Many companies face the problem of creating software for project management. They need a solution that can help cope with day-to-day tasks in a quick and efficient way.
To organize the work of your project team, you need a single information center that can reach the following objectives:
- store project documents;
- keep working materials: protocols, risks, open questions;
- inform the participants about the rules, events, plans;
- maintain all sorts of registers such as tasks, business processes, developments;
- give tasks and assignments;
- collect information on tasks and assignments.
What is needed is an intelligent, user-friendly software that is accessible to all. It should be simple, clear and at the same time very flexible and easily customizable. And these days there is a number of IT solutions that can help get things done.
Kanban Vs. Scrum
Kanban and Scrum have their own pros and cons. Kanban offers a visual system to track and monitor progress of various tasks. On the other hand, Scrum is a project management style that is agile, and lets team members collaborate to deliver business value in the shortest duration.
Kanban is ideal when collaboration happens sequentially in an assembly-line like format. Here, task owners drop in projects to their buckets and move it forward to the next member in the team when it is done.
Scrum works well when collaboration among team members is intertwined. Here, tasks change hands and work happens in parallel to meet objectives quickly.
Jira
Jira is a commercial bug tracking system designed to perform project management and interaction with users. It is one of the products developed by Atlassian (alongside with the Confluence wiki system). Jira has a web interface and can be used when it’s necessary to organize the employees’ work, set tasks, and have instant control of assignments. The system allows working with several projects. For each of the projects it creates and maintains security and notification schemes. Jira is available as an open source project management system and under the Commercial liсense. In general, Jira seems an efficient solution for project administration but, unfortunately, it is quite complicated and requires customization and thorough observance of all the procedures.
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Project is a complex software project management system which allows planning and controlling project activities of organizations. Microsoft Project helps start work quickly and manage projects with ease. There are built-in templates, instruments for different levels of analytics and statistics, means for managing working hours. All of these tools help project managers and teams stay productive. Microsoft Project is a more user-friendly solution than Jira but still requires customization and expertise. It’s available only on a paid basis. There are desktop, cloud-based, and on-premise solutions. Moreover, you can use Microsoft Project in Office 365.
Custom Kanban-based web application
The above-mentioned systems are quite complicated, so there is a demand for custom solutions that combine simplicity and project management features. If your workflow is not so intense and the internal processes in your company are not too difficult, then it’s better to use a simpler solution for your business. If you want to create a customizable task and project management system quickly and easily, you can just make use of kanban JavaScript widget which is included into some JavaScript UI libraries. This is an HTML5 web component that can be implemented into any web apps or web-based solutions.
Let’s consider in greater detail the Kanban widget that makes part of Webix JS library. This component is a tool that allows viewing work in progress and monitoring it. The Kanban board enables each employee to be aware of what each of the team members should be working on. The widget is renowned for its flexibility and easy customization via HTML templates. There can be any number of columns and rows in the board.
The Kanban component by Webix includes such advanced features as drag and drop of cards, expanding / collapsing of columns, Swimlanes, single or multiple card selection, custom card arrangement, and many others.
The advantages of Webix Kanban board:
- Ease of use. The Kanban widget is highly-customizable and quite simple.
- Informative and compact design. You can visualize full workflow information in a compact way.
- Flexible UI configuration. You can add any quantity of task cards and columns, customize the appearance of task cards.
- Management of tasks. The widget gives an opportunity to create, modify, delete your tasks and rearrange them using drag-n-drop.
- Backend integration. With Kanban widget you can load and save tasks easily.
- Reasonable price.
Bottom line
If you face a dilemma of what software solution to choose for your business, you should consider several points. First of all, think about the scale of your company. Then analyze how difficult the internal processes and procedures are. And of course, think of the estimated budget that you can afford. If your business is not too large and the working procedures are not very difficult, then it’s a good idea to choose one of the simplest solutions – to implement Webix Kanban component. It’s less expensive that Microsoft Project and Jira and at the same time it’s more easy-to-use. The Kanban widget has an extensive functionality and customizability. It is basically a complete solution that you can integrate into your business development workflow. All you need is to download Webix UI Framework and install this component.
