Project Tracking Software & Tools

Project tracking is a crucial project management process that ensures teams accomplish tasks on schedule, submit deliverables on time, and identify potential issues before they become problems. Project tracking software and tools provide project managers and teams a smart and effective solution, avoiding hours spent on manually creating project documents and status reports.

Table of Contents

• What Is Project Tracking Software?
• Best Project Tracking Software and Tools
  • Jira Software
  • Asana
  • Wrike
  • monday.com Work OS
  • Zoho Projects
  • Scoro
  • Taskworld
  • Rocketlane
  • Workzone
  • Runn
• Types of Project Tracking Software
• What Are Some Project Tracking Software Features?
• Project Tracking Tools: Our Top Picks

What Is Project Tracking Software?

Project tracking software, or a project tracker, provides users an accurate view of the status, health, and progress of a project and its components at any given time and phase. Users also get insights into the project’s direction, finances, performance, risks, schedule, and scope of work. Most of these tools are dynamic, visually interactive, automated, and customizable.

Project tracking software combines the monitoring of project data with key performance indicators. Dashboards, analytics, and reports give users real-time information and future trends. This enables them to make decisions to either continue their current methods, make adjustments, or stop to solve problems. Project tracking tools are also integrated with other productivity tools; teams can also collaborate with teams and communicate with stakeholders while using a single platform.

Read also: Project Collaboration Obstacles: How to Overcome Them

Back to top

Best Project Tracking Software and Tools

Project management involves multiple phases, activities, resources, and deliverables. For project managers to stay within scope, deadlines, and budget, they need the best project tracking software to get a clear sense of project progress. Here are some of the highest rated project tracking tools to choose from.

Jira Software

Jira Software is issue and project tracking software used by many software development teams. It enables all team members to easily track software projects according to priority. It also promotes collaboration, so teams can discuss their work in full context with complete visibility.

Jira Software includes tools like Scrum and Kanban boards to support agile and hybrid methodologies. Roadmaps keep teams in sync and aligned to company goals. The project tracking app also has ready-to-use reports and interactive dashboards that keep teams updated. Jira can track projects as issues and provide users several tools to monitor them effectively.

Pros

• Flexible board views
• Multiple ways of tracking and monitoring
• Integrated ticketing and task assignment

Cons

• Needs better control of email notifications
• Requires time for training and familiarization

Asana

Asana online project tracking and management software is for teams of any department or industry. It has flexible tracking tools for organizing, prioritizing, and clarifying work. It has multiple project views, like boards and timelines, for tracking tasks and mapping out dependencies between them.

Asana provides the tools to manage projects from start to finish. Real-time dashboards and custom charts give users updated information, as well as visual indicators so they can spot project blockers or the cause of delays. It also has a workload view to balance team load and a calendar view to show important due dates.

Pros

• Project planning and tracking
• Task management and collaboration
• Free plan for a small team

Cons

• Lacks an easy way to navigate back to previous screens
• Time tracking is only available through integration with other apps

Wrike

Wrike is versatile project tracking software that provides teams with full work visibility. Teams across departments work on a central platform that simplifies finding information. The software eliminates silos so users can make decisions in real time. It also promotes company-wide collaboration.

Wrike’s project management tracking tool provides a cloud-based digital workspace where teams from anywhere can store and organize details, discussions, and documents on record. Custom dashboards enable teams to share project progress with stakeholders. Other features include Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendars, project portfolio management, time tracking, workloads, analytics, and visual reports.

Pros

• Project documentation and overview
• Task management and collaboration
• Custom configurations

Cons

• Some work views need a simpler presentation
• Notifications can be overwhelming

monday.com Work OS

monday.com provides a highly visual platform for different types of work and teams in its Work OS. It has many project tracking tools that users can take advantage of, whether they are managing creative work, IT requests, software projects, or marketing campaigns. Tools to create custom dashboards enable users to track progress, timelines, and budgets from a high-level overview down to details.

monday.com provides visual collaboration tools so users can easily see who is doing what anytime. It has multiple project views and a team workload view for tracking progress and capacity. The software also offers several project tracking templates, such as basic task and stage tracking, budget, and overview timeline tracking.

Pros

• Task management and scheduling
• Timeline view and critical path analysis
• Custom automations

Cons

• Some features have a steep learning curve, like importing data
• Users wish for additional notification controls

Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is online project management software for project planning, tracking, and collaboration. Teams use it across industries like construction, software development, education, marketing, and real estate, among others. A comprehensive feature set lets users plan activities, assign work, track time, and create custom apps.

Zoho Projects provides a project tracking system that tracks tasks, time, issues, and other data. Multiple types of charts and reports allow accurate tracking of progress that provide instant information on completed and unfinished work. Users can also create custom project tracking templates.

Pros

• WBS and task management
• Easy integration with other apps
• Customization features

Cons

• Agile project management is handled in a separate app, Zoho Sprints
• UI needs to be more intuitive

Scoro

Scoro end-to-end work management software provides a single platform to manage all aspects of a business. It has project tracking tools that let users carefully track tasks, project status, budgets, time, and progress. Instead of shuffling between multiple tools, users have a central control hub.

Scoro enables teams to streamline work processes and communications with increased visibility into projects. Shared calendars, timesheets, and a built-in time tracker allow users to manage their time, complete tasks, and keep projects running on track. The software also has multiple work views, utilization reports, real-time Gantt charts, and financial dashboards and reports.

Pros

• Project portfolio management
• Gantt chart and task dependencies
• Custom field tracking

Cons

• Some third-party integrations have issues
• Invoicing is ideal for service providers, but not product manufacturers

Taskworld

Taskworld is project management software for teams. A single tool enables users to manage multiple projects and track tasks collaboratively. A small team of five users can start for free, while several paid plans give unlimited users access to advanced features.

Taskworld project tracking software provides several views to show up-to-date information. Visual boards let users assign tasks and track them through to completion. The software has built-in time tracking for each task with recorded logs for each project. It also has real-time performance reports and a project timeline view that helps visualize project progress and alert users to potential problems.

Pros

• Overview dashboard
• Project activity feed
• Project status filtering

Cons

• Requires time for training and familiarization
• Sharing projects with team members needs to be more intuitive

Rocketlane

Rocketlane is customer onboarding software with robust project tracking tools for increased visibility. The software provides automatic assessment and inputs, so users get notifications if project timelines are in danger of delays. It also allows the addition of custom fields for targeted project tracking.

Rocketlane provides a project overview dashboard so users see the status of goals, task completion, customer sentiments, as well as who is performing well and who needs help. Progress and performance reports show project timelines and delays, progress across phases, and deviation from planned execution.

Pros

• Increased project visibility
• Monitoring tools
• Project collaboration

Cons

• Branding of customer portal needs additional customization
• Users ask for more document management features

Workzone

Workzone online project management software is for teams managing and tracking any number of projects. The project dashboard provides a big-picture view of all projects, while the automatically created to-do list identifies priorities.

Workzone project tracking software captures the most important data on the overall status of ongoing projects. It provides real-time insight for the effective management of teams and workflows. Other features are an interactive Gantt chart, automatic risk identification through status alerts, task dependencies, group calendars, built-in time tracking, and workload reports.

Pros

• Project timeline and tracking
• Custom project templates
• Responsive support

Cons

• Upgrades occasionally cause issues on current setup
• Routing of request forms needs improvement

Runn

Runn is resource planning and forecasting software with project tracking tools. It lets users monitor the actual progress of the project and assess the rate of progress in terms of time, money, and results. Project planning is more accurate with integrated resource management, allowing project managers to build plans and assign resources according to team availability.

Runn lets users see all projects and portfolios in a single view with upcoming phases and important milestones. They can track plans against budgets, and schedule tentative projects with projected impact if they are approved. Other features are project pipeline tracking, project forecasting, timesheets, and combined project tracking and accounting.

Pros

• Global view of projects and people
• Straightforward project reporting
• Free plan with unlimited projects for five users

Cons

• Missing or limited permission levels
• Needs additional options for integration

Back to top

Types of Project Tracking Software

Project managers monitor the status, movement, changes, and issues of projects to know if the current pace will enable a team to meet its scheduled completion date. They can get this information from various types of software and tools with project tracking capabilities.

Project Management Software

Project management software includes features that encompass the whole project lifecycle. It has tools and features for users to build and execute plans, and monitor time, costs, tasks, milestones, and projected delivery dates. Tracking tools within PM software use Gantt charts, timelines, calendars, checklists, and various reports to help track project status and progress.

Issue Tracking Software

Issue tracking software facilitates project tracking by monitoring the number of issues, problems, or defects reported for software and products. It also tracks the rate of resolution to provide teams information on whether they can meet deadlines or not. Issue tracking software uses databases, case management, collaboration, and shared communication channels.

Work Management Software

Companies today implement initiatives through project-centric work and processes. As such, business software, work management software, and other enterprise productivity tools include project tracking tools or features to help monitor the status and progress of business-wide projects. These tools are also integrated to other functions such as finances, time management, team communication, and client management.

Resource Management Software

Another type of software that includes project tracking is resource management software. Since project managers use resource management and scheduling to accurately build project plans and timelines, many resource management tools now have the capability to track project progress. They can also automatically alert and notify users if a project is susceptible to delays and other problems because of resource overload or conflict.

Back to top

What Are Some Project Tracking Software Features?

Effective project tracking software is a system that can monitor the status of all project components at different levels, providing information that is easy to generate, up to date, and understandable. Look for the following essential features in a project tracking tool:

• Real-time dashboards: Enable users to bring up the latest status and progress information across teams and projects in visual charts and graphs.

• Multi-level tracking: Tracks multiple project components like task, time, team, and budget at the project, program, and portfolio levels.

• Custom reports: Makes use of smart builders, filters, and other types of grouping to focus on selected data and insights.

• Ease of use: Project tracking tools simplify the tracking process to create reports instantly and on demand.

• Shareable: Reports generated should be easy to share with the team and stakeholders, and also allow others to send feedback and comments.

Back to top

Project Tracking Tools: Our Top Picks

Organizations in need of project tracking tools can check out our Featured Partners: Project Management Software for accurate monitoring and reporting of projects.

Read next: Deliver Better Projects through Better Stakeholder Management