndown charts, velocity charts, and cumulative flow diagrams, which help them monitor project progress, identify trends, and assess team performance. These reports help Scrum Masters make data-driven decisions, identify areas for improvement, and facilitate continuous process enhancement within the Scrum framework.

Jira Pros & Cons

Pros
Cons
Offers single view for all user storiesComplexity and steep learning curve
Create tasks, subtasks, spikes, and epicsOverwhelming user interface
Customize workflows to match your company’s work styleLimited collaboration features
Centralized administration across all Atlassian Cloud productsConfiguration and maintenance
Large user community and supportReliance on third-party add-ons

Why We Picked Jira as Best for Software Development Companies

We highly recommend Jira as a top choice for project managers and Scrum Masters managing agile project management teams. It’s a familiar and mature product widely used across industries, especially by software development teams. Most teams already use this tool for other work, which makes adopting it on your team almost a nonissue. Jira checks all of the boxes when it comes to complete project and product management from planning to release.

Jira’s extensive integration capabilities see it seamlessly integrating with other popular tools in the agile ecosystem, enhancing workflow efficiency and data synchronization. The software’s scalability and flexibility make it suitable for teams of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises, and its adaptability to different agile frameworks makes it a versatile choice for agile project management. Any concern or issue can be immediately addressed without delaying progress via Jira’s abundant technical and educational resources.


Read our Jira Software review


monday dev large logo.

Best for Scalable Businesses

monday.com stands out for its agile development tool, monday dev. With monday dev, agile teams can efficiently plan, track, and execute projects with remarkable ease. The platform offers customizable boards that empower users to create and manage tasks, set deadlines, assign responsibilities, and monitor progress. monday Dev provides versatile project views, including Kanban boards and Gantt charts, so teams can visualize and manage projects in diverse formats.

What sets monday Dev apart is its capacity to support scalability. A collective set of collaboration tools, including intuitive communication channels and file sharing options, equips teams to effectively scale their operations with minimal disruption. monday.com Dev simplifies task delegation, boosts remote team cooperation, and promotes overall organizational efficiency. Managing growth and expansion is built into this solution making it ideal for evolving teams and projects.

monday.com Dev sprint and burndown chart example

monday dev’s Key Features

Agile Scrum Masters will find monday dev a valuable tool for their software development teams. With its intuitive and visually appealing interface, monday dev is a user-friendly platform to let you plan, track, and manage complex development projects through customizable Scrum and Kanban boards for easy workflow setup and management. The platform’s collaboration features, including task assignment, file sharing, and real-time communication, encourage teamwork and collaboration like no other. monday dev arms Scrum Masters with the necessary tools and features they need to successfully lead agile projects. The following top three features are worth reviewing.

  • Backlog management – monday dev’s backlog management feature sets it apart from competitors by providing an intuitive and user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of organizing and prioritizing backlog items. The platform allows teams to easily add, edit, and prioritize backlog items, ensuring a clear and organized backlog for efficient project planning and execution. With the ability to customize fields, add labels, and set due dates, monday dev offers comprehensive backlog management capabilities that streamline the agile planning process and enable teams to stay focused on delivering value.
  • Customizable agile and Kanban boards –  monday dev’s highly customizable agile boards allow teams to adapt their workflows to fit specific agile methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban. The boards provide a visual representation of tasks, allowing teams to easily track progress, assign work, and visualize the status of each item. With the ability to customize columns, labels, and card views, teams can tailor the boards to match their preferred agile processes and easily manage their projects better than with other solutions.
  • Prioritization and status tracking – monday dev’s prioritization and status tracking features outshine the competition by offering a highly visual and customizable approach to managing tasks. Teams can easily set priorities, assign deadlines, and track progress using intuitive status labels, ensuring clear visibility and accountability. The platform’s flexibility allows teams to adapt the prioritization and tracking features to their specific needs, enabling efficient workflow management and facilitating timely decision-making. monday dev sees teams consistently staying on top of their tasks, driving productivity, and ensuring that projects are progressing smoothly with less effort.

monday dev Pros & Cons

Pros
Cons
Enterprise-grade securityAdding to the number of users costs extra
Multiple visual ways to view your workThe subtask addition process can be difficult
Sprint management and burndown chartsLimited offline access
Automation and integration
Git integration

Why We Picked monday dev as Best for Scalable Teams

monday dev is an exceptional choice for agile project management, boasting mature features and receiving consistent positive user feedback. Designed with a developer-friendly interface optimized for agile, the system includes remarkable features and benefits for agile teams. Its customizable agile and Kanban boards empower teams to adapt the platform to their specific workflows and methodologies, ensuring seamless project execution. 

Through comprehensive research and analysis of similar tools and real-world use cases, it is evident that monday dev delivers a robust and reliable project management solution perfectly suited for agile teams in search of a powerful, intuitive, and customizable platform. This software tool covers all the bases so your team won’t be stranded without a solution for any challenge that comes their way. Whether you’re a seasoned Scrum Master testing out the higher-tier paid plans, or a team new to agile methodologies test driving the basic plan, monday dev offers the tools and functionalities to drive your projects forward and achieve remarkable results.


Read more about monday


ProjectManager

Best for Distributed Workforces

ProjectManager is another robust agile project management tool designed for planning, executing, and tracking iterative projects from start to finish. It offers a wide range of specific features essential to agile project management success, including task management for creating and assigning tasks, setting priorities, and tracking work progress. With interactive Gantt charts, teams can visualize project timelines and dependencies, making it easier to manage and adjust project schedules. Collaborative features such as real-time teamwork, document sharing, and commenting foster effective real-time communication and coordination across distributed workforces and remote teams, making it easy to work smoothly and continuously together when they are not in the same location or time zone.

Agile project managers and teams can plan and execute agile projects, manage sprints and backlogs, track timesheets, build agile roadmaps, and automate Kanban workflows in one reliable tool.

ProjectManager dashboard

ProjectManager Key Features

ProjectManager is a cloud-based project management software packed with key features designed to plan and streamline work, support teams while executing the work, and deliver and report on agile projects. These top features of ProjectManager make this a solution to consider for your short list of agile project management tools.

  • Task management views – ProjectManager offers task management views that set it apart from other tools in the market. With its interactive Gantt charts, agile teams can visualize project timelines, dependencies, and task progress in a dynamic and user-friendly interface. This unique feature provides teams with a comprehensive overview of their projects, allowing for efficient planning, scheduling, and adjusting of tasks.
  • Team collaboration tools – ProjectManager excels in its team collaboration tools, offering real-time communication, document sharing, and commenting capabilities. What sets it apart is the seamless integration of these features within the platform, eliminating the need for external communication tools and creating a centralized hub for collaboration. This integrated approach streamlines team communication, enhances coordination, and boosts productivity.
  • Project reporting and analytics – ProjectManager stands out with its robust project reporting and analytics features, providing agile teams with valuable insights into project progress, resource utilization, and team performance. What sets it apart is the flexibility and customization options available in generating reports, allowing project managers to tailor the reports to their specific needs and track key metrics. With its advanced analytics capabilities, ProjectManager empowers teams to make data-driven decisions, identify trends, and optimize project performance.

ProjectManager Pros & Cons

Pros
Cons
Features designed specifically for agile project managementCustomization constraints
Interactive Gantt chartsLimited advanced features
Real-time collaborationPricing can be high for some users and teams
Customizable reporting and analyticsLearning curve for new users may be high
Integration capabilitiesIntegration limitations and compatibility issues with less common niche tools

Why We Picked ProjectManager As Best for Distributed Teams

For agile project managers seeking a smart solution, ProjectManager is a strong choice that has proven to be a valuable tool for agile teams based on observations and research. We have read a lot about this tool but have not had much professional experience with it; we will most likely recommend it for future teams and projects to gain in-depth experience. 

With its comprehensive features and user-friendly interface, ProjectManager empowers teams to efficiently plan, execute, and track their agile projects. The tool offers interactive Gantt charts, real-time collaboration, and customizable reporting, providing a holistic view of project progress and enabling teams to make data-driven decisions. Through research, ProjectManager has demonstrated its ability to streamline project management processes, enhance team collaboration, and improve overall project outcomes, making it a reliable and effective choice for agile project managers.


Read more about ProjectManager


What Are the Key Features of Agile Project Management Software?

When selecting agile project management software for agile teams, project managers should focus on identifying key features that align with their unique project management requirements and contribute to increased workflow efficiency.

Look for software that offers a visual Scrum board or Kanban board, allowing Scrum Masters to create and track tasks, organize them into sprints, and monitor progress. This feature helps facilitate effective sprint planning, backlog management, and task assignment.

Choose a solution that provides a user-friendly interface for managing user stories and backlogs. This feature enables Scrum Masters to easily create, prioritize, and refine user stories, ensuring clear communication and alignment with stakeholders and development teams.

Opt for software that offers robust reporting capabilities, including burndown charts, velocity tracking, and team performance metrics. These features provide Scrum Masters with real-time visibility into project progress, helping identify bottlenecks, track team efficiency, and make data-driven decisions to improve sprint outcomes.

What Are the Key Benefits of Agile Project Management Software?

For project managers, it is crucial to recognize the invaluable advantages of utilizing agile project management software and tools that are specifically designed or have separate features for agile teams. This choice enables enhanced productivity, seamless collaboration, and streamlined project execution, leading to successful project outcomes.

Agile project management software promotes seamless collaboration among team members. It provides a centralized platform for communication, task assignment, and progress tracking, enabling real-time updates and facilitating collaboration regardless of team members’ locations. This fosters effective teamwork, transparency, and alignment towards project goals.

Agile project management software streamlines the agile workflow by providing features such as backlog management, sprint planning, and task tracking. It allows teams to prioritize and manage work effectively, ensuring that tasks are completed within sprints and enabling continuous delivery of value. This results in improved efficiency and productivity for agile teams.

Agile project management software offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities, providing teams with valuable insights into project performance, progress, and metrics. By analyzing data and visualizing trends, agile teams can make data-driven decisions, identify bottlenecks, and optimize processes for continuous improvement. This helps teams adapt their strategies and achieve better project outcomes.

FAQs

By considering these factors, buyers can choose an agile project management software solution that aligns with their team’s agile methodology, scalability needs, and provides reliable customer support and training resources.

Selecting the right agile project management software is vital for the success of agile teams. Ultimately, conducting thorough research, reading reviews, and testing software through trial periods or demos will be the true proof ypu need in selecting the best agile project management solution.

By carefully evaluating the following key factors, project managers can make an informed decision:

Ensure Compatibility with Preferred Operating System: Ensuring that the software is compatible with the preferred operating system, whether it’s Windows, macOS, or Linux, is essential to ensure a seamless user experience. This compatibility allows the team to leverage the full potential of the software within their existing technology infrastructure.

Also, a solution’s integration capabilities should facilitate smooth data flow between the tools your team is used to working with, and minimize manual effort. This will gop a long way toward enhancing productivity and reducing silos in the development process. 

Key Features for Agile Project Management: Assessing the software’s key features is crucial to ensure it aligns with agile project management principles. Features like sprint planning, backlog management, and task tracking play a significant role in facilitating agile workflows and enabling effective collaboration within the team.

Look for features like real-time messaging, task comments, and document sharing, which facilitate seamless collaboration and foster transparency among team members, stakeholders, and clients.

Finally, robust reporting and analytics tools enable data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement, allowing agile project managers to optimize project outcomes. 

Scalability and Pricing: Evaluating the software’s scalability options and pricing plans is essential, especially for growing teams or organizations. Project managers should consider whether the software can accommodate the increasing needs of their projects and if the pricing structure aligns with their budget and long-term requirements.

Customer Support and Training: Reliable customer support and comprehensive training resources are vital to ensure both a smooth onboarding process, and ongoing assistance when encountering challenges or exploring advanced features. Project managers should consider the level of customer support provided by the software vendor, including access to documentation, training materials, and responsive support channels, to ensure a smooth adoption process and ongoing assistance.

Avoid software solutions that lack flexibility and customization options. Agile project management requires adaptability, so choose solutions that allow you to tailor workflows, terminology, and reporting to match your team’s specific needs. 

Beware of hidden costs. Additional fees for advanced features or excessive charges for adding more users should be clearly understood. Consider the pricing structure and any potential limitations or restrictions that might impact your team’s ability to scale and collaborate effectively.

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