8 Best Agile Project Management Software – By a Seasoned Project Manager (2023)

There’s nothing as exciting as searching for agile project management software.

Only kidding.

It’s tiring and tedious, and the stakes are too high to miss something.  

I know this because I’ve had the pleasure of migrating project management software various times for multiple companies. The only real benefit is that I’ve tried just about every agile tool on the market so I can confidently tell you which ones you should look into and why. 

So whether your team runs on scrum, kanban, or a custom version of agile, I’m going to show you which project management software is most suitable. 

Methodology for choosing the best agile project management software

Before getting too deep into the article, it’s important to know what to look for. The last thing you want to do is revert back or migrate to something else a month in because you missed a key consideration. Regardless of what SaaS companies tell you, the switching costs are real. In my experience, you will lose time, money, clients, and even staff trying to make something work. You might even settle for what is easy instead of what is right because you’re desperate for a solution. 

I’ve personally used most of the tools on this list when I was a Project Manager for companies like Finder and JXT Global, or a Project Coordinator for the Reserve Bank of Australia. I still signed up and explored their new features to ensure I had a deep understanding of the pros and cons. I’ve even requested expert opinions to get further input as you may notice throughout the article.

Below are the nine key metrics that play a part in the consideration of each software:

• The ease of use: Can you and your team members comfortably use the tool without feeling overwhelmed or cutting corners because it's too complex?
• Agile suitability: Can the tool handle agile project management requirements? What about the variations of agile like scrum or kanban?
• Ease of migration: Can you migrate to the tool without breaking the bank or spending insane hours?
• Support: If you get stuck do you have a point of contact? Are they helpful?
• Documentation: Can you rely on the documentation to guide you?
• Integrations: Does the project management software integrate with other software in your organization?
• Automation: Can you build useful and reliable automated workflows?
• Value for money: How expensive is the software compared to the value you get from it? 
• Sharing: Can you share views, projects, and workflows with other people outside of your organization such as stakeholders or clients? 

1. Monday

If you’re like me you’ve probably seen one too many Monday.com ads on YouTube. They’re one of the newer entrants in the market but still boast over 180,000 customers. Monday offers three core products including Monday Work Management, Monday Sales CRM, and Monday Dev. 

Monday Dev is the most suitable for product and development teams since it has features like roadmap planning, sprint management, and bug tracking. Monday Workflow Management is more suitable for agencies or smaller teams that still want to run a basic scrum or kanban model but doesn’t require advanced software development features. 

Monday key features for agile teams

• Ability to create multiple, customized, and real-time dashboards. 
• Monday Dev allows you to build custom agile workflows for each product release or team. 
• The mobile app is genuinely useful and can keep your team on top of their tasks or key updates that involve them.
• The app marketplace allows developers to build custom apps that solve any additional problems you might have. 
• It’s easy to invite guests to boards and communicate with them. This is especially handy for marketing agencies.

Monday.com pros and cons

Pros

• You can choose a more tailored product suite (either Monday Dev or Monday Workflow Management) to give you more flexibility.
• The “My Work” view makes it easy and obvious for everyone involved in a project to know exactly what is assigned to them and when it’s due. Especially if they’re involved in multiple projects, which is common for Engineers, Designers, or Writers. 
• Monday Dev integrates with hundreds of tools like Github, Gitlab, Slack, and Figma. 
• The Monday app marketplace has a load of free apps to choose from to enhance your workflow.

Cons

• Some of the additional plugins/apps can increase the price of your membership. 
• Sending emails from the Monday dashboard is not the best experience and can be frustrating.
• The time-tracking widget is a bit tedious and requires you to configure it manually. 
• The best features such as timeline, Gantt views, calendar view, and automation are in the more expensive tiers.

Monday Pricing

Monday Work Management Pricing

• Individual: $0/mo up to 2 seats and limited features.
• Basic: $10/mo per seat with templates, views, and access to the mobile apps.
• Standard: $12/mo per seat with timelines and Gannt views, and guest access. 
• Pro: $20/mo per seat with additional and advanced features. 
• Plans are 18% cheaper on a yearly contract. 

Monday Dev Pricing

• Basic Dev: $12/mo per seat with free viewers, templates, and wikis. 
• Standard Dev: $14.5/mo per seat with timelines and Gannt views, sprint, and roadmap features.
• Pro Dev: $25/mo per seat with additional and advanced features such as cross-team roadmaps and agile reporting.  
• Plans are 18% cheaper on a yearly contract. 

Overall score

2. Asana

Asana is a popular project management tool built for cross-functional teams. The product suite is a great solution for businesses running on agile since it can comfortably facilitate different workflows. According to their website, 80% of Fortune 100 companies use Asana. 

There are over 200 templates ready for you to duplicate in categories such as marketing, operations, design, product, and sales. Below are three agile templates you might want to check out:

• Sprint planning template
• Sprint retrospective template
• Product roadmap template 

Asana's key features for agile teams

• Advanced suite of features for remote teams to help facilitate collaboration and async communication.
• Easy to create custom fields for specific boards/projects to help with reporting. 
• The agile dashboard allows users to track key metrics like velocity and burndown.
• The team conversation facilitates real-time collaboration on tasks, projects, or portfolios.
• Most of the agile-related tools and templates can integrate with your tech stack (e.g. GitHub, Jira, Lucidchart, and Figma).

Asana's pros and cons

Pros

• Audited to SOC 2 Type II standards and ISO 27001, ISO27017, and ISO 27018 compliant. 
• The Asana Mobile app can enhance collaboration between team members across projects and time zones. 
• You can create custom workflows and templates to suit your business's version of agile. Unlike some other tools, you don’t need to be shoe boxed into a solution.
• The visual project tracking features make it easy to understand the progress of a task, project, or program of work. I personally prefer the simple design of Asana over the competitors on this list.

Cons

• There’s a steeper learning curve with Asana, and this can make it harder to get buy-in from your team to use the tool or use it properly.
• Whilst you can create custom workflows, this can easily become overwhelming. 
• With a limited budget and time tracking functionality, in some cases, you’ll need to integrate with a tool like Day.io.
• Business owners often complain about how expensive the tool becomes when you onboard more users. 
• Can’t assign a single task to more than one person. 

Asana's pricing

• Basic plan: $0/mo with extensive access and up to 15 collaborators.
• Premium plan: $13.49/mo per user for advanced features, workflows, and customization. 
• Business plan: $30.49/mo per user for additional features like advanced integrations with business intelligence tools, custom rules, and advanced reporting.
• Enterprise plan: Contact sales.
• All plans are cheaper on a yearly subscription.

Overall score

3. ClickUp

In recent years, there has been an explosion of new project management tools, each with its own unique set of features and benefits. Similar to Monday.com, ClickUp is one of the newer entrants to the market but has quickly gained popularity with over 10,000 5-star reviews. ClickUp offers a comprehensive project management solution that includes features such as task management, time tracking, collaboration, and automation.

ClickUp is a great all-rounder option for agile teams that expect features such as burndown charts, sprint planning, user stories, and kanban boards. Additionally, teams that value flexibility and customization options would find ClickUp a suitable option. 

ClickUp's key features for agile teams

• Chat interface that resembles Microsoft Team, Slack, or Hangouts.
• There’s a built-in knowledge management system (called Docs) that makes it easy for product teams to write user stories, narratives, or even processes. 
• The product features are split based on use cases such as project management, engineering, and product teams.
• 24/7 support via email, live chat, and webinars. 

ClickUp's pros and cons

Pros

• ClickUp is the only project management software to have a negotiation form. You simply fill in a form and negotiate a plan that’s most suitable for your team.
• Ability to create subtasks under subtasks which is particularly helpful for larger projects so they don’t require spitting up. 
• Most people that review ClickUp point out that the sprint planning features are excellent. 

Cons

• The free forever plan is only useful for freelancers and consultants, agencies or startups would need to compromise a lot of core features such as form views, integrations, and agile reporting. 
• There have been some complaints about the user experience and navigation of the application not being intuitive. 
• The color palette can also make the navigation confusing and annoying. 
• The overwhelming number of features means there’s a steep learning curve.  

ClickUp's pricing

• Free forever plan: $0/mo for basic features and best for personal use. 
• Unlimited plan: $9/mo per member.
• Business plan: $19/mo per member.
• Business plus plan: $29/mo per member.
• Enterprise plans require custom pricing. 
• All plans are discounted on a yearly subscription.

Overall score

4. Wrike

Wrike is a popular project management tool with many different use cases, workflows, and integrations. Similar to its competitors, Wrike boasts impressive clients including Google, Lyft, Ogilvy, and Snowflake. The good news is that Wrike facilitates various styles of agile project management and even has eight workflow templates for you to duplicate. 

Their new product “Wrike Lightspeed” make some bold claims including 70% fewer meetings, 90% fewer emails, and 45% faster project deliverable. Wrike stands out as the project management software that saves time and money. Whilst it has similar features to the competitors, its design, integrations, and workflows help maximize team productivity. 

Wrike's key features for agile teams

• Over 400 integrations are available.
• Highly customizable kanban boards. 
• You can easily create custom workflows for each team or project type.
• The dashboards allow you to see multiple teams' tasks (you can even toggle between personal and shared boards). 

Wrike's pros and cons

Pros

• Wrike lightspeed actually helps remove complexity and improve productivity.
• Wrike works great for product launches that require multiple teams and stakeholders within an organization that doesn’t usually interact.
• You can customize processes to the way each team works.
• The knowledge management system makes it easier for cross-functional teams to work together and get up to speed since you can share key documents in one spot. 

Cons

• Lack of support from the Wrike customer success team for complex integrations. 
• Unless the whole company adopts Wrike, you will miss out on some of its best features. 
• Creating dashboards is time-consuming and tedious (this is why it’s important to make sure your naming conventions and configuration are accurate from the beginning).

Wrike's pricing

• Free: $0/mo per user.
• Team: $9.80/mo per user.
• Business: $24.80/mo per user.
• Enterprise: Contact for a custom quote. 
• Pinnacle: Contact for a custom quote. 

Overall score

5. Plaky

Plaky is a Serbian-owned company operating under Coing and is one of the most underrated agile project management tools on the market. Especially because it’s completely free. This includes unlimited projects, unlimited tasks, and unlimited users for $0 per month.

Plaky has a specific use case for agile teams. Although, I wouldn’t recommend it to large organizations with more than 20 users. It does a great job of managing smaller projects and teams and in most cases can be a great alternative to Asana, Monday, Trello, or ClickUp. However, since it’s completely free, you can’t expect the best support or feature improvements. 

Plaky's key features for agile teams

• Workflows and features to facilitate collaboration with remote teams.
• Huge variety of templates to choose from when creating a new project.
• Easily attach files and comments to specific tasks.
• An intuitive kanban view makes it easy to see the high-level progress of a project. 

Plaky's pros and cons

Pros

• Completely free.
• ISO 27001 & SOC 2 certified and GDPR compliant.
• Bug tracking, product roadmap, and product launch features. 
• Ability to create dedicated boards for various projects.
• Admin control features to create views and permissions based on user type.

Cons

• Plaky does plan on creating premium plans in the future and this might mean it is no longer free. 
• Limited support since the tool is free.
• No native integrations with tools like Figma, Slack, and Github. 

Plaky's pricing

• $0/mo for unlimited users.

Overall score

6. Trello

Trello is a project management tool I still use today. It’s owned by Atlassian, has over 2,000,000 users, and is one of the best kanban boards on the market. Trello has three core features that make it attractive: boards, lists, and cards. 

Trello is extremely simple to use, understand, onboard, and even customize. There are hundreds of “Power-Ups” which allow you to add more functionality and integrations if you require them. 

Trello's key features for agile teams

• A simple-to-use Kanban board. This is key for stakeholders who have limited knowledge of project management tools. 
• Power-Ups allow you to customize workflows to your specific needs.
• Since it’s owned by Jira there is a great two-way integration. 
• You can embed links into the comments/descriptions making it easy to visualize design elements in the board view.

Trello's pros and cons

Pros

• Very simple to use.
• Extremely cheap and reliable.
• There isn’t a learning curve so if you require stakeholder input it’s a much easier tool for the user. If you run an agency this is particularly important. 
• You can divide a task into a card and still have subtasks within the card. 

Cons

• Limited agile features outside of the kanban boards.
• Can get expensive very quickly if you require many different Power-Ups. 
• The more complicated and detailed a project gets the more overwhelming the screen can become since you can’t filter or organize for certain information. 
• Limited customization is available to your views and dashboards. 

Trello's pricing

• Free plan: $0/mo and free for the whole team up to 10 boards.
• Standard plan: $6/mo per user for unlimited boards and advanced features. 
• Premium plan: $12.50/mo per user for more customization and integrations. 
• Enterprise plan: $17.50/mo per user for 50 users with enterprise-level features. 

Overall score

7. Jira

If you’ve worked for a tech company you’ve probably spent a large portion of your time in Jira. This is another popular Atlassian tool that most companies rely on to handle their entire project management function. I’ve worked for small agencies and large government organizations that both leverage Jira in their own way to handle project management. With over 100,000 users from companies like Square, eBay, Spotify, and Cisco you can trust the quality of the tool.  

Jira is one of the few project management software that is designed for agile teams. They offer scrum boards, kanban boards, and a flexible combination of both. Jira is a truly agile project management software with core features like release charts, velocity charts, and burndown charts.

Jira's key features for agile teams

• Jira can handle teams of 1 all the way up to 20,000.
• Customizable workflows based on the business's style of working.
• The roadmap feature makes it easy to align bigger goals and company-wide OKRs.
•  The reporting and insight tools are very handy and advanced. Provided your tickets/workflow includes the right information you can create detailed reports.

Jira's pros and cons

Pros

• Jira is insanely flexible when it comes to workflows, you can run any variation of agile/scrum that matches your business's style of operating.
• Drag and drop automation to speed things up and make your workflow more robust. 
• Integrations with all of the tools you’ll likely need (e.g. Slack, Teams, Bitbucket, GitHub, etc)
• Great support on the paid plans if you get stuck with something. 
• Since it is designed for agile and scrum methodologies you. 

Cons

• In some cases, Jira forces updates that can change the UX without warning. This can easily confuse or annoy staff who are used to working a particular way. 
• You need to know your business pretty well before using Jira. Since it is so flexible it required you to create your own workflow. 
• Can be overwhelming for new users since there are many features and a steep learning curve. 

Jira's pricing

• Free plan: $0/mo for up to 10 users and all the basic features.
• Standard plan: $7.75/mo per user for up to 10 users.
• Premium plan: $15.25/mo per user for up to 10 users.
• Enterprise plan: Contact for pricing.
• All plans are cheaper if paid annually. 

Overall score

8. Backlog by Nulab

Backlog is a project management tool owned by Nulab, a company that specializes in building B2B SaaS products. Backlog is particularly helpful for agile teams since they offer a range of features such as task tracking, issues management, collaboration tools, Gantt charts, kanban boards, and loads more. 

Backlog is suitable for most companies that require an agile project management solution but is most helpful for software development teams. This is because they offer version control, bug tracking, and wikis. 

Backlog's key features for agile teams

• Easy-to-navigate kanban boards.
• Native integrations with most of the supporting tools you’ll be using such as Slack and Github. 
• Flexible workflow customization so you can tailor the tool to your version of agile. 
• Collaboration tools such as commenting, file attachments, and mentions.
• Advanced reporting for agile teams including burndown charts, velocity charts, and cumulative flow diagrams. 

Backlog's pros and cons

Pros

• The premium plan is only $175/mo for unlimited users, projects, features, and dedicated support. 
• You can easily import your tasks from Jira and Redmine.
• Bug reporting and task creation are much more intuitive than other tools like Jira. 
• Businesses report that it’s easy to set up and onboard users. 

Cons

• No ability to create different bug statuses for different projects. 
• Some users have reported the interface is not dynamic or intuitive. 
• Limited to 10 MB file sizes for attachments which is very low, some pdfs are larger than this. 

Backlog's pricing

• Free plan: $0/mo for up to 10 users and 1 project.
• Starter plan: $35/mo for up to 30 users and 5 projects.
• Standard plan: $100/mo for unlimited users, 100 projects, and more advanced features.
• Premium plan: $175/mo for unlimited users, unlimited projects, and dedicated support.

Overall score

Frequently asked questions