Effective project management is essential when running a fast-paced organization like a software development com. It is helpful to enable your team to deliver projects on time. According to a StateOfAgile report, 75% of the software development companies that adopted agile project management stated they have improved and accelerated their software delivery.
For this to happen in your organization, you’ll need to support how your team works by adopting an agile project management strategy. With so many agile tools available on the market, how are you supposed to choose the one that works best for you and your team without affecting your budget?
Below you will find our top picks for free agile project management tools for a software development team. To begin with, let’s discuss the principles of agile methodology:
What is Agile Project Management?
This method involves dividing a project into multiple smaller tasks that can be afterward developed concurrently. This allows the team to collaborate and focus on minor problems that can be solved quickly. The main goal of an agile project management tool is to improve a team’s efficiency. This is done by supporting early delivery and flexibility to make changes. This positively impacts the financial performance of a project and customer satisfaction.
The benefits of Agile Methodology
The Agile approach provides numerous benefits for a project manager, including:
- Optimized development processes
- Faster deployment of software
- Faster issue detection
- Increased collaboration inside the team
- Constant feedback from the client, eliminates the rework
- Increased flexibility
- At each step of the project, transparency is visible to both parties.
In the process of choosing the right free agile tool, here are some must-have features you should look for:
- Progress tracking – you should choose a tool that displays visual progress. It makes it easier for your team members to see their progress and identify the bottlenecks.
- Issue tracking – bugs are part of any software development project. It’s best to choose a free agile project management tool that allows your team to focus on the identified issues immediately.
- Collaboration – spare your team from long email chains. It can be done by choosing an agile tool that integrates a centralized partnership to share information easily.
- Reporting and analytics – change how you analyze your team’s performance by extracting insightful reports for every milestone.
- Client access – last but not least, make sure your agile project management tool allows clients to track progress and offer feedback.
Here are the best Free Agile Project Management tools, in our opinion:
1. Jira
Jira is the perfect agile project management tool for software development teams. It was developed mainly for issue & bug tracking. Its free plan is ideal for managing basic development projects.
What our team likes:
- Track tasks through Kanban boards
- Customizable workflows
- Lots of updates and new features are available
- Great integration with other tools
Pricing plans:
- Free – $0
- Standard – $7/user/month
- Premium – $14/user/month
2. Planbox
Planbox is the pioneering agile innovation management platform. It allows project managers to create a collaborative environment with their teams, customers, partners, or other third party involved. It helps them to receive feedback and quickly adapt to any changes. Planbox includes complex analytics and reporting tool that provides users to identify and track progress issues.
What our team likes:
- Complete analytics and reporting, including charts to visualize project status
- Systematic workflow management
- Customizable UI design
- Allows customers feedback
- Easy collaboration through commenting option
Pricing plans:
- Free – $0
- Group – $5/user/month
- Professional – $10/user/month
- Enterprise – $20/user/month
3. Github
GitHub is one of the most straightforward available solutions for project management. It allows software development teams to efficiently tasks and track their progress in one place, helping them coordinate they deliver on schedule. Also, it has a freemium plan. This way, it’s the ideal agile project management tool for start-ups and SMEs.
What our team likes:
- Visualize tasks by status
- Prioritize tasks
- Easy to add tasks
- East to share your work
- Allows collaboration with other teams
- Issue and bug tracking
Pricing plans:
- Free – no charge freemium plan
- Team – $4/user/month
- Enterprise – $21/user/month
4. Asana
Asana offers many features for a free agile project management tool that will help you and your team better organize your tasks: from board views, setting priorities and deadlines to generating reports in no time. Also, you can integrate Asana with over 100 collaboration tools to keep all your communication in one place.
What our team likes:
- Easy to set priorities and deadlines
- Great integration with other tools
- Offers an overview of the project
- You can easily generate graphs
Pricing plans:
- Basic – $0 (Free forever)
- Premium – $13.49/user/month
- Business – $30.49/user/month
In conclusion, at Redbee Software, we are constantly trying new agile project management tools. We do this to find the one that best suits the needs of our team and our clients looking for an impeccable communication process with their nearshore software development team. We are curious – what agile management tools does your team use?
