5 Tools to Manage Your Dedicated Software Team

TechsPlace | The COVID-19 pandemic has made the concept of remote teams more popular than ever before. In this piece, we’ll explore what a dedicated team looks like and five project-management tools that you can use to manage your own dedicated software development team.

What is a dedicated software team?

Simply put, a dedicated team for custom software development is a concept built upon ownership and control and is an extension of your local, in-house team.

The members of your dedicated software team are permanent, full-time employees that belong to your business and work only for you. Conveniently, this model is not geographically specific, which means that they are still an integral part of your business, irrespective of where they sit.

Unlike outsourced engineers, dedicated software teams do not handle multiple projects across multiple clients. This ensures 100% customer focus and higher levels of employee engagement and productivity.

5 project-management tools for working with dedicated teams

1. Trello

Trello is a project management tool that is easy, flexible, and visually appealing. Trusted by millions of people globally, Trello helps both small and large teams stay organized. Their subscription service starts from as low as $9.99 per user per month for groups and organizations with less than 100 people.

Essentially, Trello is a collaboration tool that helps organize all your different projects into boards. Imagine having a hundred sticky notes with a list of tasks for you and your team members. To add to the tasks, you also have photos, attachments, documents, collaboration tasks, and more. It can be a nightmare to organize all of it. That’s where Trello comes in handy — a digital tool that tells you all the tasks that are being worked on at the moment, who is working on what, and the supporting documents for each task.

Some of the features of Trello are –

Create boards to represent projects. Each board can have several lists that represent work stages, topics, and different groupings. Further, each list can have several cards that outline the work details, checklists, file attachments, due dates, and more.
Many team members can collaborate on a single board or even task. As users complete the tasks from the list assigned to them, they can move to the next cards representing the next stage of work.
Users can attach files and documents that need to be shared, either from their local systems or from cloud storage services. A notification system alerts and reminds users of changes, updates, due dates, and more.

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is a project management tool that has become increasingly popular because of its many unique features. Some of the features of Basecamp that you can implement include –

Split all your work into projects and add collaborators for each project. Each project board will contain all the people involved, every discussion ever made, supporting documents, files, and deadlines. You can also post announcements to the board, pitch ideas, and update progress.
Create to-do lists of all the tasks that need to get done, assign it to people, and set due dates.
Schedule important dates and meetings that are integrated with Google calendar, iCal, and Outlook.
Schedule automatic check-ins with your team by asking questions like ‘What are you working on today?’ or ‘What are your priorities for the next week’.
Create Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and more.

3. Asana

Asana is a comprehensive project management tool with Premium, Business, and Enterprise level memberships to help teams work faster and get more productive.

Some of the features of Asana that you can use include –

Organize your work into shared projects in the form of lists or Kanban boards. Each project can then be broken down into tasks and subtasks, assigned to different team members, and given due dates.
Create custom forms, fields, and sheets to track and filter information.
Create timelines of the project using a Gantt-style view to project deadlines, plan better, and hit deadlines.
Add attachments to the project board from your local computer, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, or Dropbox.
Create rules to automate manual processes such as updating Asana fields, triaging, and assigning tasks.
Set, track, and manage company goals, milestones, and strategic initiatives.

4. Monday

Monday.com is yet another cloud-based project management tool that enables organizations and teams to manage projects and tasks. As of 2020, Monday serves over 100,000 organizations across different industries and geographical locations.

Some of the features of Monday.com that you can use in your day-to-day business include –

Use ready-made templates and drag-and-drop building blocks to create projects, making it possible to get your team remote-ready in just minutes.
Customize Kanban boards to manage projects, workflows, and day-to-day tasks. You can even add code-free automation to your boards to minimize the chance of human error.
Display important data in a visually appealing manner, so it is easy to understand. Gain key insights from the data across multiple boards about the status of your projects, teams, and processes.
Seamlessly integrate all the tools you regularly use to a central hub to streamline your workflows in just a few clicks.
Create just one workspace for your project’s entire life cycle, starting from initiation to planning, execution, monitoring, and closure. You can also set project goals, select relevant stakeholders, and outline the resources needed.

5. ClickUp

ClickUp is a project management tool that was specifically designed to make business life easier. The founders of ClickUp wanted to create a comprehensive tool because they were dissatisfied with the other project management tools in the market. Thus, ClickUp was born — a straightforward, user-friendly solution to make the world more productive. ClickUp is essentially a single tool that replaces tasks, docs, goals, and chat.

Some of the features of ClickUp include –

Customize your workflow to fit the project by using preselected templates or creating your own.
Create task lists, assign tasks to multiple people, and add task dependencies such as waiting on, blocking others, linking to, etc., if needed.
Create an agile board view that allows you to view every single task on your team on a single board. Create workflows within boards using workflow templates that are available on ClickUp.
Create, collaborate, and store your work in one place by creating wikis and docs for whatever tasks you’re working on.
Create a mission control center for your entire team to track sprints, epics, initiatives, team planning, and other creative ideas.