What application(s) do you use to plan a new project?

Question

Say you want to create a new project, say a website or software, what application(s) would you use to achieve a successful start to your product?

Jessi Lu · Accepted Answer

Hey, I would recommend our tool Zenkit. You can start with brainstorming in the mind map view and afterwards switch to the kanban board or table to organize your tasks and ideas. It´s easy to use with a lot of features for individual use. If you work with a team - no problem, you can assign tasks, communicate and track the process of your project. With Zenkit it´s possible to build your own database, set references to other collections or upload files.

Jitesh Dugar · Answer

It's trending on ProductHunt today so it's worth talking about.

Been using Codegiant since a week and it seems a great tool for agile project planning and management.

Having a bunch of features like documentation, issue tracking, hosted git repositories and continuous integration, makes Codegiant a brilliant choice for end-to-end project management until project delivery.

It is truly the only platform that we need to ship agile project :)

Hannah White · Answer

Instead of using a normal project management tool here, like others have recommended, I'd recommend trying something like Tonkean. It's more of a Coordination Platform.

Tonkean does the organization and tracking of information, like any project management tool, but also adds a layer of automation on top.

Think of it like this, say you are hosting an event -

1. Add a new List to Tonkean titled '2018 Fall Event'
2. Create Tracks within the list like Attendees, Press, Music, Catering, Decor, etc. 
3. Important relevant data (i.e. budgets from an Excel spreadsheet, RSVPs from an event app, etc.)
4. Assign an owner and a due date to each track (Braxton > Attendees > Due September 20)
5. Watch the magic happen

Tonkean will monitor the dates, metrics and feedback from your team and have a ready-to-go dashboard for you at all times.

Say there was a spike in people who could not attend your event, which was being tracked through that event app mentioned above. Tonkean's AI-powered chatbot would reach out to Braxton and see what the problem is. Then, the bot would publish his input to your dashboard on the 'Attendees' track and update it accordingly (the due date, metrics, whatever is applicable - it's smart enough to know!).

As the person managing the event, you have no longer have to chase people down or sit in tiresome meetings to get status updates. It's all ready for you in your dashboard. The bot is even smart enough to know when your team is most likely to respond and provide input.

All of this is awesome, but the game-changer is that nobody on your team needs to change anything about their workflow. Tonkean's bot works with everyone's favorite collaboration tools (Slack, Teams and email), and all your team has to do is respond to the Tonkean bot in Slack. They never even have to login to Tonkean.

It's less nagging for you and less reporting for your employees. It's a win-win.

Laure Albouy · Answer

Loads of entrepreneurs and startups are using Slite to kickoff their projects! It's a great way to keep track of meeting notes and overall knowledge that you gain as the project goes on :)

Ilya Bovkunov · Answer

One of the usefull tool for web development on planning stage — best before starting to work with designer, developer or copywriter.

Joshua Tab. · Answer

Trello is my favorite productivity tool to organize my ideas and classify them

Chandhann Kumar Ramchurn · Answer

This one is pretty cool! The freemium concept is even more appealing - with notes, subtasks, lists and forums listed nicely. Give it a try!

Nikhil Bansal · Answer

Looks very clean!

Nick Timms · Answer

I would only use this if it's a small project primarily on email correspondence :)

Sam Gehly · Answer

In terms of planning and outlining an idea, nothing is better than Notion. It's clean, simple, and most importantly, gets the job done in terms of feature-set.

Pavel Kukhnavets · Answer

I vote for the all-in-one product management platform for growing companies, Hygger.io. It proposes everything you need to manage any simple and complex project, from smart boards, task tracking maintaining a backlog roadmapping to the new updates and innovative features. Moreover, there are enough strong reasons for changing Jira or Trello to Hygger.

AKANKSHA SAXENA · Answer

Before Trello, I use ProductPlan to plan my entire project & break them into smaller tasks which I later assign on Trello Board.

Waseem Aslam · Answer

I would use Trello it is quite easy to use and its Free too. The best way to approach this is getting into the mindset of splitting up tasks and be diligent in moving items around the board otherwise it can be quite easy to just forget about trello and realise you haven't moved items around but the project has moved along .

Ashley · Answer

I would definitely recommend integrating JIRA and Confluence, as combined together they are perfect!

You have all your issues on one page, you can easily manage the sprints; there is a really useful workflow system, as well as reports & charts; overall you have all your business processes perfectly structured and executed.

James Dyer · Answer

A 21st century database-come-spread sheet. Powerful tool with great UX.

Mitesh Shethwala · Answer

I have started using this Project Management APP and it has been very smooth experience so far!

Saketh Rasakatla · Answer

Agile CRM's project management feature -> https://www.agilecrm.com/project-management    has been of great help for us. I suggest you try it and get accustomed to it and enjoy the maximum benefit. It is the best. Take my word for it :)

Nitin Bajaj · Answer

Help us streamline and structure big project into segments and their delete autosave is so sync.

Bart van Poll · Answer

It's the 3rd project management tool I've tried, and stuck with it for years now. Very satisfied.

Janett Shields · Answer

one of my favorite ones) When I'm planning publications to my tech blog - http://techandhumanity.com/ - I usually use it.

Joshua Anderton · Answer

I have a project for "New Project Ideas" and then when I decide to go ahead and build; I just convert it to a new project.

Jan Kuzel · Answer

Well besides Trello for the actual kickoff, for the very first brainstorming, I like to use Paper. The simplicity of using it, the way it handles images and integrates emojis, it's really good to start dishing out the steps without getting stuck on organizing the content.

Araix Rand · Answer

A best tool for Blogger and Project planning.

Marcel Folaron · Answer

Leantime was build for this exact case. It includes research boards for project inception. Roadmap planning for long term planning and a daily tracker for your immediate to-dos

Sergey Bushtruk · Answer

Why not? ;)

Petr Nagy · Answer

Excellent way to visualize your new idea and it's difficulty before making any more permanent structure.

Fawad Ansari · Answer

I recently discovered Scrumpy and found it a great tool.
P.S. we have something in the works of our own for the same. I'll recommend it to you soon as we launch.

bazingagag · Answer

Mobile security is more and more important nowadays, that’s why I think no matter who you are, what you do. You will need an app to protect your phone!

I am using this app called ‘AppLock’, which is amazing because it can lock all of my apps, images even videos. This app is always on my list when it comes to app recommendation.

The one thing that I like the most about this app is that it can take photos of the person who’s trying to unlock your phone! This feature is really funny because I always got the intruder selfie notification from my kids. They are trying really hard to unlock my phone for video games.

If you are a cautious people, you really do need one of this app.

Chris Sheffield · Answer

Been using this for work. Moved away from trello to use this as have not looked back.

Great support, create your own templates outside of the agile method, fantastic app and so much more.

You can assign tasks to multiple team members and send email updates on certain tasks as well as attaching documents.

Answer

The most important and basic step in planning a website is creating a sitemap.

Instead of using a sheet of paper and pen you can create neat and professional sitemaps using Slickplan.

Slickplan allows you to use an existing website as a template for your sitemap and then thanks to its intuitive interface you can easily redesign it.

In the sitemap projects you can also create mind maps and flow charts in real-time with your teammates. The diagrams can be created as a standalone, shareable projects as well.

During the 30 Day Free Trial Slickplan is fully functional, so our users can check every feature the app has to offer.

Aender Lara · Answer

Personally I think there is a ToDo app for each person, and getting the habit of using one is really difficult.

The last years Todoist is the only ToDo app that has worked for me, sometimes I stop using it for a while, but I always return to it and the last 8 months have been my best companion to take order of the development of my independent games, 3D projects and creation of articles, even to remind me when to publish certain things in social media.

Fred Wilson · Answer

1. It's incredibly affordable. 
2. Remarkably easy to understand and use. 
3. Offers fully-featured management modules that include: project management, time tracking, team management, issue 
    tracking, risk assessment and meeting management.

Fred Wilson · Answer

This bad boy is new on the market and recently launched on Product Hunt.  We have all heard of Trello and Asana as the best management tools out there. And while that maybe true, it's always better to check out emerging platforms with greater benefits each year. You'll find nTask easy to use, simple to explore and most importantly, soft on your budget (considering you can avail ALL features on a Free Account).  Check it out !

Answer

GTD app. Simple

Richard Rizk · Answer

Great tool to keep track of meetings, get automatically meeting minutes and 1-click search to retrace any moment of a conversation.

Nash Whaley · Answer

Trello, Asana and the rest are great for planning individual/long-term projects but they fall short when comes to managing repeatable processes in your business. Trello offers a lot of flexibility in that you can create a new Kanban board for every task or project, but you sacrifice scalability. A better solution would be a system that organizes processes sort of like an assembly line at a factory. Instead of creating separate boards for each project or department, you'd have a number of boards that reflect business processes. For example, you might have one for processing a certain type of payment where each item on the board is a payment. I've seen this done with Trello, but it's not intuitive.

Answer

Trello is absolutely the best tool available online. It is a powerful solution for your project management even for free! Strongly recommended to everyone

Jan Kuzel · Answer

Great way to plan visually.

Answer

Just try it and you'll see why. The best solution I've found.

Pavel · Answer

Before planning I love to create a big picture in mindmap format.

Colin Gray · Answer

I love Notion for organising all my planning docs. Also, really handy for putting together web page wireframes. I'll use the simple layout tools to put together the copy for a page in a rough layout, then pass over to the designer on my team. They can make it look pretty from there!

Biraj Ghosh · Answer

You can visually organize things by color coding, use multiple tags to filter lists then use kanban view to work on them, also you can use daily kanban if you prefer tasks by date.

Rich Peterson · Answer

I'd narrow down my search to save time in your project management software search.

Malte Scholz · Answer

Strategy platform to prioritize your projects and features to build more effective roadmaps. Integrates with all major project management platforms.

Answer

Starting with some simple notes in mind-map form is ideal. Whimsical is my latest favorite mapping tool – it's the cleanest-looking and most intuitive! Even better, they have wireframes and sticky notes coming soon.

Niesha ✌️& ❤️ · Answer

Free! Has tons of features too and adds more often.  Think Asana on steriods

Niesha ✌️& ❤️ · Answer

Free! Has tons of features too and adds more often.  Think Asana on steriods

Shane Stiles · Answer

I started using ClickUp recently after trying several other project managers.  It is fantastic.  I don’t think I’ll be switching again.

Logan Isitt · Answer

Stumbled upon ClickUp while looking for alternatives to several apps recommended here. It allowed me to organize my project exactly the way I wanted it to be for free, no trials. Everything about it is clean and it easy to use.

Kirill Atstarov · Answer

easy tu use, pretty UX

Chris McIntyre · Answer

Great access controls, easy notifications, and everyone is on the same page.

Andreas Nørgård Overbeck · Answer

Enjoy it because of how intuitive it is, and that it has me covered for both organizing my tasks, messaging the team and accessing our files.

madhweep Lakshmanan · Answer

Editor style task collaboration tool. Think of google docs with formatting options related to collaboration and not text

Corpa · Answer

Creative teams use Corpa to redefine work and workflows. Build, integrate, automate and run processes, workflows, tasks, communication, reports, and dashboards in one mobile app.