Looking to get better visibility of a project, but don't know where to start? Enter project roadmap tools!
When you're in the thick of a project, it can be hard to get a handle on exactly how much work you've completed and how much is left.
This can be especially challenging if your teammates aren't always available and are spread out across different time zones. The more frequently you check in with your team, the more likely it is that you'll be able to stay on schedule and keep your team focused.
But what can you do to make all the dots connect?
Try to get better visibility with project roadmap tools!
A project roadmap tool is software that offers a visual representation of your project’s roadmap — often in the form of a Gantt chart.
The visual roadmap gives a quick overview of your project phases, key milestones and objectives, teams involved, and the tasks included. As a result, it helps project managers keep up-to-date with project progress and align their team on the project scope and workflow.
Before we dive into a list of project roadmap tools to explore, let’s touch on the key features you should be looking for in such a tool.
Remember: these features are ones that’ll help you create an effective project roadmap, assisting your team to stay on track and achieve the set objectives.
This is the most important feature a project roadmap tool should offer, since a visual illustration of a roadmap makes it easy to communicate a project’s goals, timeline, and deliverables and track progress at a glance.
This representation can be in the form of Gantt or milestone charts. If you prefer, you can choose a tool that offers a calendar view of the roadmap as well — here’s a list of project management calendar tools to explore.
One last thing to be mindful of: the project roadmap tool you select should also give you the option to color code your project plan. This is crucial for tracking a project’s overall health using colors. For example, green indicates all is well and red shows something needs attention
Most projects require input from team members not only after the roadmap is ready but also during the planning phase.
Either way, collaboration in real-time is one of the key features that a project roadmap tool should offer. The feature lets you create roadmaps with realistic project timelines. It also improves resource allocation — allowing you to get input from team leads on how to best utilize their team without burning out or underutilizing employees.
It’s also important that your project roadmap tool lets you customize your roadmap since every project is unique and the roadmap you create for it should reflect that too.
Meaning: a project roadmap tool offering roadmap templates isn’t enough. Instead, you need a tool that lets you change the roadmap to meet the project’s specific needs.
Integrating with other tools is a critical feature for streamlining your workflow and making your roadmap more comprehensive.
So look for a tool that integrates with other tools in your kit such as your document management system, communication platform like Slack, and project management software.
Where color coding is an important feature for quickly identifying project roadblocks, you also need your tool to offer robust reporting and analysis features. This should include the ability to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and generate custom reports.
This way, you can effectively track project progress — ensuring it stays on the right track and within the determined scope — and document overall project success. In turn, you can revisit these reports for a better understanding of common project roadblocks and to create more accurate work plans.
Initiating a project, managing it during its lifecycle, and seeing it through to the end, it's easy at times to get lost in a sea of information overload. Project roadmap tools can organize everything that is going on with your project, and they allow your team to understand what the next step is in completing your goal.
All successful project roadmaps have one thing in common: a clear direction and a clear path to completion. When deadlines are looming, you need to be able to clearly see how you are going to reach them. Good project management tools will help you manage both your resources and your team's workflow along the way.
Project managers have a hard enough time keeping track of all the little details and making sure everything's running smoothly. The last thing they need is to be left in the dark about what's going on with their projects.
These nine tools are designed to create a clear vision of where your projects are going, who's working on them, what tasks are being assigned, and how every piece is coming together. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and some work better in circumstances than others. However, if you take a look, you are bound to find one that fits the needs of your organization.
Runn is visual project management software with built-in project templates. You can create a project roadmap on each template and update it monthly, weekly, daily or even hourly if you like to keep your team on track. But one of the best tool features here is that things will be getting updated automatically so you don't have to hover over your project dashboard like a doting parent.
You can also create a custom dashboard for each project. It's easy to use and gives you real-time visibility into what's going on across your organization. It's great for planning and execution, and for seeing how different projects overlap with one another.
With Runn's resource scheduling and capacity management you can always know whether you have enough resources (and, most importantly, the right resources) to finish your projects on time ad within budget. If you see that you're missing capacity and your teams are already overloaded, the tool will help you figure out what experts you need to hire to prevent understaffing issues.
On top of that, you get to enjoy project planning and forecasting features to always remain one step ahead of potential bottlenecks. Missed deadlines are out of the question — you will know when and how you can deliver the project with visibility not only into your project progress, but also into different possible project scenarios.
The name speaks for itself — with Teamgantt, your project roadmap will be structured in the form of Gantt charts, which means you can easily plan, schedule, and manage complex projects.
On top of the Gantt charts, however, you also get the option to plan out your project roadmap using a Kanban board or a calendar view, which can be particularly useful if you have some project-related releases coming up and want to get a high-level view on all of them at the same time.
Asana has been on the project management market for quite some time and can now tend to the needs of various teams.
With this tool on the table, complex projects tend to run smoothly. Choose between a Timeline view (Gantt charts) and Boards view (Kanban boards) to visualize your projects and the tasks that go into them.
What sets Asana apart from many other tools and makes it particularly useful when planning and executing projects is the fact that here you can enjoy 200+ integrations.
Want your project updates to be mentioned in Slack or events/ milestones marked in Google Calendar? Asana can help you in that!
With Wrike, you get full visibility and control over your projects.
In short, Wrike is work management software for project management, marketing, and professional services teams.
When it comes to building your project roadmap, Wrike can offer you the same views as the tools mentioned above — timeline, Kanban, and calendar. With their business intelligence solution, you can visualize project progress and team performance using real-time insights.
At the same time, if you are in a business where project progress is billed per hour worked of each expert assigned to it, you can use a time tracker to trace billable hours and give invoices to your clients accordingly.
Managing project roadmaps can also be particularly easy with Teamwork. You can effortlessly manage your team, projects, clients and freelancers — all within one platform. The tool will help you empower real-time collaboration between team members, helping them deliver their part of the project on time and within budget.
As "The last project management tool you’ll ever use", Teamwork gives you all the equipment needed to avoid scope creep and stick to deadlines. Here you can even get burnout reporting and utilization reports to see how your team members are doing, whether they need some time off, or help in using their time on tasks that matter most to the success of your project.
Toggl is a time tracking software and it's perfect for keeping records of who's working on what tasks and how much time they spend on these tasks. It's also very easy to use, so anyone in your team can enjoy it, no matter their technical skills.
Depending on your project needs, Toggl can be of great help if you need to know exactly how much time a particular task or milestone will take (say, for future project planning or client billing). And it is that granular view into your projects that turns a dreaded chore, time tracking, into an easy and fun activity.
With that level of visibility, you can create an end to end project roadmap and always be ahead of potential scope creep.
Hive promises to help you manage projects faster and collaborate better. If you are working with a hybrid or remote team, a tool like this one can be a life saver to ensure an all hands on deck situation.
As one of the hottest roadmap tools in 2022, Hive helps you finish all meetings with an action plan, easily visualizes complex project plans, and enables your agile teams to achieve all project goals.
This software also offers over 1000+ integrations with tools like Intercom, Zendesk, Zapier, and others for you to create product roadmaps and project plans that are feasible, transparent, and connected from day one.
Clickup has a simple message to convey — it is a platform where you can get all of your work done. Tasks, docs, chats, goals — all key features go into one platform that will help you create sustainable project roadmaps.
Here you can initiate, plan, track, and manage any project to give your teams sufficient visibility into what is going on with any specific project or across different projects in the organization. Clickup means no more siloed tasks, data, or projects — it is all about visibility and transparency.
On top of that, this software also promises to replace Asana, Monday, and Jira with its clean interface and multi-layered functionality.
If you are on the lookout for best product roadmap tools, this might be the one! Unlike all the tools above, this one will be more relevant for SaaS companies, rather than marketing agencies or professional services businesses, because it focuses on creating product roadmaps, rather than project roadmaps in general.
This platform will help you understand user needs, prioritize, and build strategies to align your teams around clear product roadmaps.
As a product roadmap tool, Airfocus covers a specific niche in project management, but it is its narrow focus that makes it stand out.
Need to scale your product and start with a clear vision? Try Airfocus!
Having a clear sense of what you're trying to do and how you plan on doing it is key for successful initiatives.
Project roadmap tools help you keep track of projects and see how they are going in relation to your company goals and deadlines.
Want to see if Runn is the tool to aid you in this? Book a demo today!
