A project management tool is software that helps teams organize, plan and track the progress of their projects. It centralizes all essential information: tasks, deadlines, files, exchanges... and lets everyone know what to do, when and with whom.
In concrete terms, these tools facilitate collaboration, improve productivity and avoid delays thanks to clear views (Kanban, Gantt, tables) and features such as reminders, comments or time tracking.
Indispensable for IT, marketing and HR teams, or for freelancers, they can be adapted to all types of projects and organizations, from the most agile to the most structured.
There's a multitude of project management software on the market, but not all of them are created equal. To help you make sense of it all, here's our selection of the top 10 tools in 2025, tested and approved by thousands of teams.
Simple, visual and ultra-customizable, Monday has established itself as one of the market leaders. It's a modern, visual and highly customizable project management tool, ideal for SMEs, SMBs and large project teams within larger organizations. It let's you organize tasks according to different views (Kanban, Gantt, calendar), automate reminders and track key indicators thanks to clear dashboards. Compatible with Slack, Google Drive, Teams or Salesforce, it promotes fluid collaboration between teams. Its Enterprise version also offers security and reporting functions adapted to large structures. A sure choice for combining simplicity, performance and visibility.
💡 Monday.com's plus: an ultra-visual, customizable tool that combines ease of use with power, ideal for multidisciplinary teams looking to centralize and automate their projects.
Ultra-complete, ClickUp stands out for its functional depth: where most tools focus on task management, ClickUp goes further by integrating collaborative documents, internal chat, time tracking, objectives, CRM and automations. Its major advantage? Everything is centralized in a single space, eliminating the need for multiple software applications.
Highly modular, it's just as suited to tech teams working in Agile as it is to marketing or HR teams looking for an overview of their activities. Its hierarchical system (spaces, folders, lists, tasks, sub-tasks) offers a unique management granularity, particularly useful for small and medium-sized companies or large project teams.
It's the all-in-one tool par excellence, adapting to all methods (Agile, Scrum, Waterfall...), while maintaining overall consistency. It's the ideal tool for those who want to automate and visualize everything.
💡 clickUp's plus : the perfect tool for companies that want to control everything from a single workspace.
Asana is ideal for teams who want to track project progress without complexity. It 's renowned for its intuitive handling and clear interface, designed to help teams collaborate effectively without getting lost in complexity. Where ClickUp relies on versatility and Monday on customization, Asana stands out for its ability to make project management accessible to everyone, even non-experts.
Each task can be assigned, commented on, linked to a goal and tracked in different views (list, table, calendar, timeline). The tool emphasizes work transparency: everyone knows who's doing what, and when.
Asana is particularly aimed at SMEs, ETIs and the internal departments of large corporations looking for a reliable tool for tracking their marketing, communication, HR or innovation projects. Thanks to its integrations with Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom or Teams, it fits perfectly into the daily work ecosystem.
💡Asana's plus: a fluid, collaborative experience, perfect for teams who want to gain clarity and coordination without weighing down their processes.
Designed for large teams or complex projects, Wrike is one of the most powerful project management tools on the market, tailor-made for large enterprises and structured SMBs. Unlike Asana or Trello, which focus on simplicity, Wrike stands out for its functional depth and multi-project management capabilities.
The tool enables you to manage several portfolios simultaneously, track team workloads and visualize task dependencies using dynamic Gantt charts. Customizable reports and real-time dash boards provide complete visibility of performance and priorities.
Wrike also boasts advanced resource management and customized workflows, ideal for marketing, engineering or PMO teams. Its Enterprise version enhances security (SSO, access control, audit logs) and governance, meeting the requirements of large groups.
💡 Wrike's plus: a platform tailored to organizations that need structure, visibility and strategic reporting on large-scale projects.
Trello is without doubt the most intuitive project management tool on the market. Based on the Kanban method, it organizes tasks in the form of cards that can be moved between several columns (to do, in progress, completed). Its strength lies in its simplicity and visual clarity: everything is accessible at a glance.
Ideal for freelancers, startups and small teams, Trello encourages rapid collaboration without the need for training or complex configuration. Each card can contain checklists, attachments, comments, labels, deadlines and integrations with tools like Slack, Google Drive or Zapier.
Its paid version adds advanced functionalities (chronological views, automations via Butler, multiple tables), making it a flexible solution for tracking the evolution of a simple project or product roadmap.
💡 Trello's plus: an ultra-fluid, visual experience, perfect for teams who want to get organized quickly without drowning in complexity.
"Trello allows me to have a very visual picture of tasks to be done, in progress or finalized, and to collaborate effectively with other people on these tasks. I particularly like the visual aspect and the simplicity of updating tasks."
More than just a project management tool, Notion is a modular platform combining task management, database, collaborative documents and internal wiki. Each team can create its own workspace: project dashboard, budget tracking, product roadmap or resource library.
Its major advantage lies in its absolute flexibility: everything can be customized as required, without any technical knowledge. Content blocks (text, tables, tasks, dates, checklists, etc.) can be freely assembled to create lively, interconnected pages.
Ideal for freelancers, startups and SMEs looking for a lightweight yet powerful tool, Notion is also increasingly adopted by large corporations as a document base and cross-functional collaboration space. At Focustribes, we use it to centralize all our editorial planning for our various communication channels. We can store a large quantity of content and organize our tasks seamlessly as a team.
💡 Notion's plus: a minimalist yet comprehensive environment, perfect for centralizing ideas, documents and projects in a single space.
"Notion allows me to group together in a single tool many useful functionalities for a project: planning, task management, document and information sharing, automations, contact management, reporting, budget tracking. It's my favorite tool today."
For Excel fans looking for more power, Smartsheet is often described as the bridge between Excel and collaborative project management. It takes the spreadsheet logic familiar to many teams, while adding advanced features such as task assignment, automatic notifications, Gantt charts, forms, dashboards and real-time tracking.
Thanks to its spreadsheet structure, Smartsheet is particularly appealing to financial, industrial or production management teams who want to maintain a numerical approach while gaining visibility and coordination. Its ability to manage large volumes of data and create automated workflows makes it a highly appreciated solution for medium-sized and large companies.
💡Smartsheet's plus: a robust solution that combines the analytical power of Excel with the collaboration and automation of a modern project management tool.
"It's a tool with several functionalities; you can manage schedules independently, but you can also add resource management or not. In particular, I've used it with a number of key accounts to draw up WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) structures, i.e. task organization charts."
Developed by Atlassian, Jira is one of the most powerful project management tools on the market - but also one of the most specialized. Unlike generalist platforms such as Monday or Asana, Jira is primarily designed for IT, product and software development teams. It allows you to track each task (or "ticket") from backlog to delivery, organize work into sprints and visualize progress via Kanban or Scrum boards.
Jira stands out for its granularity and rigor: dependency management, bug tracking, complex automations, performance reports (burndown charts, velocity, team capacity)... all tools tailored to demanding technical environments.
Its native integration with Confluence, Bitbucket, GitHub and Slack makes it a true management hub for agile teams.
💡 Jira's plus: a robust, ultra-configurable solution, ideal for technical teams looking for precise, collaborative management in line with agile methodologies.
"As a freelancer, we're always adapting to the tools available at our customers' sites, but Jira is one of the tools often used by my customers. I use it in particular to manage activity and backlogs. It's used to manage product roadmaps, particularly in Agile project management by a certain number of product owners."
Planview is often misunderstood by the general public, but it's a project portfolio management (PPM) tool that is in demand by large groups and SMEs undergoing transformation. Unlike more operational tools such as Monday or Asana, Planview is designed to provide a strategic, cross-functional view of ongoing initiatives: project prioritization, resource allocation, budget arbitration and alignment with corporate objectives.
Where Jira or Wrike stop at operational management, Planview stands out for its global management capabilities: it links transformation projects, strategic programs and business roadmaps in a single interface.
The tool also offers advanced integration with SAP, ServiceNow, Microsoft Project, Jira and Power BI, making it ideal for organizations that are already well equipped.
💡 Planview's plus: a strategic platform designed for transformation departments, PMOs and CIOs looking to align projects with business objectives and drive overall performance.
The classic for project managers! Microsoft Project remains a benchmark, especially in large companies and public organizations. Designed for detailed planning and rigorous monitoring, it enables complex projects to be managed at the finest levels of granularity: creation of tasks, dependencies, resources, costs and schedules.
Its strength lies in its analytical power and native integration with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem (Teams, Excel, Power BI). This gives project managers a complete view of their portfolios, with advanced reporting and simulation capabilities ("what-if analysis").
Although more technical to get to grips with than more modern tools, Microsoft Project remains a must-have for project managers. PMOs, CIOs and program managers looking for structured management and proven reliability.
💡 Microsoft Project's plus: a robust, comprehensive solution, tailored to major accounts looking for total control over the planning, resources and performance of their projects.
"Microsoft Project remains a benchmark for fine-tuned project planning, while highlighting the interactions between the various sub-elements of the project, the prerequisites and the progress of the various stages. The result is precise and enables quality follow-up, nevertheless I find it rather cumbersome to use on a daily basis."
Not all project management tools are created equal. But there are certain elements that are essential to managing a project from A to Z. Here are the essential functionalities to be found in a good solution, whether you're an SME, a tech team or a large enterprise.
This is the cornerstone of any effective project management solution: managing tasks, assigning them, defining deadlines and monitoring progress must be intuitive and visual for every team member. An effective solution systematically offers several visualization modes adapted to operational needs:
- List view, for a clear, structured hierarchy of tasks;
- Kanban view, to monitor workflows and status in real time;
- Gantt view, to analyze dependencies and critical deadlines;
- Calendar view, to plan and anticipate major deadlines.
💡 Example: tools like ClickUp or Monday.com enable you to switch from Kanban view to timeline view with a single click, while guaranteeing data integrity and operational continuity.
In today's large companies, the majority of teams are international and organized in hybrid mode, or even entirely remotely. To guarantee fluid team communication and maintain the alignment of all project players, it is essential that your collaborative project management tool facilitates day-to-day exchanges: comments, mentions, secure file sharing, centralized notifications... Everything must contribute to limiting dispersed email exchanges and reinforcing the visibility of decisions and priorities.
The most advanced solutions, such as Asana or Notion, now integrate collaborative spaces and discussion modules, enabling each team to document, exchange and iterate in complete transparency. This approach fosters team productivity, traceability of actions and ensures that every member has up-to-date information in real time.
👉 The result: less friction in collaboration, greater operational fluidity, and a team that is always synchronized in its priorities and execution.
Time and resource tracking is an essential feature in any professionally-oriented project management tool . It ensures precise control of workloads,budget management and objective assessment of teams' operational performance. In both large companies and small and medium-sized businesses, this data is crucial for reliable budget management and optimal resource allocation across all project portfolios.
The right software can track the time spent on each task, analyze staff availability and anticipate periods of overload or under-capacity.
The most advanced solutions, such as Wrike, ClickUp or Smartsheet, offer integrated time tracking and capacity management functions, as well as analytical dashboards for cross-referencing workload, productivity and profitability indicators.
Integrating this data into tools such as Power BI or Excel enables further analysis of trends, cost variances and load forecasts. This approach strengthens project governance and promotes informed decision-making, based on real, up-to-date data.
A high-performance project management tool or platform needs to integrate seamlessly with your existing software environments to eliminate silos and facilitate day-to-day collaboration. Whether you use Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, CRM, ERP or Power BI, rich native integrations and API compatibility are essential to ensure tool interoperability and information flow continuity, while maximizing team productivity.
The addition of artificial intelligence modules and project management automation solutions accelerates digital transformation by freeing teams from repetitive tasks. Automatic task generation, file synchronization, status updates and automatic reminders: these are just some of the features that optimize business processes and make activity management more reliable.
💡 Example: a simple Slack message can, via intelligent integration, instantly generate a task in ClickUp or Asana. This means you benefit from rigorous tracking, with no risk of double entry or oversight, for project management aligned with the standards of excellence expected in agile and international organizations.
Dashboards and reporting functions are at the heart of project performance management.
A high-performance project management tool must enable real-time visualization of task progress, delays, costs and workload, to provide a clear picture of project health. These indicators - or project KPIs - are essential for anticipating risks and supporting strategic decisions.
The most advanced solutions, such as Wrike, Planview or Microsoft Project, enable you to build customized dashboards adapted to each user profile: project manager, finance department, IT department or PMO. Data can be filtered, cross-referenced and visualized in the form of graphs, diagrams or dynamic reports.
Integration with Power BI, Tableau or Excel enhances analysis capabilities and promotes a data-driven approach to project management.
Effective reporting does more than simply collect data: it tells the story of the project, highlighting successes and identifying sticking points before they become critical.
It doesn't have to be the most complex tool: what's important is that it meets your real needs. Here are 5 criteria to check before taking the plunge:
Number of users: the tool must adapt to the size of your team, now and in the future.
Budget: some tools are free, others charge per user. Check the cost over the long term.
Useful features: tasks, Gantt views, time tracking, integrations... Keep what really counts.
Compatibility: make sure it works well with your current tools (email, CRM, Slack...).
Simplicity: a good tool should be easy to learn, even without training.
A good tool isn't everything. It's how you use it that counts. Even the best software will never replace a clear organization, well-defined roles and a team aligned with objectives.
At focustribes, we see it every day: it's working methods, efficient processes and human support that make the difference. A well-chosen tool is the starting point. But a well-managed project is what guarantees results.
💡 Need a helping hand? Our freelance consultants can help you structure your projects, choose the right tools and embed good practices in your teams.
A project management tool is a piece of software used to organize, plan and monitor the various stages of a project. It centralizes tasks, deadlines and exchanges, and facilitates team collaboration.
A task management tool is simpler: it's mainly used to list and track to-dos. A project management tool goes further: resource management, global planning, reporting, collaboration...
Yes! Trello, ClickUp and Notion offer highly effective free versions. Ideal for freelancers or small teams. For more advanced features, a subscription is often required.
Absolutely. Most tools are accessible online, with mobile apps. Perfect for telecommuting, hybrid teams or multi-site projects.
If you're looking for simplicity: Trello, Notion or Asana are good options. For more complex or collaborative projects, turn to ClickUp, Wrike or Monday.