DEV Community: Ranjali Roy

Jira vs GitHub Issues: Which is better for issue tracking?

Ranjali Roy — Wed, 12 May 2021 08:55:58 +0000

If GitHub is where developers reside, Jira is what most software development teams use to keep tabs on their progress.

Both these tools have become a household name when it comes to tracking issues and managing projects. So, how are they different? What are their pros and cons? And ultimately, which project management software is better for your software development team?

Before we get to answering these questions, let's have a quick overview of the two issue tracking project management apps.

Quick Overview of Jira

Atlassian created Jira in the year 2002 and it was initially built to be an issue and bug tracking application.

Now, Jira software has grown into an agile project management tool catering to software development teams - small and big. Jira offers a plethora of functionalities and integrations to more than 2000 third-party applications. Yet, its USP remains the same till date - issue tracking.

Most teams that are new to project management get started with Atlassian's Trello. And once they require more functionality, they later move to Jira after comparing Trello vs Jira.

Since most software companies are opting for Jira, should you too? Let’s find out.

The pros and the cons of Jira

Although Jira software is a pioneer in project management tools, with most apps being modelled on it, it has its pros and cons.

The pros:

Atlassian’s Jira is an expert at capturing bugs in your product that can then be assigned to members, prioritized and tracked to completion.
Jira software lets you add story points to each issue to quantify the work required to be done and also group related issues using its Epic issue type
Jira software has agile capabilities that supports frameworks such as scrum and kanban with features like scrum and kanban boards.
Jira is flexible and has a workflow builder that enables you to customize your workflow by setting up rules to define how a work item should move from one status to another.
Advanced configurations help you control who can view what work items in which kanban columns.
Roadmap functionality aids in a quick overview of the entire project and to track overall progress.
A huge collection of more than 2000 third-party apps for use cases ranging from CRM to code review, and more.

The cons:

Jira software’s design is not a developer’s favourite as it appears to be streamlined on the outside but leads to micromanagement when you dive inside.
Most developers also hate this app for its slow speed.
Jira software’s primary unit of work is an issue and not a task which is terrible as you’ll only think of tickets and not features.
Jira’s agile capabilities lack finesse when it comes to implementing frameworks like scrum, unlike Zepel. You don’t get the elegant Sprints view that has built-in agile reports such as burnup and burndown charts. So, check out alternative scrum tools if it is your priority.
Jira software’s learning curve is steep, making onboarding new members a living hell.
If you fail to set advanced configurations right, miscommunication and lost productivity within your squad can occur.
Jira software enables you to collect bugs and support tickets from customers via its external service desk but doesn’t allow you to bring in tickets from various customer feedback platforms such as Canny, Intercom, etc., like Zepel’s Streams does.
Even though you can create customized workflows, creating it becomes a nightmare due to its complex design.
The pricing plan limits onboarding to only 10 members in the free plan and unlike Zepel, it comes with certain functionality restrictions.

Quick Overview of GitHub Issues

Joining as a recent addition to the list of Jira alternatives is GitHub. This tool is every developer's best friend; the platform where most of the product development and code collaboration happens.

Popularly known for source code management, now, GitHub has expanded its horizons from version control systems to project management. And it is rising to fame as a popular replacement to Jira as it can do most of what Jira can do. And moreover, it's where the code is.

Akin to Jira software, this app uses bug tracking as a means of measuring progress. So, instead of thinking in terms of tasks and features, you will be working on tickets. Although this approach might seem simpler, it can become very difficult to build quality software.

Therefore, is GitHub cut out for handling projects? Read on to find out.

Pros and Cons of GitHub Issues for Project Management

Just like any other app, GitHub also has its pros and cons that will help you decide if this is the app for your org.

The pros:

GitHub is where the code is and so you wouldn’t need to leave your current workflow to update your work item’s status.
GitHub’s project boards have useful templates such as basic kanban, automated kanban, automated kanban with triggers for PR review status to help prioritize work and customize workflows. Here are some kanban board examples for inspiration.
GitHub Actions enables you to automate all your workflows effortlessly.
GitHub can be integrated with almost every software application available in the market today.
GitHub’s pricing plan is quite affordable.

The cons:

Unlike Jira software and Zepel, GitHub lacks powerful agile capabilities other than simple kanban software and Milestones for scrum.
Traditional project management functionalities such as file sharing and messaging, customizable dashboards, and multiple views like Gantt/Timeline, List view, etc
GitHub Issues helps collect customer requests for features, enhancements, or fixing bugs. You can even bring them in as imports from external sources like Canny and Intercom. But it isn't as elegant as Zepel’s Streams.
Unlike Atlassian’s Jira, GitHub doesn’t have story points to capture and quantify the work required to be completed
GitHub’s way of grouping issues together using labels or milestones is poor in comparison to Jira software’s Epic Lack of permissions that help you control who has access to what data.
GitHub isn’t friendly to non-technical people as it isn't intuitive and so it isn't meant for cross-functional teams.
Although the pricing is affordable, only public repositories are free.

Feature Comparison of Jira vs GitHub

	Jira Software	GitHub
Agile planning	Jira provides agile capabilities such as scrum boards, kanban boards, agile reports, etc., to implement both scrum and kanban painlessly.	GitHub lacks powerful agile capabilities like Jira and offers only simple kanban boards and Milestones for scrum sprints.
Ease of use	Easy to set up and use but the user experience and onboarding is hellish due to the complexity in its design.	Easy to use for developers and engineering teams but difficult for new technical users and non technical members as it isn't intuitive.
Developer- friendliness	Atlassian Jira enables pretty deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. However, it is extremely slow. Also, its workflows are over-engineered, causing micromanagement. This makes jira a tool developers hate.	GitHub is a tool loved by developers as it's where they spend most of their time doing what they love - coding. And managing work items here is a bonus as they don’t need to leave their current workflow.
Features & functionality	The core functionality of Jira is bug tracking and its unit of work is a ticket. You can add story points to issues and group them using its epic issue type, unlike GitHub. But its core concept forces your team to think in terms of tickets instead of outcomes. When it comes to features, Jira has plenty of them - from multiple views to roadmap and custom dashboards.	Akin to Jira, GitHub is also based on tickets, leading to a similar problem. Whereas tools like Zepel help you prioritize and build customer focussed software. But even when it comes to issue tracking, GitHub lacks crucial functionalities such as story points and proper grouping methods. In terms of features, this app doesn’t offer traditional project management functionalities such as multiple views, file sharing, and messaging. It also lacks custom dashboards.
Customer requests	Atlassian Jira has an external service desk to collect customer feedback but does not support bringing in tickets from other external tools such as Canny, Intercom, etc., like Zepel’s Streams does.	GitHub Issues can collect customer feedback and also enables bringing them in from other platforms but only via imports.
Flexibility & customizability	Jira’s workflow builder allows you to create customized workflows making it flexible.	GitHub may not have a powerful workflow builder but it has Actions and project boards to help automate and customize your workflows efficiently.
Integrations	Whopping 2000+ third-party apps and add-ons are available.	Integrations available with almost every software application in the market today.
Pricing	Atlassian Jira's free plan limits the no. of users to 10 and also limits functionalities. The paid plans start at $7/user.	GitHub has a free version but only for public repositories and with feature limits. So, for private repos and access to more functionalities, you must choose either the Teams plan that starts at $4/user/month or the enterprise plan at $21/user/month.
Best for	Small to large SaaS enterprises.	Small software development teams.

3 Reasons why issue tracking isn't the ideal solution to project management

1. Customer needs can’t be boiled down to a two-line ticket

Perhaps the most important requirement for building customer-focussed software products is context. And that’s why teams put in so many hours of efforts to understand the customer’s needs. So, when you try to compress all the information you’ve gathered about your customer’s requirements into a two-line ticket, what's the end product going to look like? There’s certainly going to be an information gap between the product and the engineering teams.

2. Developers aren’t ticket movers

Having worked with developers, you’d know one thing for sure; they love building features and hate the managing part i.e dragging and dropping tickets across the progress-tracking board. So, expecting them to be ticket movers rather than creators, who love to build software, is going to suck up their drive to improve the product. And bid adieu to quality.

3. Issue tracking hurts development

If bug tracking is the core of your project management, the quality of the software product is bound to take a big hit. Because your team will only look at building features as clearing tickets leaving no room for innovation. Moreover, there will be a lot of misunderstandings during product-engineering handoffs due to lack of context and clarity regarding the end goal. Also, there’s a lack of clarity on how efficiently the feature must function when your sole focus is on solving tickets. And that's how issue tracking hurts development.

The bottom line is that when it comes to capturing bugs, both GitHub Issues and Atlassian Jira are top-notch. But they fail to meet the criteria of a good project management software as there’s only so much you can do with tickets as your unit of work; you can only mend and not build.

3 best alternatives to Jira and GitHub that are a better fit for your org

1. Zepel

Zepel is the perfect alternative to both the tools. And it can be the right app for your org as it is more than just a bug tracker.

It is a clutter-free project management app that doesn't focus just on tickets. Instead, it helps you prioritize and build customer-focussed software.

Zepel has powerful agile capabilities that supports the implementation of scrum, kanban, or even a combination of both effortlessly.

Zepel's USP is its developer-friendly aspects such as deep integrations with GitLab, Bitbucket, and even GitHub, markdown support, / commands, and automated Git workflows. On setting up these Git workflow automations, Zepel will perform status updates on your dev crew’s behalf. You can complete this workflow by connecting your Slack to it and receive real-time notifications of progress updates by your squad. This is why Zepel is the widely-preferred engineering project management software.

You can onboard squads of any size painlessly owing to its uncomplicated design and affordable pricing.

Key Highlights:

Intuitive, uncomplex, powerful UI that makes onboarding easy
Capabilities that agile teams often look for — Sprints, burndown charts, boards, scrum boards, etc. — that allow both scrum and kanban implementation
Developer-friendly due to deep integration with Git, markdown support, and / commands
Git workflow automation along with Slack to perform status updates and receive instant notifications
Brings in customer feedback from multiple sources like Canny, Intercom, etc., and helps prioritize it
Great pricing plan!

Have a look at all the functionalities that Zepel offers here.

Pricing:

Zepel’s pricing plan is simple. The free plan doesn’t charge a penny for the first 5 members forever. So, no matter how many members you add, the first 5 members will never be charged. The paid plans for each member starting from the 6th is at $5/member/month paid annually $7/member paid monthly.

Best For:

Development teams of any size that desire to build software products the agile way.

2. Wrike

Wrike is a popular Jira competitor that was also created for serving agile teams. Akin to Jira and GitHub, Wrike also lacks an intuitive user interface and has a very steep learning curve. But unlike the two apps, Wrike isn't a bug tracking software. It is a traditional project management tool like Zepel.

Key Highlights:

Workspaces that are customizable
Dynamic reports that are easy to share, insightful, and visual
Boards, Gantt, and Calendar view to track progress and plan deadlines
Workload and resource administration
Shareable task lists and custom dashboards

Check out all the functionalities Wrike offers.

Pricing:

Wrike's free plan limits you to add up to 5 members only. The paid plans start at $9.80/member/month.

Best For:

Agile product development and non-technical orgs that are small in size.

3. ClickUp

ClickUp is a well-known PM app that aims to be an all-in-one suite and has a wide target audience belonging to different sectors. Similar to Jira, ClickUp offers plenty of functionalities and integrations.

Key Highlights:

Offers functionalities suitable for any company pertaining to any industry
Supports a long list of views, namely, board, list, gantt, workload, box, table, calendar, activity, several reporting features, and mind maps.
Easily customizable to serve your software development agency’s
A massive number of third-party apps to integrate with Good customer support

Here’s everything that ClickUp offers.

Pricing:

ClickUp's pricing plan includes a free plan that allows you to add unlimited users but with functionality restrictions. The paid plan starts at $5/user/month.

Best For:

Small software companies and non-technical orgs of any size.

3 Reasons why Zepel fits the bill for your business

Let's take a look at not one but three reasons why Zepel is the PM app meant for your squad:

1. Collaborate with agile squads of any size to implement Scrum, Kanban or both

Zepel enables you to onboard and collaborate with product development squads of any size with ease. And it's powerful agile capabilities are every software squad's dream.

2. Ensure both your customers and your squad's happiness

Zepel’s Streams functionality helps bring in customer requests from various platforms and build customer-focussed features that are sure to satisfy your customers. Moreover, it gives your dev squad all the context they need and provides deep integrations with Git to do all the grunt work for them.

3. Right features, right pricing

Zepel offers just the right amount of features that your squad will need in order to build the best software products. Zepel's straightforward pricing plan is the icing on the cake. The free forever plan enables you to add up to 5 members for free, forever and without any functionality restrictions. So, even if your squad expands and you must add more members, you won’t be charged for the first 5. The paid plan starts at $5/member.

Impressed but want to see how Zepel fares in comparison with competitor agile project management tools? Go ahead and check it out here.

You can also get a no strings attached demo to learn more about Zepel and see for yourself why 4000+ development teams love Zepel. Or sign up and take Zepel for a spin for free.

Cycle Time vs Lead Time: How are they different?

Ranjali Roy — Tue, 11 May 2021 13:42:51 +0000

Cycle time and lead time are two important metrics in software development that get confused with one another more often than not. Being so similar at first glance, I’d only be surprised if you didn’t mix these two terms up.

But at the end of this article, you will not only know to differentiate between cycle and lead time, you will also learn their importance, benefits, and know when to look into which metric.

Quick overview of cycle time

Cycle time is the time difference between when a developer/ a development unit picks up a user story from the backlog to when they have completed it. That is, it is the duration between moving work items from ‘In progress’ to ‘Done’ on the kanban board.

For example, when a developer picks up a work item from the ‘To do’ to build a chat feature and moves it to ‘In Progress’, the cycle time starts. And it ends when the developer completes the chat feature and it is moved to ‘Done’.

Check out this article on Cycle time to get a deep understanding of it.

Quick overview of Lead time

Lead time is the time interval from when a user story is created and added to the backlog to when the story is shipped and delivered to the customer. That is, it is the time difference between adding a work item in ‘To do’ to moving the item to ‘Done’.

For example, lead time starts when a work item for building a chat feature is added to the ‘To do’ column of a kanban board. It ends when the work item is moved to ‘Done’ and shipped.

Difference between cycle and lead time

1. Definition: Core difference

The core difference between cycle and lead time is very minute and simple.

As shown in the image above, Cycle time starts when you move a work item to ‘In Progress’ and it ends when the item is moved to ‘Done’. Whereas lead time starts when a work item is added to the backlog and it ends after the item reaches the end-user/customer.

Basically, lead time includes the waiting time of a work item in the backlog while cycle time doesn’t.

2. Importance and benefits of measuring cycle and lead time

Measuring cycle time enables you to test the efficiency of your development team and identify bottlenecks or problem areas to help improve this efficiency. Thus, you can proactively resolve the bottlenecks with accurate cycle time calculation and painlessly meet deadlines. No more holding your breath and barely meeting deadlines.

By measuring lead time, you can figure out how many item/feature requests are flowing into your backlog and how long your squad takes to check those off. This also helps identify what processes in your software development - from backlog management to delivery, require work.

These two metrics are crucial to understanding your current pace of progress and decipher how to pick up this pace to ensure your customers’ satisfaction. So, keeping your cycle times short helps keep your lead times short and in turn sail through your backlog without chaos.

3. When to analyze what: cycle time vs lead time

When you want to know the time your development squad takes to roll out features/items, calculating your cycle time helps. You can also identify the problem areas for your development team to improve in the next sprint.

But when you want to test the overall efficiency of your system, the entire development process from backlog creation to delivery, and to know how long your customer needs to wait for a feature/item, turn your focus towards lead time.

Tip: Use the cumulative flow diagram to analyze cycle and lead time.

4. How they are measured

Although there are plenty of tools in the market to calculate cycle and lead time, understanding how they are calculated can prove helpful while roughly planning releases.

Cycle time = developer start date of item - item release date

Lead time = create item in backlog date - item release date

For example, an item is created in the ‘To do’ column on the 1st of April. It gets picked up by a developer and moved to ‘In progress’ on the 7th. And the developer moves it to ‘Done’ on the 15th of April after releasing the item. So, the lead time for this item is 15 days while the cycle time is 8 days.

Measuring cycle and lead time accurately goes beyond simply moving a task on your kanban board from start to finish and then calculating the time difference between them. Because in reality, to err is human and as humans, we often tend to forget to update our progress on the board. And nobody is to blame because being a software development team, there's enough work on each one’s plate that everybody is already working round the clock in a race against time to complete that request before the deadline.

So, how do you calculate cycle and lead time accurately then?

It’s quite straightforward. For cycle time, it is done by combining the data from your project management tool with the data generated in the tools where the dev team practically lives — Git!

At Zepel, we take the data generated in the developer-favourites - GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. When the dev makes their first commit for a user story, the cycle time clock begins.

Time gets tracked throughout the fun stuff (coding) and through the different stages such as PR issuing, review, and merging. Finally, the clock stops when the item has been delivered.

For instance, the first commit is made for an item on the 1st of April, whose release is planned for the 15th of April. The PR gets issued on the 10th, reviewed on the 12th, and the final merge is made on the 13th. The item gets released in time. This helps you detect bottlenecks immediately and resolve them.

As far as lead time is concerned, there aren’t any accurate ways to measure it. But lead time delays that tend to occur are usually due to handoffs between the product team and the engineering team. Not having sufficient information regarding the context of what customers want adds to this. That is why Zepel has a feature called Streams to help with the handoff, reduce delays, and improve lead times.

Streams enables you to gather all your customer requests from various external sources such as Canny, Intercom, etc, prioritize them, and delegate them to respective squads in Zepel. Thus, bridging the gap in the product-engineering handoff.

So, no more waiting for context, no more lead time delays; just plain sailing from start to end. :)

But be it tracking cycle or lead time, you will need a dev-friendly project management tool to help you measure them accurately. Otherwise, you will never know where and how to streamline your development process better.

Zepel is one of the most developer-friendly project management tools in the market. With deep git integrations, your progress updates are made automagically based on your Git workflow. Your squad will also receive instant notifications regarding such progress updates on Slack via the Zepel + Git + Slack workflow setup.

Pick Zepel and get accurate, real-time cycle and lead time reporting.

Looking for a project management tool that will make your software development process easy, efficient, and chaos-free?

Try Zepel. Or sign up for a demo to learn more about our tool. No strings attached, we promise. :)

Understanding Cycle Time in Software Development & its Importance

Ranjali Roy — Tue, 11 May 2021 09:00:18 +0000

There’s a never-ending thirst for achieving a 100% productivity rate. Although that’s practically not possible, achieving one’s maximum productivity level without getting completely exhausted is a realizable goal - a goal that every software development team is striving to actualize.

In that pursuit, a metric is often left out of the equation or not given the due importance that it deserves. And that is cycle time.

What is cycle time?

Cycle time is the time a development team/a developer takes to complete the work assigned to them. It is calculated from the time the developer begins working on a task till it is completed and shipped to the customer.

For example, the cycle time starts when a developer picks up a work item such as creating a search feature. The cycle time ends when the search feature has been released and is available to the public.

Why is development cycle time a big deal?

When you measure your team’s cycle time, you not only have the superpower to identify bottlenecks but also to proactively resolve them. When done correctly they can indicate how efficient your software development team really is.

Shorter cycle times mean your development team’s progress is more efficient, smooth, and fast. And that translates to reduced time to market, a better product, and satisfied customers.

How is cycle time measured?

There are several tools out in the market today that can come in handy to measure cycle time. But if you want a rough calculation of the cycle time, you must simply calculate the difference of time between the start and end date of the process. Or, as the definition states, the difference in time between the developer’s start date to the ship date of the process.

For example, if a developer starts work on the 7th of April and they release the process on the 15th, the cycle time for this process is 8 days.

Cycle time is normally measured in no. of days.

Is the current industry method of measuring cycle time accurate?

The industry-standard way for measuring development cycle time is by tracking how long it takes for an item to go from the “In Progress” column in a Kanban Board tool to completed and shipped.

But with this method, the accuracy of your development cycle time goes out the window.

Because this is a process that heavily relies on manually updating the status of work items. And no matter what product or tool you use, we all know there's always that one member who forgets to update progress.

Here are some practical reasons why:

Sometimes, the developer may have completed the task but may have forgotten to update its status.
Quite often, there have been delays in changing the task’s status due to bottlenecks that go unnoticed.
There have also been scenarios, though rare, where the developer might begin work on a task even before it’s added to the backlog.

In all these cases mentioned above, your report will have a huge gap that won’t get noticed and hence won’t be accurate. You simply can't blame the developers for these situations or breathe down their necks to make regular updates because they would have more pressing matters on their plate rather than to manually update their progress in the PM tool.

But, since these gaps in cycle times go unnoticed, it becomes next to impossible to identify areas for improvement or single out bottlenecks accurately.

So, how can you calculate software development cycle time accurately?

Combine the data from your project management tool along with the data generated in the tools your development team spends the most time in — Git!

So, here’s how we do it at Zepel.

We take the data from the developer's home turf - GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. And when the first commit is made for a user story and the developers begin what they love doing - coding, we start calculating the cycle time.

We track the time throughout the different stages such as when a PR is issued, reviewed, and then merged. Finally, we end tracking only after the item has been released. This gives organizations a more accurate cycle time report.

Additionally, we identify bottlenecks and problem areas when a delay occurs. Here’s how👇🏼

How to identify bottlenecks using cycle time?

Identifying bottlenecks in the earlier stages of development can help proactively resolve them and thereby improve the development process.

But how does cycle time help you do this?

For instance, you have planned a release on the 15th of April and the work begins on the 1st of April. But the work does not get completed on the 15th. The developer(s) working on the feature completes it only on the 20th.

Of course, the cumulative flow diagram of this release will show you the days when your team’s productivity wasn’t that great. It could be possible bottlenecks.

But if you wish to identify bottlenecks, you must measure the cycle time of each stage in the development process. That is, keep an eye on the time taken between the first commit and the PR opened, the time taken from PR opened to PR reviewed, and the time from PR merged to release.

For example, say you’ve planned a release on the 15th of April and the developer(s) makes the first commit on the 1st of April. Now, you know if a PR isn’t issued by the 10th, it’s likely to get delayed. If there’s a delay, then you can identify and resolve the bottleneck immediately.

So, whenever there is a considerable delay in any one of these stages, then that stage likely has a bottleneck that needs immediate attention and resolving to be done.

Zepel is one of the most developer-friendly project management tools with deep git integrations at its heart. It lets you update the progress of your tasks automagically based on your Git workflow, update teammates on Slack, and get accurate, real-time cycle time reporting so you can improve your software development process.

If you're on the lookout for a project management tool that will make the software development process easy for your team, try Zepel. :)

7 ways to improve developer productivity without getting drained

Ranjali Roy — Fri, 07 May 2021 09:44:16 +0000

Improving developer productivity isn’t straightforward.

Because the day in the life of a developer doesn’t involve just writing code and solving problems. They’re expected to keep everyone updated on their progress. Share knowledge. Collaborate with their teammates — technical and non-technical. Handoff work. Do code reviews.

Whew!

And the list goes on…

In my exploration on the topic of developer productivity, I came across two camps:

Folks who constantly ask why you haven’t updated progress. These are people who believe tracking progress is essential because how can you improve productivity if you don’t know where you stand! If devs aren’t working on priority items, are off-target to timelines, are not following QA process, or not following agreed specs then the company could be losing money. And developers are expensive as hell.
Folks who absolutely loathe the idea of being tracked. These are people who believe tickets in your PM tool are not the work itself, never was and never will be, but it gets taken for the central thing. They just want to get the work done. Fixing a bug without filing a ticket is in itself progress. Moving a card without any other change is not. Yet the second is what’s visible and therefore what’s rewarded.

To be fair, both camps have some rather compelling points. You can’t completely stop tracking progress. And at the same time, you can’t constantly pester your teammate to share updates.

So, what do you do? How do you improve a developer’s productivity and ship great software together?

1. Work happens in Git. Why not let it do the grunt work?

According to Stack Overflow’s 2018 survey of developers, 87% of developers use git around the world. Being one among them, having the ability to integrate git with your PM tool must be incredibly useful in getting work done and tracking its progress.

But not many tools support such deep integration with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket as Zepel does.

When you’ve integrated Zepel with GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, there are a bunch of things you can do:

Automatically showing progress information,
Creating a feature in Zepel when a branch is created as feature/{squad-key}/feature-name, and Creating a bug when a bug-fix branch is created as bug/{squad-key}/bug-fix-name.

Because let’s be honest, sometimes developers begin working on a fix even before it can be logged in your PM tool. To interrupt and ask them to link to an item just so you can track their progress isn’t ideal. So why not just log it automatically?

2. If you don’t automate the mundane tasks, you’re doing a disservice to your development team

A developer’s time is expensive. Surely you’d prefer if they spent it solving problems and building software.

So what boring tasks can you take off their plate? Updating statuses, sharing progress, and letting you know that they’re waiting for you to have a look at the PR, of course.

Once you’ve connected your Zepel account with git (GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket), you can set up git workflow automation and make automatic status updates. Any item can be moved automatically from one status to another.

You can set up triggers and appropriate actions to be carried out when those set of events occur. Some examples are shown in the image below.

Of course, you don’t want to go overboard and automate every part of your development process. But when you automate key areas that are also considered by your developers as mundane, you aren’t just saving developers time and energy. You’re making sure they get to do what they love doing the most — building products and software.

Psst… Here are 5 git workflow strategies that you can use for inspiration.

3. Developer controlled, System automated

System notifications are probably the biggest culprits when it comes to a drop in productivity. But when you turn them off, you’re going to leave your teammates in the dark about your progress.

Talk about a catch 22!

Get control over what notifications you want (and don’t want) to send by connecting your Zepel account to your Slack channel.

Don’t want to be notified when a task is completed? Sure. But want to be notified when a feature is marked as completed. Got it. And need a notification when a branch is opened for a feature that your developer was working on? Yep, you can get a notification for that too!

And if you’ve got the Git Workflow Automation already set up, you now have one powerful automation in place that connects Zepel + Git + Slack. Since it’s all automated and under your control, it allows developers to stay focussed and managers to plan the next steps.

Look ma, no hands!

4. Don’t leave developers in the dark. Especially when it comes to customer feedback/requests

For all the talk of agile and scrum and getting constant feedback, there’s actually very little information that your developers get about what your customers are saying about the feature you just built.

This becomes all the more painful when you have multiple customers making several requests across multiple tools — help desks, live chat, error tracking tools, and more.

And it gets painfully hard for the developer to get a sense of why they’re building what they’re building from an isolated ticket.

Streams in Zepel helps you bridge this gap. You can gather requests from popular tools such as Canny, Intercom, Zendesk, Sentry, and more with a few clicks. You can then prioritize these requests and delegate them to your Squad as a feature, user story, enhancement, or bug to be worked on.

With Streams, your team won’t be cranking out software and features. They’ll be shipping customer-focussed software.

5. Your devs have great ideas too!

Between all the emojis and memes and “Can you hear me?”, there’s a wealth of ideas that your teammates have that can help you build better products.

These pop-up between conversations and “By the way, my friend said this about our product”.

How do you capture them?

You can use Slack as a source for Streams in Zepel to collect all these ideas with just two clicks.

Once they’re captured inside Streams in Zepel, you can group them with other similar requests, prioritize them, and hand them over to your development team for execution.

P.S. You can send any team member's Slack message as a request, not just yours.

6. Get in the “Zone” with My Tasks

Everybody has a way of working. Some prefer to organize their work by deadlines. Some by Sprints. And some like to wing it. (It’s not productive. Trust me.)

However you like to view your work, you can do it with My Tasks in Zepel.

And with quick access to the ID, you can effortlessly link the task assigned to you to a branch, commit, or a PR.

7. Communicate changes with images. After all, an image screams a thousand words.

One of the crucial aspects of product development involves design. How do you communicate minute design changes? Or a front-end bug?

Zepel Capture lets you capture images, edit them, share them with your team as screenshots, and even add them as an attachment to a new item in Zepel.

You needn’t leave your current workflow and switch to any other tool - take screenshots, edit them, and then share these with the team or attach it to an item/feature.

Impressed? Head to your Zepel account right away and tweak it to meet your needs. And if you’ve got any queries reach out to us; we’re always happy to help.

Wrike vs Asana: Battle of the 2 Project Management tools

Ranjali Roy — Thu, 06 May 2021 07:01:27 +0000

Wrike and Asana are both solid project management tools that offer powerful functionalities and are quite similar to one another. In fact, you may notice some of their functionalities and strengths overlapping with one another.

But the audience that they’re after is quite contrasting. However, that isn’t the only aspect the two apps differ in.

Let us look at the comparison of Wrike vs Asana in-depth and find out which PM solution is perfect for your org.

Quick Overview of Wrike

Founded in 2006 by Andrew Filev, Wrike has surely come a long way - from a self-funded startup to a notable alternative to Jira software that prioritizes functionality over aesthetics. Although this app was built with agile product development companies in mind, it offers special account types for the marketing department and other creative teams.

At heart, Wrike is an app for managing tasks and team collaboration. So, for each project, you can create any number of work items, assign them to multiple members, create dependencies, and add descriptions, comments, deadlines, and attachments.

Some of the qualities that make Wrike popular are its flexibility to customize workflows, easy learning curve, reporting capabilities, and intelligent functionalities such as the ability to predict when a project is at risk of not shipping within the stipulated deadline, smart replies, and document processing.

What makes Wrike a good project management tool for your team?

Wrike offers a range of unique templates including a template to implement agile capabilities such as backlog planning, managing sprints using scrum board, and reports for monitoring progress.
Supports a File view that shows a list of all the files shared and a Stream view that summarizes all the activities on the project, apart from the standard views, namely, board, list, Gantt, and table.
Also includes a centralized repository-like functionality called Spaces, a grouping type that enables you to create folders and group all info related to your squad.
Apart from traditional collaboration-focussed functionalities, Wrike also has the option to manage ongoing work i.e. ongoing work items without a final deliverable or a fixed deadline. For eg: gathering customer feedback.
Allows you to customize your workflow via feature add-ons and a plethora of third-party integrations. Separate account type for marketers and other creative departments.

Reasons why businesses think Wrike isn't worth their time

Wrike lacks an appealing user interface in comparison with its competitors.
Very difficult to figure out which functionalities come with which account types and hence choosing the right account type is a challenge.
Offers agile capabilities as a template but lacks the power and finesse of a dedicated, full-fledged agile tool like Zepel does.
Wrike can get expensive and since it is a sliding scale pricing with possible add-ons, you will need to contact the sales department to purchase.
Unlike Asana, it doesn’t support an in-built messaging platform for team chats and so you will need to integrate with 3rd-party apps like Slack.
Difficult to navigate if you’re unfamiliar with this app and owing to the clutter.

What are users saying:

Review on G2: "What do you like? -Clearly see details about certain projects, including project goals, attachments, assignees, and status

-Time-tracking capabilities

-Using Calendars for social media and content marketing tracking

What do you dislike?
Wrike isn't intuitive. And we never had any kind of implementation process or kick-off to make sure we're all using the tool the same way.

As a result, everyone is using Wrike in their own way, resulting in disorganization and confusion."

Review on Capterra: "Overall: Configuration support was limited unless you spend extra. Chat support is very good but limited to the art of the cure available, not the are of the possible. Getting users to use the system rather than Outlook is very difficult. Integration with Outlook requires expensive additional components. The basic business license has good functionality but lacks important elements that are only available with the enterprise license.

Pros: It is versatile and can be configured for numerous functions

Cons: While good at some it is not great ant any UNLESS you spend significant money to integrate it with other software like Microsoft Outlook or conference systems like Zoom. These integrations are possible but not cheap. The system doesn't have a notion of time of day for scheduling tasks."

Quick Overview of Asana

Founded in 2008 as an internal application by former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein, Asana was kept in private beta for 4 years before being launched to the public in 2012. Today, Asana is one of the moguls in the project management tools industry.

Asana is a quintessential task management application where for every project you create, you can populate it with work items and subitems. You can then add assignees, descriptions, comments, and tags to each work item.

Team collaboration is what makes Asana a sought-after PM solution. Here, you can hold all your squad’s convos in one place so that no info gets lost.

Although Asana caters to both technical and non-technical orgs, it is preferred more by the latter than the former. And so, if you’re a software development org, you’ll find these Asana alternatives impressive.

What makes Asana a good product to manage projects?

Intuitive user-interface makes work a fun experience
Flexible and customizable to suit your needs with its custom templates, custom statuses, custom tags, and custom fields
Supports multiple views such as board, list, calendar, and Gantt to help visualize your projects and a special workload view for resource management
Loads of integrations with third-party apps available for streamlining your workflows
Team communication and collaboration capabilities enable holding all your work items and related conversations under one roof Offers unlimited tasks for orgs to get work done even on the free plan

Reasons why some customers dislike Asana's product features

Too many functionalities that result in a steep learning curve
Doesn’t support agile capabilities other than a simple kanban board
Lacks a single nestled view for viewing work items and subitems, unlike Zepel.
Doesn’t allow assigning multiple users to a single work item
No / commands and markdown support to get work done fast
Pricing can get expensive quickly

Top user reviews

Review on G2: “What do you like best? The interface is really clear and intuitive, it is also beautiful. It is nice to use, you can split the tasks in projects and get updated of what is going on in each product in a simple way, you also have a schedule view where you can see how the project is evolving during time.

People used to like it, very fast learning curve to start using, create tasks and organise everything if you could build a team culture that has the habit of updating and documenting what is going on.

For teams that are not so focused on productivity metrics and agile methodologies (like Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, etc.) could be a great solution.

What do you dislike?
If you compare to a more robust tool like JIRA you will miss a lot of productivity and agile metrics like velocity reports, burndown charts and etc. So if you would like to be more predictive about how much work your team can deliver in certain amount of time is not easy to get this information from using Asana. Also if you are working with software development it lacks integration with tools like Github to keep everything synced and easy to find out. If you are using a free version and your company is growing fast be aware that if you reach the limit of the free version the cost for keep using it could be much more than you expected and not fit your budget.”

Review on Capterra: “As I have primarily only used this for software development tracking, I have found the experience frustrating with lack of good organization and other features. But for any other tasks that are not as specific as software development, it should work great.

Pros: I like the Kanban modes and its integrations with Slack. My company has used this for software development tasks though, and there it lacks in development related features. Fortunately you can get integrations to automatically sync with Jira or other task managers.

Cons: Lacking in complicated workflow creation. It also is not nearly as suited for software development as a task manager such as Jira. Jira allows you to tie a task to a git branch, display commits, keep track of tasks and time tracking better, and has more project manager features.”

P.S. You can find agile metrics, deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, complicated workflow setup, and more in Zepel.

Comparison & difference between Wrike vs Asana - 11 questions to ask

The following 11 questions and answers will help you compare in detail Wrike vs Asana and identify which app is ideal for your squad:

Who’s got a superior UI - Wrike or Asana?
Asana’s user-interface is far more intuitive when compared to Wrike, although the latter’s user-interface is simpler. But if you’re looking for a simple but intuitive UI, then check out Zepel.
Which software is easier to get started with?
Both the apps are difficult to navigate and get a hang of owing to the wide range of functionalities they offer. But Wrike is easier to get started with than Asana due to the simple design of the app.
Whose functionalities closely match your org’s requirements?
Both the platforms are both packed with utilities that enable customizing your workflows. However, Wrike has a comparatively rigid workflow that makes it hard to use.

When it comes to agile, Asana lacks agile capabilities other than a basic kanban board while Wrike offers more functionalities to implement other agile frameworks such as scrum.

Who is more developer-friendly among these two apps?
Wrike is a bit more developer-friendly than Asana as it at least supports other agile frameworks such as scrum whereas Asana has only a basic kanban board. But, if developer-friendliness is what you’re after, then you can pick Zepel blindly. Because with Zepel, you get powerful agile capabilities for scrum and kanban and deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Zepel also supports Markdown and / commands for getting work done in seconds.
Which app helps you collaborate with your squad better?
Asana allows you to hold all your team conversations in one place, making collaboration efficient. Whereas Wrike only has a comment box that allows you to @mention members. So when it comes to communication and collaboration, Asana wins hands-down.
Which application to pick in terms of pricing?
Wrike as well as Asana offer free plans. The former’s free plan limits functionalities, views, storage, and even the number of users to 5 per organization. The latter’s free plan also limits you to add only 15 members and has restrictions in functionalities. Wrike has a variety of paid plans and accounts start at $9.80 per user per month. On the other hand, Asana’s paid plan starts at $10.99 per member per month billed annually.

But if bucks matter, (of course they do!), you’ll get more value from these free project management software.

Is Wrike’s customer support better or Asana’s?
Wrike and Asana’s customer support is below average. You aren’t guaranteed a response period. And so, you’re bound to get equally disappointed by both the apps.
In terms of security, which app is your best bet?
Both the PM solutions are quite secure with file encryptions and TLS for securing files in transit. But Wrike’s security slightly outperforms that of Asana’s with its own servers for storage rather than using AWS.
Who wins when it comes to integrations?
Wrike has an extensive library of integrations for a wide range of use cases. Asana too is no less when it comes to this and has an impressive lineup of integrations up its sleeve. But Wrike reserves certain integrations to certain tiers and so for a greater number of integrations, you need to shell out more money. Whereas Asana is pretty reasonable and offers more integrations in its lower tiers while reserving advanced integrations for the higher tiers.
Who are the target customers that these apps are meant for?
Asana is best for non-IT departments such as marketing, sales, and the like. Meanwhile, Wrike is apt for agile product development organizations that are small in size.
Are there alternatives to Wrike and Asana that are more suitable for your company?
Yes, there certainly are more solid alternatives to these two apps that are better suited for your org.

4 recommended alternatives to Wrike and Asana for your business

1. Zepel

The perfect alternative (and #1 choice) to Wrike and Asana is Zepel. The user-interface is simple with an elegant and uncluttered design. But, it is also very intuitive and easy to navigate. This makes onboarding a hassle-free experience.

When it comes to functionalities, Zepel has everything your software development squad has only dreamt of - from deep integrations with dev-favourites such as GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket to automating your git workflows so that Zepel does the boring grunt work of updating the status of your dev squad’s progress. Zepel also supports / commands and markdown to speed up your work.

With Zepel, you can implement more than just basic kanban. You can implement scrum and even a combination of both efficiently. And that’s why engineering squads revere Zepel as one of the most developer-friendly engineering project management software today. Zepel removes all the chaos from the development process and makes building software products hassle-free.

Zepel completes your development process with a functionality called Streams that brings in customer feedback in the form of requests from various external sources such as Canny, Intercom, etc. Now, you can prioritize and build customer-focussed features for your product with more than mere issue-tracking.

Pricing:

Zepel’s pricing plan comes with a free plan that doesn’t charge you anything for the first 5 members forever no matter how many members you add. When you add your 6th member, the standard annual plan starts at $5/member/month and its standard monthly plan starts at $7/member.

Best For:

Cross-functional teams of any size that desire to build software products with context the agile way.

2. Monday.com

Monday.com is a noteworthy competitor to both the apps as it is loaded with a ton of functionalities and multiple views, namely, calendar, gantt, forms, and so on. This app has plenty of templates for any department, can be customized, and can be automated for certain tasks. This makes building custom workflows easier on monday.com.

Akin to Wrike and Asana, monday.com also supports a lot of integrations with 3rd-party apps such as Slack, OneDrive, Google Calendar, and even with other PM apps like Jira.

But when it comes to agile, it lacks capabilities other than simple kanban. Another minus point is, due to too many functionalities, it is easy to get overwhelmed and the learning curve is steep.

You might be interested in comparing Asana vs Trello vs Monday. Or just Asana vs Monday.

Pricing:

Monday.com’s pricing plan is heavy on the pocket. There isn’t a free plan but instead, a 14-day trial post which you must choose a paid plan, starting at $10/member/month.

Best For:

Non-IT agency and departments pertaining to marketing, sales, etc.

3. ClickUp

ClickUp is also a notable alternative to the two apps. It may appear strikingly similar to Asana but has its differences when you look closer. Here’s a comparison of Asana vs ClickUp elaborating their differences.

ClickUp aims to be an all-in-one PM platform that replaces all the tools in the market via feature add-ons. From handling tasks to resource management, you’re most likely to find functionality or an add-on for everything here.

But the drawback of this app is that, similar to its peers, it also lacks the powerful agile capabilities that you’ll find in Zepel.

Pricing:

ClickUp’s pricing plan is affordable just like Zepel’s. However, it comes with functionality restrictions that you won’t find even in Zepel’s free plan. ClickUp’s free plan enables you to add unlimited users. However, if you want to access all its functionalities and add-ons, you must purchase a paid plan that starts at $5/user/month.

Best For:

Any business belonging to any industry but ideally non-IT companies.

4. Jira

Jira is one of the pioneers in the PM sector that was initially built as an issue tracking application. But today, it has grown into a PM app that caters to agile development orgs.

With Jira software, you can effortlessly customize your workflows to capture issues and bugs, assign them to members, prioritize and track them to completion.

Even though Jira has become a PM platform, it still remains an issue tracker at heart. And that’s why orgs look for Jira alternatives.

Pricing:

Jira software's pricing plan is considerably straightforward. Jira software allows you to add up to 10 members in its free plan but with limited functionalities. The paid plans start at $7/user.

Best For:

Small IT organizations that are looking to build products using agile methodologies.

Find out the comparative advantage of Jira vs Asana here.

5 reasons why Zepel is the ideal project management software

Here are 5 reasons to help you see why Zepel is the perfect platform for your org:

Zepel supports collaboration with squads of any size and because of its intuitive UI and elegant design, without any clutter, onboarding is painless.
You will get the powerful agile capabilities that you've been looking for and you can implement Scrum, Kanban, or both effortlessly.

Being one of the most developer-friendly PM apps out there having deep integrations with developer-favourite apps and workflow automation, your dev team will love Zepel.

Handing over priorities from product to development team is hard and creates a disconnect. With Streams in Zepel, you can easily bring customer requests and bug reports from your product stack to handoff to developers. And build customer-focussed software painlessly.

Zepel offers value-for-money pricing that doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket while providing you with maximum benefits.

Like what you see? You’ll love Zepel. But don’t take my word for it. See what 4000+ development teams like yours have to say about Zepel.

Asana vs Monday: Comparison of 2 Similar Project Management Software

Ranjali Roy — Wed, 05 May 2021 13:01:39 +0000

What happens if you put two feature-packed project management tools against one another? How do you pick the best app?

Both Asana and Monday are loaded with similar functionalities which makes it hard to differentiate. But just like any project management software, they have their strengths and weaknesses that can be clear to see when you dig deeper.

Let’s uncover these differences by comparing Asana vs Monday in detail and find out which tool is the most ideal for your org in 2021. But first, let us quickly overview the two tools.

Quick Overview of Asana

Asana was founded in 2008 by former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein as an internal tool. And it was released to the public for commercial use only in 2012, after being kept in private beta for 4 years.

Today, Asana has grown into a big name in the PM sector, catering to a wide user base hailing from both development and non-development backgrounds. However, this tool is more popular among non-technical departments such as Marketing, Sales, etc.

Asana has adopted a task-oriented approach to PM where everything is centered around projects and tasks. This means for each project you create, you can add tasks and subtasks, assign to teammates, include description, tags, comments, and custom fields.

Asana’s competitive advantage is its team collaboration and communication capabilities. But what other advantages do you get by choosing this app? And what are the disadvantages?

Let’s have a look.

Advantages of choosing Asana

Intuitive UI: The user-interface in Asana is intuitive and makes the whole work experience fun.
Flexibility and customizability: With Asana, you have the flexibility to customize this tool to suit your needs - right from custom templates and custom tags to custom fields.
Multiple views:Asana supports multiple views, namely, list, board, calendar, timeline, progress, and forms to help visualize your projects and monitor progress.
Workload snapshot: The Workload aspect in Asana gives you an overview of what your entire squad is working on. It enables you to view what work is assigned to whom and also the workload of each individual.
Team collaboration: Asana's key highlight is its squad collaboration capability that enables you to keep all your work items and related conversations in one place.
Plethora of integrations: Choosing Asana gives you access to a great deal of crowd favourite third-party apps to help streamline your workflows.

Disadvantages of choosing Asana

Can get overwhelming: Asana is functionality-packed but the downside of this is that it can get overwhelming and distracting, especially for a newbie.
Steep learning curve: Due to Asana's sea of functionalities and complex design, the learning curve is pretty steep, making onboarding a nightmare.
No scope for agile: Having only a simple kanban board, Asana lacks the agile capabilities to implement other popular frameworks such as scrum like Zepel does.
Lacks nestled view: Asana doesn’t support viewing tasks and subtasks in a single, nestled view.
Can’t add Multiple assignees: Asana doesn’t allow you to add multiple assignees to a single task.
Too many dollars for very little benefits: The pricing scheme isn’t affordable, to say the least. You can only collaborate on projects with a maximum of 15 members, with functionality restrictions, in the free plan. You won’t find such functionality restrictions in Asana alternatives like Zepel, even in its free plan.

Quick Overview of monday.com

In 2010, this tool was created to be used internally in an Israeli company called Wix.com, and in 2012, the product became a separate company called daPulse. Later, in 2017, daPulse was rebranded as monday.com.

And now, monday.com has established itself as a visually appealing task management application in the PM tools market.

Monday.com is loaded with functionalities and caters to both technical and non-technical teams. However, it is favoured by non-technical departments pertaining to Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, etc.

What makes monday.com popular, apart from its colourful, attractive, and intuitive UI is its ability to collaborate with multiple departments. But its complex design and far too many functionalities result in a lot of clutter that you don’t find in adversaries like Zepel.

Advantages of choosing monday.com

Colorful and attractive UI: Much like Asana, monday.com's user interface is also intuitive, colourful, and attractive on the whole.
Multi-department collaboration: Monday.com provides a wide range of functionalities from managing work items and tracking overall development of projects to CRM that makes multi-department collaboration hassle-free.
Multiple assignees: Similar to Zepel, and unlike Asana, monday.com enables you to assign multiple members to the same work item.
Wide range of 3rd-party integrations: Monday.com enables you to integrate with several third-party applications to perform a range of activities from CRM to bug-tracking, and more.

Disadvantages of choosing monday.com

Overwhelming user experience and onboarding: Monday.com's GUI is convoluted, making the learning curve extremely steep and the user experience overwhelming, especially while onboarding.
Lacks full-fledged agile capabilities: Other than boards for kanban, Monday.com doesn’t support full-fledged agile capabilities such as Sprints for scrum that you can find in Zepel.
Confusing task-related functionalities: In monday.com, all the functionalities and aspects related to managing tasks are not present in one place, thus leading to confusion.
Complicated task dependencies aspect: Monday.com enables you to add task dependencies only via a separate column to additionally be kept track of and not in the item card itself.
Missing free plan: The pricing scheme is not pocket-friendly and it doesn’t include a free scheme like its competitors. So, if pricing is your priority, check out these free project management software.

Full-scale comparison of Asana vs Monday

	Asana	Monday
Views & Features	Multiple views namely board, gantt, calendar, and so on. Packed with utilities from traditional task handling to squad collaboration. But it lacks agile capabilities to implement agile frameworks other than simple kanban.	Plenty of built-in views available such as Kanban Board, Timeline, Calendar, Workload, and List. Has far too many functionalities than needed but lacks agile capabilities. The functionalities vary based on cost.
Ease of use & UX	Intuitive UI that makes work fun but owing to the ton of functionalities, the learning curve is steep.	Colourful, attractive and intuitive UI but has an extremely steep learning curve.
Developer-friendliness	Lacks powerful agile capabilities and deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Also, it doesn’t support `/` commands and markdown for quick sharing of code snippets among devs. So, it isn't developer-friendly.	Similar to Asana, it also lacks powerful agile capabilities and deep integrations with dev-favourites such as GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. No markdown support and `/` commands for getting work done quickly. P.S. If you want all of the above functionalities, try Zepel - one of the most dev-friendly apps out there.
Collaboration & team management	Can collaborate with up to 15 users for free. Onboarding members is hellish owing to its steep learning curve. Communication and collaboration among your squad are made efficient with the conversations utility that holds all squad-related conversations in one place.	Cannot collaborate with users for free. And similar to Asana, onboarding is a nightmare due to its steep learning curve. Offers basic collaboration-focussed aspects but they’re not in one place. Dependencies related to tasks can be added but only as a separate column.
Integrations & add-ons	160+ integrations available with popular third-party apps	50+ integrations are available
Pricing	Allows you to collaborate with up to 15 users for free but with functionality restrictions. The paid scheme starts at $10.99/person/month.	Complex payment scheme with 4 paid plans - basic, standard, pro, and enterprise, starting at $8/seat/month billed annually.
User Rating	Capterra - 4.4/5 (9434) G2 - 4.3/5 (7,021)	Capterra - 4.6/5 (2229) G2 - 4.6/5 (1443)

Asana vs Monday: The decider, which project management software to pick?

Both Asana and monday.com are best suited for non-technical departments, namely, marketing, sales, and so on.

If you’re looking for a collaboration and communication tool for your business with good task-handling capabilities, Asana is a great tool. But if you’re after a project management software that is visually appealing, intuitive, and fun to use with decent task-handling functionalities, monday.com is apt for you.

However, be prepared to invest a lot of time and money if you’re choosing either one of these PM tools. And also if you’re a software development org, forget about implementing agile.

What users think about the two tools: Reasons to switch to better alternatives

Asana review on Capterra

“Some teams use Asana for project management and perhaps it's good for that. For me I feel it isn't very useful for technology teams. We can't paste code, we have no auto integration with build processes like Jenkins and it's incredibly slow to wait 5 seconds to load each asana task. It's not easy to pass around a task #... as Asana creates these long tokens for every task. Several of us have asked for these features on Twitter with the Asana team and we just are told it's not something that they're interested in adding.

Pros: I guess it's an easy interface to make a task

Cons: It really doesn't offer what Jira or other software packages offer... there's no enforced flow for bug / defect tracking, there's no easy way to pull tickets up (i.e. it's not a simple task identifier such as CR4478, instead it's a 20 character random string. When you pull up an individual task it takes nearly 5 seconds to load it, and you get the Asana splash screen while you wait. You can't easily put code into the Asana tasks. Asana doesn't have 3rd party API connecting (like Jira) to automatically link to Jenkins or other products. As a defect tracking system it's entirely lacking. This may not be what you intended it to be used for, but that's how we use it (for everything) and it's incredibly lacking. We have to be creative with Asana to make it sorta work and it's still not very appealing from the QA or Dev side of things.”

Monday review on Capterra

“Overall experience is good. If you're utilizing this software, you need to make sure that your team's adoption is fast and consistent. Otherwise, you'll find yourself being the only person using it and doing more micro-management.

Pros: Visually, Monday.com is appealing. Its color scheme makes it easy to quickly scan and view a project or task's status. It is also very easy to organize projects and tasks in various boards. Each task has the ability to add comments, files, docs, etc to keep everything in one place.

Cons: There are some key features I always look for in a PM software that this one doesn't have: task dependency, able to quickly build timeline, easily describe who is accountable for which task. Right now, timeline building is very click heavy. It's OK if you are needing to manage few projects with few tasks, but by not having task dependencies or a user flow that makes it easier to get several dozen tasks added, it is very time extensive.”

A list of feature-packed alternatives to Asana and Monday

1. Zepel

Zepel is the perfect alternative as it is intuitive like Asana and monday.com but also powerful without any clutter. Owing to its uncomplex design without overwhelming functionalities, the learning curve isn’t steep and so you can painlessly onboard your squads.

Project managers and engineering squads love Zepel as it comes with powerful agile capabilities that enable you to implement not just kanban but also scrum, and even a combination of both. Apart from this, Zepel’s USP is its developer-friendliness. It is one of the most developer-friendly apps in the market today with deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and other similar sources.

That’s not all. Zepel also enables you to set up your git workflows to perform automatic status updates on your dev squad’s behalf and receive real-time Slack notifications. Some other developer-favourite perks of Zepel are the markdown support and / commands that help get work done in a jiffy.

Some other perks of picking Zepel are the ability to add task dependencies, item ID to track tasks, and so on that you won’t get when you opt for Asana and monday.com.

Zepel is complete with a functionality called Streams that brings in customer feedback from various external sources such as Canny, Intercom, Zendesk, etc., in the form of requests. This will help you prioritize, build, and ship customer-focussed functionalities.

Key Highlights:

Powerful, intuitive UI that makes onboarding hassle-free
Agile capabilities for both scrum and kanban such as Sprints, burndown charts, etc
Developer-friendly due to deep integration with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and a variety of similar sources
Markdown support and / commands for quick work
Workflow automation to perform status updates and receive instant Slack notifications
Brings in and helps prioritize customer feedback from multiple sources like Canny, Intercom, etc.
Value for money pricing!

Check out all the functionalities that Zepel offers.

Pricing:

Zepel’s pricing plan consists of a free plan that enables you to add 5 users for free forever without functionality restrictions. From the 6th member onwards, you can opt for either one of the business schemes: the standard annual that starts at $5/user/month or the standard monthly that starts at $7/user/month.

Best For:

Squads of any size that desire to build customer-focussed products the agile way.

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is a solid PM solution that is ideal for managing tasks and a notable alternative to Asana and Monday. Because, akin to these two tools, Basecamp also offers plenty of functionalities and integrations. What makes Basecamp standout is its ability to effectively bring all members of different departments together.

However, Basecamp lacks agile capabilities.

Key Highlights:

Messaging platform with a forum-like view for squad communication
Automatic check-ins for frequent status updates
Controlled client access
Hill charts to track progress
File sharing with a storage of 500GB

Here’s everything that Basecamp offers.

Pricing:

Basecamp offers a basic plan with a 30-day free trial. At the end of the trial, you will be charged a flat fee of $99/month for unlimited users.

Best For:

Remote, service-based companies that don’t require agile methodologies.

3. ClickUp

ClickUp is another functionality-loaded PM app that tries hard to be an all-in-one productivity tool. You can find any functionality that caters to any business from any industry as an add-on or an integration. The user interface is intuitive and attractive. However, ClickUp lacks the finesse of a full-fledged agile tool when it comes to implementing agile.

Key Highlights:

Provides a wide range of functionalities for any company pertaining to any industry
Supports a number of views, namely, board, list, timeline, workload, box, table, calendar, activity, and mind maps.
Customizable, from custom tags to custom statuses
A massive number of third-party integrations
A huge fan base among solo users

Have a look at all the functionalities ClickUp offers.

You can compare Asana vs ClickUp here.

Pricing:

ClickUp includes a free plan that enables you to add unlimited users but there are some restrictions of functionalities. And to access those functionalities, that vary with cost, you must pick a suitable paid scheme, starting at $5/member.

Best For:

Non-IT businesses of any size belonging to any sector.

4. Jira

Jira is the industry standard that many tools use as a guideline. Most software teams who want to adopt agile to build products have gradually switched to Jira from other tools due to the lack of power.

However, in recent times, superior alternatives to Jira that are more solid there have emerged — less clunky, faster, offer more powerful agile capabilities of full-fledged kanban and scrum tools, and are a value for money.

Key highlights:

Flexibility that enables you to customize your workflows
Issue tracking that lets you capture issues effortlessly
Agile capabilities to implement not just kanban but also scrum
Roadmap functionality to visualize projects
Massive library of integrations with third-party apps

Take a look at the complete list of Jira’s functionalities.

Pricing:
Jira's free plan lets you add your first 10 members in for free but with feature restrictions. But if you want to access all its functionalities, you must upgrade to the premium plan that starts at $5/member/month.

Best For:
Service-based organizations and IT companies looking to build software products using agile methodologies.
To help you decide whether Jira is right for you or not, here is a helpful comparison of Asana vs Jira.

5. Trello

Trello is the easiest PM tool to get started with. This kanban board application is incredibly user-friendly and takes only 10 mins to onboard your entire org. But don’t expect Trello to be powerful with agile capabilities to implement other frameworks such as scrum. Because you will be disappointed and you will need to look for Trello alternatives.

Key Highlights:

Boards that represent projects and sticky note-like cards representing tasks to implement basic kanban
Flexible and customizable with plenty of templates
Simple user interface that’s fast and responsive
Ability to add on any number of functionalities as power-ups
A catalog of integrations with 3rd party apps like Zapier, Hubspot, Dropbox, etc

View all the functionalities that Trello provides.

Pricing:

Trello's pricing is extremely simple. There’s a free plan that enables you to collaborate with unlimited users but with functionality restrictions. For complete access to all the utilities, power-ups, and integrations, you must sign up for a basic plan that starts at $12.50/member/month.

Best For:

Small non-IT companies that require simple workflow visualization and task handling.

Compare Asana vs Trello and Asana vs Trello vs Monday and find out which tool suits your org.

Why Zepel is the ideal project management tool for modern teams

Zepel is the PM tool meant for your squad and your organization for the following reasons:

Zepel enables you to collaborate with squads of any size painlessly.
You can implement Scrum, Kanban, or both with Zepel, making it a favourite engineering project management software
Zepel is one of the most developer-friendly PM tools as it provides deep integrations with developer-favourite apps like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, markdown support, git workflow automation, and / commands.
Win your customers over and maintain a low churn rate with Zepel Streams that helps you prioritize and build customer-focussed functionalities.
Zepel’s affordable and straightforward pricing enables you to add up to 5 users for free forever without any functionality restrictions. From the 6th member onwards, you will be charged only $5/member.

Make your customers and your developers happy, choose Zepel.

4000+ development teams love Zepel and you will too. :)

Asana vs ClickUp: 2021 Comparison of the 2 Project Management Tools

Ranjali Roy — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 09:41:50 +0000

Asana and ClickUp are two project management tools that appear very similar to one another at first glance. But as you begin to look closer, you will be able to discover the key differences between them and identify which tool suits your development team/development agency the best.

To help you differentiate and pick the perfect project management tool for your org, here’s a quick yet comprehensive comparison of ClickUp vs Asana.

Quick Overview of Asana

In 2008, Asana was founded by former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein. But it was kept in private beta for 4 years and finally launched to the public in 2012. Today, Asana has become a popular choice, especially among non-IT teams even though it caters to IT teams as well.

Asana takes the task-oriented route to project management where everything revolves around tasks and projects. This means you create tasks and subtasks for every project that you create and handle them.

Team collaboration is one of Asana’s key USPs. This is why apart from traditional collaboration functionalities such as assignees, descriptions, and tags, you can hold conversations related to them.

The plus points

Intuitive user-interface that aims to make work a fun experience
Flexible and can be customized to suit your software team/development agency’s needs with its custom templates, custom statuses, custom tags, and custom fields.
Provides multiple views, namely, board, list, calendar, and Timeline to help visualize your projects.
Also has a workload view that allows you to view what work and how much work is assigned to whom and thus control your team’s workload.
Plenty of integrations with third-party apps are available for streamlining your workflows
Team communication and collaboration capabilities enable keeping all your work items and related conversations in one place.
Unlimited tasks and projects for teams to get work done even on the free plan.

The minus points

A steep learning curve, which makes the user experience hellish, due to far too many features than required.
Not an agile tool as it lacks agile capabilities other than a simple kanban board
Doesn’t support a single nestled view for viewing tasks and subtasks, unlike Zepel.
Pricing is too costly
Can’t assign multiple users to a single work item
Doesn’t support markdown and / commands to get work done quickly

Top user reviews

Review on G2:
“The project plans are fairly straightforward and flexible. Great for workflow management and collaboration. The price is also relatively reasonable. We use this for simple projects where there are less sophisticated teams collaborating and where communication and simplicity are the main objectives.

This platform is only good for the simplest and most basic of project management tasks. It lacks more sophisticated features necessary for real project management, such as time tracking tools and other features. Also, it's lack of structure proves challenging when it is implemented without a lot of strategic planning and / or forethought.

If you are looking for a simpler tool this can fit the bill, just requires forethought as to how it is being implemented. For more complex product/project management this is not the platform to use.”

Review on Capterra:
“Some teams use Asana for project management and perhaps it's good for that. For me I feel it isn't very useful for technology teams. We can't paste code, we have no auto integration with build processes like Jenkins and it's incredibly slow to wait 5 seconds to load each asana task. It's not easy to pass around a task #... as Asana creates these long tokens for every task. Several of us have asked for these features on Twitter with the Asana team and we just are told it's not something that they're interested in adding.

Pros: I guess it's an easy interface to make a task

Quick Overview of ClickUp

Founded in 2017, ClickUp is an all-in-one project management platform that aims to replace all the tools in the market via feature add-ons. You can most likely find any feature in ClickUp that your development team/software development agency needs and can add it to your account, right from task management to time management.

And for those functionalities that this feature-loaded software lacks, you will most likely find an integration for it. That’s why ClickUp is preferred by companies of all sizes from any industry and not just a niche audience.

A highlight about ClickUp is that it has a huge fan base among solo users for managing daily activities and not just teams.

The plus points:

Provides a library of functionalities for any company pertaining to any industry
Supports a long list of views, namely, board, list, gantt, workload, box, table, calendar, activity, and mind maps.
Customizable to serve your software development agency’s needs from custom tags and custom statuses to custom permissions, where you can control who sees what
A massive number of third-party apps to integrate with.
Good customer support and makes a continuous improvement to the app and its user experience based on customer feedback

The minus points:

Feels bloated due to the ton of functionalities that it provides, which is more than what's required, overwhelming and cluttered, unlike Zepel
Way too many customization options which add to the overwhelming experience that this app radiates
User interface is intuitive but very complex and so has a steep learning curve that makes onboarding a nightmare
Initial setup is incredibly challenging with high risks of messing up processes due to the complex design
Offers agile capabilities but lacks the finesse of a dedicated, full-fledged agile tool like Zepel does

Top user reviews:

Review on G2:
"I like that it has all types of tools to be able to work with the different ways people approach things. I liked that there was an inbox feature.

I felt it was a bit overwhelming and had a steep learning curve. I also wish that I could add more than one person to each area for free. I run a small business and want my clients to see only their projects with my team members without having to create a new space entirely.

I found it tedious to have to tag myself in everything if I wanted it to show up in my inbox."

Review on Capterra:
"Easy to use. Clear and intuitive interface. Easy to assign tasks for the week and update it. Calendar view is very efficient for planning weeks.

Limitation for saving views (for Guest AND for Member) in unlimited plan. To get all features we need to upgrade to Business/Enterprise plan and convert Guest to members: way too much expensive. A full import/export (JSON?) feature, not the current limited csv format, could improve compatibility with our internal custom tools. Moving a small bunch of tasks over the time is easy, but moving many tasks is quite annoying."

Key differences between Asana and ClickUp

Getting Started: Asana and ClickUp are equally complex and thus you’re going to experience difficulty while getting started. Due to the plethora of functionalities they provide, you can easily get overwhelmed.
Features: Asana and ClickUp are both feature-packed and both include customizable automation triggers and actions. But when it comes to agile capabilities, ClickUp has more to offer such as burndown charts, cumulative flow, etc., than Asana.
Developer-friendliness: ClickUp offers comparatively deeper integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and other developer-favourites than Asana. ClickUp also supports Markdown for getting work done quickly while Asana doesn’t provide Markdown support.
Team Collaboration: Asana allows you to hold all your team conversations in one place, making collaboration efficient. ClickUp also offers a similar conversations platform. It goes a step further and provides a documentation feature akin to Google Docs with real-time editing functionality.
Pricing: Both Asana and ClickUp offer free plans. Asana’s free plan limits you to add only 15 members whereas ClickUp enables you to add unlimited users. But both the tools’ free plans come with feature restrictions, unlike Zepel. Asana’s paid plan starts at $10.99 per member per month billed annually while ClickUp’s paid plan starts at 5 per member per month.
Customer support: Asana provides support to its customers via email ticketing whereas ClickUp offers live online support via their webchat. In terms of quality of support, ClickUp offers better support than Asana.

Final Verdict of Asana vs ClickUp

Asana is best for non-IT companies for handling projects pertaining to marketing, sales, and so on. And so, if you're a software development company and scrum is your priority, you must consider other free project management software tools like Zepel that have all the functionalities of a scrum tool.

Truth be told, ClickUp is a great PM software for your development team/software development agency of any size and any sector. But much like any application that tries to be an all-in-one solution, ClickUp is a jack of all trades, master of none. That might work for a non-IT agency but for a software development org looking to implement agile extensively, it is better to consider other project management apps that are built specifically for agile.

5 Alternatives to Asana and ClickUp

1. Zepel

Zepel is the perfect choice of an alternative to both Asana and ClickUp as it is intuitive, has no overwhelming clutter of functionalities, and has all the powerful agile capabilities that your software development squad would kill for. And to top it off, Zepel has an uncomplex design that makes onboarding painless.

With Zepel, you can implement more than just simple kanban. You can implement scrum and even a combination of scrum and kanban efficiently.

Unlike its contemporaries, Zepel supports very deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and other similar sources, making it one of the most developer-friendly apps in the market. Zepel also provides the capability to automate your git workflows so that even if your dev squad forgets to update the status of a work item, Zepel does it for them.

You can complete this workflow by connecting your Slack to it and receive real-time notifications of progress updates by your squad. Developers using Zepel also love the markdown support and / commands that help get work done quickly.

And this is why engineering teams are extremely fond of Zepel and consider it to be the ideal engineering project management software. Zepel removes all the chaos from the development process and makes building software products hassle-free.

Zepel comes complete with a functionality called Streams that brings in customer feedback in the form of requests from various external sources such as Canny, Intercom, etc.

This way you can prioritize and build high-quality, customer-focussed features for your product effortlessly.

Key Highlights:

Intuitive and powerful UI that makes onboarding easy
Agile capabilities like Sprints, burndown charts, etc that allow both Scrum and Kanban implementation
Developer-friendly due to very deep integration with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and a variety of similar sources
Workflow automation to streamline and control stages of the development process, perform automatic status updates, and receive real-time Slack notifications
Brings in customer feedback from multiple sources like Canny, Intercom, Zendesk, etc., and helps prioritize it
Affordable pricing plan!

Here’s an overview of what Zepel offers.

Pricing:

Best For:

Cross-functional teams of any size that desire to build software products the agile way.

2. Monday.com

Monday.com is a project management solution that is a great alternative to Asana and ClickUp. This app is also loaded with utilities but in terms of agile, it lacks powerful capabilities. Because of far too many functionalities, it is easy to get overwhelmed and the learning curve is steep.

Key Highlights:

Loaded with functionalities and multiple views, namely, calendar, gantt, forms, and so on
Customizable notifications and reports
Supports the automation of certain tasks
Plenty of templates for any department
Many integrations with 3rd party apps like Slack, OneDrive, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, and more

View all the utilities that monday.com provides here.

Pricing:

Monday.com’s pricing plan is quite complex. There isn’t a free plan. You get a 14-day trial post which you must choose a paid plan that starts at $10/member/month.

Best For:

Non-IT agency and departments pertaining to marketing, sales, etc.

3. Basecamp

Basecamp is a solid task-management tool that is quite a popular choice in the market. The USP of this app is its ability to bring all members of different departments together efficiently. However, Basecamp lacks agile capabilities.

Key Highlights:

Messaging platform with a forum-like view for real-time group chats
Automatic check-in questions for frequent status updates
Controlled client access
Hill charts to track progress
Supports sharing files and documentation with a storage of 500GB

Here’s everything that Basecamp offers.

Pricing:

Basecamp offers a straightforward plan with a 30-day free trial. At the end of the trial, you will need to pay a flat fee of $99/month for unlimited users.

Best For:

Remote, service-based agency that doesn’t require agile methodologies.

4. Wrike

Wrike is a PM app that caters to agile product development orgs. It offers templates for setting up your agile workflows. But Wrike does not offer an intuitive user interface as Asana and ClickUp do. The learning curve is also very steep, making onboarding a hassle.

Key Highlights:

Customizable workspaces
Templates to set up agile workflows
Easy to share visual dynamic reports that are insightful
Boards, gantt, and calendar views to track progress and plan deadlines
Workload and resource administration
Shareable task lists and dashboards

Check out all the functionalities Wrike offers.

Pricing:

Wrike is free for up to 5 members. The paid plans start at $9.80/member/month.

Best For:

Agile product development companies that are small in size.

5. Trello

Trello is another notable choice to Asana and ClickUp. Trello is a kanban board software that is incredibly user-friendly and perhaps the easiest PM app to get started with. It takes barely 10-15 mins to onboard your entire org. But if you expect Trello to be powerful with agile capabilities to implement scrum, and other frameworks, you will be disappointed. And that’s why teams look for Trello alternatives.

Key Highlights:

Straightforward kanban board software with sticky note-like cards
Flexible with plenty of customizable templates
Fast, responsive, and simple user interface which makes onboarding painless
Ability to add on ‘n’ number of functionalities as power-ups
A huge catalog of integrations with 3rd party apps like Zapier, Hubspot, Dropbox, and 100+ similar apps

Have a look at all the functionalities that Trello provides here.

Pricing:

Trello's pricing plan is extremely simple. Trello offers a free plan that enables you to collaborate with unlimited users but with functionality restrictions. So if you want to access all its utilities, power-ups, and integrations in the future, you must sign up for a paid plan that starts at $12.50/member/month.

Best For:

Non-technical IT squads such as marketing, sales, etc.

Compare ClickUp vs Trello and Asana vs Trello here.

5 reasons why Zepel is your go-to project management software

Rather than giving you straightforward reasons as to why Zepel can be the perfect tool choice for you, I’m going to ask you 5 simple yes/no questions. The purpose of this is to help you understand the requirements your PM app must meet and to realize what Zepel will do for you:

Do you want your PM app to enable you to collaborate with squads of any size?
Do you need powerful agile capabilities to help implement Scrum, Kanban, or both?
Would you want your PM software to be developer-friendly?
Would you like your PM tool to help you build customer-focussed features?
Is affordable pricing a must-have requirement for your PM solution to meet?

If the answer to all the above questions is a ‘Yes' for you, give Zepel a shot; you won't be disappointed. But don’t take my word for it. See what our customers have to say about Zepel. :)

Asana vs Jira: Picking the ideal project management tool in 2021

Ranjali Roy — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 09:57:50 +0000

Thousands of companies have been using both Asana and Jira to fulfill their PM needs. Asana offers plenty of functionalities for managing both IT and non-IT projects while Jira is widely preferred by product development squads worldwide.

Both of these project management software have their pros and cons. But which of the two apps is ideal for your org in 2021?

Let’s compare Asana vs Jira in-detail and find out. But first, let us have a quick overview of both PM apps.

Quick Overview of Asana

Asana was founded in 2008 by former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein. And today, it has established itself as a team collaboration application in the PM sector. Although Asana caters to both IT and non-IT companies, it is more popular among non-IT teams like marketing, sales, etc.

Project management in Asana is task-oriented. That is, here, PM revolves around projects and tasks. So, for every project that you create, you can create work items and subtasks, assign them to squad members, add descriptions, tags, comments, and custom fields.

In essence, Asana is a feature-loaded task handling application that provides a platform for your org to communicate and collaborate.

But are these functionalities useful in managing projects for your org? Let’s learn more about Asana and find out.

The good, the bad, the ugly

Here are things about Asana that are likable, not so likable but are tolerable, and aspects you’re most certainly going to hate.

The Good:

Asana is very flexible and customizable with its custom templates, custom tags, and custom fields. You can tailor it to serve your needs. You can also find plenty of saved templates to get familiar with.
Asana supports multiple views to help visualize your projects and monitor progress. Additionally, its workload aspect allows you to view what work and how much work is assigned to whom.
A great deal of crowd favourite third-party apps are available at your disposal to streamline your workflows.
Asana’s team communication and collaboration capabilities enable you to keep all your work items and related conversations in one place.

The Bad:

The learning curve is pretty steep, making onboarding a difficult task. But once you spend a considerable amount of time using Asana, you will find it easy to use this application.
Budgeting and reporting capabilities to compute and plan your budgets are absent but you can make do without it by creating a custom field to track budgets or using 3rd-party apps with time tracking and budgeting apps like Everhour.
Asana doesn’t support viewing tasks and subtasks in a single, nestled view, unlike Zepel. It doesn't get in the way of any work process but it can certainly make task handling easier as it greatly minimizes the chance of missing out on a work item.

The Ugly:

Forget about implementing agile frameworks like scrum. If you require agile capabilities more than simple kanban functionalities, you have no choice but to consider alternatives to Asana.
No provision to add multiple assignees to a task. This can get frustrating when more than one person is working collaboratively on a single task.
The pricing plan isn’t affordable and quite frankly, you end up paying too many dollars for very little benefits. You can only collaborate with 15 members in its free plan and that too with basic functionalities only. You won’t find such functionality restrictions in Zepel, even in its free plan.

Quick Overview of Jira

Jira is a product of the company called Atlassian and was founded in 2002. Initially, the whole purpose of this app was to be an issue and bug tracking application.

But today, Jira has grown into a project management tool for agile product development. So, it targets app developers, engineers, and project managers who are on the lookout for PM apps to help build applications.

Since this app is difficult to get a hang of for beginners who are new to project management tools, companies get started with Atlassian’s Trello. And on comparing Trello vs Jira, they move to Jira for more functionality.

Jira is extremely popular among IT firms, big and small, looking to adopt agile for building products. But does that make it perfect for your org? Read on to find out.

The good, the bad, the ugly

Atlassian’s Jira, just like any other PM app, has its pluses, pain points that you can live with, and intolerable minuses.

The Good:

Jira is your go-to application for tracking issues and bugs in your product. After all, it is Jira’s USP. You can capture these issues and bugs, assign them to members, prioritize and track them to completion.
Being very flexible, Jira enables you to customize your workflow using its workflow builder. With this builder, you can now set up rules to define how a task/card should move from one status to another.
A massive library of third-party apps for use cases of CRM, code review, and more.

The Bad:

Agile capabilities for building products may be Jira’s strong suit but it still lacks finesse when it comes to assisting development squads in implementing frameworks like scrum as its competitors such as Zepel do. You won’t find here the elegant Sprints view that has built-in agile reports such as burnup and burndown charts.
Even though you can set up some advanced configurations to restrict the visibility of certain work items in certain kanban columns to certain people, this can lead to miscommunication and lost productivity within your squad if not done right.
Unlike Asana, you can track resources and plan for budgeting but for the monetary aspects of budgeting, you need to use 3rd-party apps like Tempo.
The roadmap functionality to track the overall progress of the entire project is nice but it lacks facilities to gain some oversight.
Jira has an external customer service desk to collect bugs and support requests from customers but unlike Zepel’s Streams, it does not bring in customer requests from various customer feedback platforms such as Canny, Intercom, etc.

The Ugly:

Jira’s design may seem extremely streamlined from the outside but can result in your agile squad getting micromanaged when you dive in. That’s why most developers hate this app, apart from its slow speed. And they prefer alternatives to Jira such as Zepel, which is extremely developer-friendly.
The primary unit of work here, unlike Asana, is an issue and not a task. This is a terrible place to begin building products as you will think in terms of tickets and not features.
Creating workflows is hellish due to its complex design.
The pricing plan limits onboarding to only 10 members in Jira’s free plan and it comes with certain functionality restrictions, unlike Zepel that has absolutely no restrictions on functionalities.

Comprehensive comparison of Asana vs Jira

	Asana	Jira
Views & Features	Asana is packed with utilities from traditional task handling to squad collaboration and CRM. But it lacks agile capabilities other than a simple kanban board. Multiple views namely board, gantt, calendar, and so on.	Jira offers quite a lot of functionalities but not nearly as many as Asana does. Its key highlights include issue and bug tracking functionalities, roadmaps, and agile capabilities such as scrum boards, kanban boards, agile reports, etc. Has a number of views such as list, board,and issue detail view.
Ease of use & UX	Intuitive UI that is simple and user friendly but owing to the ton of functionalities Asana offers, the learning curve is steep.	Easy to set up and use but the user experience isn’t all that good due to the complexity in its design.
Developer-friendliness	Asana lacks powerful agile capabilities and deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Also, it lacks markdown support, which makes it hard for devs to share code snippets with each other. So, it isn’t very developer friendly.	Jira enables quite deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket but it is extremely slow. Also, its over- engineered workflows cause micromanagement. Thus, most developers tend to hate Jira.
Collaboration & team management	Onboarding members is not that easy due to its steep learning curve. Team communication and collaboration is made efficient with the conversations utility that holds all squad-related conversations in one place.	The extremely steep learning curve due to its complex design makes onboarding a mammoth task. In terms of squad handling, this app offers many functionalities from messaging and file sharing to collaborative problem-solving.
Integrations & add-ons	Over 160 well-known 3rd-party apps from Slack to Salesforce.	Whopping 2000+ third-party apps and add-ons are available.
Pricing	Asana’s free plan allows you to collaborate up to 15 users with functionality restrictions. The paid plans start at $12.50/person.	Jira allows you to add up to 10 members in its free plan, with limited functionalities. The paid plans start at $7/user.
Pros	- Intuitive UI - Custom templates, tags, and fields - Several in-built views and quick filters - Workload functionality shows an overview of how much work each member is assigned - Conversations functionality helps hold squad-related conversations in one place	- Powerful agile capabilities - Efficient issue and bug tracking - Massive library of third-party apps and add-ons - Customizable workflows - Roadmap functionality
Cons	- Steep learning curve - Lacks agile capabilities other than kanban - Can’t add multiple assignees to an item - No nestled view to view tasks and subtasks - Costly	- Being an issue and bug tracker, Jira’s approach to PM is flawed - Extremely steep learning curve - Clunky and slow application - Boring UI with complex design - Setting up workflows is a nightmare - Expensive
Best for	Non-IT squads such as marketing, sales, customer success, and so on.	Application development companies that prefer managing projects the agile way.

3 Reasons to consider alternatives to Asana and Jira

1. Getting started is a nightmare

When you’re looking to get started or onboard your squad, brace yourself for the steep learning curve ahead. Both the apps offer a ton of utilities and add-ons that can be pretty confusing for a newbie to get started with.

2. Too many features and add-ons but of very little use

Asana is loaded with functionalities but lacks agile capabilities other than simple kanban board, which makes it a bit disappointing considering the price you pay for this app. On the other hand, in a pursuit to be an all-in-one suite for application development companies, Jira also offers plenty of aspects including agile functionalities for scrum and kanban. But it fails to deliver any of these aspects satisfactorily.

3. Pricing is heavy on the pocket

Both Asana and Jira will definitely leave a dent in your wallet, despite offering a free plan. You can add up to 15 members in Asana’s free plan while you can only add a maximum of 10 users in Jira. But since the two apps have restrictions on functionalities, you must choose an appropriate paid plan. Asana’s paid plan starts at 12.50/member/month while Jira’s paid plan starts at $7/user/month.

4 Alternatives to Asana and Jira

1. Zepel

Zepel is an ideal alternative to both as it is the perfect blend of the two apps but with more benefits. It is intuitive like Asana with powerful agile capabilities like Jira. Thus, you get the best of both worlds.

Painlessly onboard your squads owing to Zepel’s uncomplicated design. And efficiently implement popular agile frameworks that you prefer, such as scrum, kanban, or both.

Unlike its counterparts, Zepel is by far one of the most developer-friendly apps as it supports deep integrations with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and other similar sources. Zepel goes a step further and enables you to set up and automate your git workflows to perform status updates on your dev crew’s behalf. Complete this workflow by connecting your Slack to it and receive real-time notifications of progress updates by your squad. Some other sweet developer-friendly perks of Zepel are the markdown support and / commands that help get work done in a jiffy.

And to top it off, Zepel has a functionality called Streams that brings in customer feedback in the form of requests from various external sources such as Canny, Intercom, Zendesk, etc.

Thus, with Zepel, you can prioritize and build customer-focussed features for your product.

Key Highlights:

Intuitive yet powerful UI that eases onboarding
Agile capabilities like Sprints, burndown charts, etc that allow both Scrum and Kanban implementation
Developer-friendly due to deep integration with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and a variety of similar sources
Workflow automation to perform status updates and receive instant Slack notifications
Brings in customer feedback from multiple sources like Canny, Intercom, etc., and helps prioritize it
Great pricing plan!

Have a look at all the functionalities that Zepel offers.

Pricing:
Zepel’s pricing plan consists of a free plan that doesn’t charge a penny for the first 5 members forever no matter how many members you add. When you add your 6th member, the standard annual plan starts at $5/member/month and its standard monthly plan starts at $7/member.

Best For:
Squads of any size that desire to build exceptional software products.

Zepel vs Asana vs Jira

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is a solid tool for project management and is ideal for managing tasks. What makes Basecamp a great alternative to consider is how it effectively brings all members of different squads together. However, Basecamp lacks agile capabilities.

Key Highlights:

Messaging platform with a forum-like view for team communication
Automatic check-ins for frequent status updates
Controlled client access
Hill charts to track progress
File sharing with a storage of 500GB

Here’s everything that Basecamp offers.

Pricing:
Basecamp offers a simple plan with a 30-day free trial. At the end of the trial, you will need to pay a flat fee of $99/month for unlimited users.

Best For:
Remote, service-based companies that don’t require agile methodologies.

3. Wrike

Wrike is a Jira counterpart that targets agile product development orgs. Akin to Jira, Wrike also lacks an intuitive user interface and has a very steep learning curve.

Key Highlights:

Customizable workspaces
Easy to share, insightful, visual and dynamic reports
Boards, Gantt, and Calendar view to track progress and plan deadlines
Workload and resource administration
Shareable task lists and dashboards

Check out all the functionalities Wrike offers.

Pricing:
Wrike is free for up to 5 members. The paid plans start at $9.80/member/month.

Best For:
Agile product development and non-IT companies that are small in size.

4. Monday.com

Monday.com is a PM app that is very similar to Asana. This app is also loaded with utilities but lacks agile capabilities. Because of far too many functionalities, it is easy to lose focus and difficult to get started.

Read about the in-depth comparison of Asana vs Trello vs Monday.

Key Highlights:

More than sufficient functionalities and multiple views, namely, calendar, gantt, forms, and so on
Customizable notifications and reports
Ability to automate certain tasks
Plenty of templates for almost every type of PM squad
Several integrations with 3rd party apps like Slack, Asana, Trello, Toggl, Google Calendar, and more

View all the attributes that monday.com provides here.

Pricing:
Monday.com’s pricing plan is complex and doesn’t have a free plan. It offers a 14-day trial post which you must choose a paid plan that starts at $10/member/month.

Best For:
Non-technical IT squads such as marketing, sales, etc.

5 reasons to pick Zepel over the others

Zepel is the PM app meant for your squad and your organization for the following 5 reasons:

1. Collaborate with squads of any size

Zepel enables you to onboard and collaborate with product development squads of any size with ease.

2. Implement Scrum, Kanban, or both

Zepel offers powerful agile capabilities that help you implement widely-used agile frameworks such as scrum, kanban, or a combination of both. So, if you think agile, think Zepel. ;)

3. Not too many features, not too less

Zepel does not offer too many functionalities as that can be distracting and overwhelming. At the same time, it doesn’t lack any key utilities that you’d require to streamline your workflows. This way you can build products without chaos and distraction.

4. Keeps both your customers and your squad happy

Zepel Streams helps build customer-focussed functionalities that are sure to satisfy your customers. And the deep integration with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket is everything your developers need.

5. Absolutely affordable pricing

Zepel’s straightforward pricing plan includes a free plan and a paid plan. The free forever plan enables you to add up to 5 members for free, forever (literally!), without any functionality restrictions. Even if your squad expands and you must add a 6th member, you won’t be charged for the first 5 members. The paid plan starts at $5/member.

These 5 reasons should have helped you realize that Zepel's the right tool for your organization.

But if you're still on the fence, sign up and try Zepel for free. You will swear by it, just like the 4000+ development teams using Zepel.

8 Problems You’ll Face By Using Trello for Agile Web Development

Ranjali Roy — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 13:57:31 +0000

Trello is a great Kanban software if you’re a small startup or a company that’s just getting started with a project management tool.

Trello was created based on the kanban concept of using sticky-notes and office boards to track progress. While the sticky note-like card represents a task in Trello, the board represents a project. And it is divided into columns such as Todo, Doing, and Done to represent a card’s status at a given point in time.

This simplicity and ease of use are what everybody loves about Trello. This tool was essentially built for all purposes from web designing to wedding planning! But, if you’re on the lookout for a project management software that supports agile web development, you’ve got to consider other project management tools like Zepel as an alternative to Trello.

If you’re still contemplating using Trello for web development, here are some of the main problems you’ll be faced with.

Problems with Using Trello for Web Development

Being a squad that builds software products, here are 8 problems you’ll encounter while using Trello for web development that will turn the entire buildout process into a nightmare.

Problem 1: Does not support agile reports

Reports, in general, come in handy when you wish to monitor and get a clear picture of your software product’s progress at any given point in time. It is no different in agile as well.

With reports and charts such as sprint burnup, burndown, and cumulative flow diagram, you can have a clear insight into your workflow’s advancement. That is, you can get a straightforward expectation vs reality comparison of how you expected your sprint to move forward and how it is currently proceeding. This will give you an understanding of where your buildout process stands presently.

Reports are also useful to analyze the previous outcomes of sprints and agile workflows to identify the pain-points and better plan the forthcoming workflows. Without an agile report, you will not only struggle to be transparent with your stakeholders regarding your squad’s progression but you will also easily lose sight of your software product’s vision.

In Trello, you can't get any of these reports for free. You can only get your hands on them by adding power-ups and third-party integrations with popular services and applications. Trello even enables integration with apps like Zapier, a web app automation service, that can automate report generation.

But these power-ups and integrations cost money.

This means you end up paying more when you can get it free in alternative tools like Zepel.

Staying focused and transparent with Zepel’s agile reports and charts

Zepel supports a multitude of agile reports including the burnup, burndown, and cumulative flow diagram charts to help you stay on course and meet deadlines. As mentioned above, Zepel allows you to get your hands on these informative reports for free.

Problem 2: No dedicated view to run Sprints for Scrum teams

Sprints are an integral aspect of agile, particularly scrum. Planning your sprint backlog efficiently to carry out your sprint without any hiccup is one thing but actually getting them done is a whole other level of difficulty.

And to get your sprint right, you must ensure that your sprint goes according to plan and you get most of the work items in your sprint backlog done if not all of them. This is no joke, right? You’re going to need all hands on deck and a utility that can provide all the assistance you require for this mammoth job.

I can feel you nodding your head vehemently in agreement.

Not having a dedicated view to keep an eye on your sprints only makes things harder than it already is. For such a core process, if you had to use the same kanban board, it becomes a stitched up process. That’s exactly what will happen if you use Trello.

Running web development sprints successfully with Zepel

Zepel provides a number of functionalities to implement the agile frameworks - kanban, scrum, and a combination of both. One such functionality is Sprints in Zepel that will help you keep tabs on each sprint with ease.

From presenting the current advancement through burnup and burndown charts to displaying the open items in a sprint, Sprints will enable you to monitor the sprint velocity efficiently, leaving no room for a botched sprint.

You can also view the time estimates displayed for each sprint, which is automatically calculated based on the time estimates of individual items in the sprint, to track time and ensure that the sprint is forging ahead as per plan.

Zepel also offers scrum boards to keep tabs on the advancement of your sprints.

Problem 3: Simplicity comes at the cost of structure

Trello is undoubtedly one of the simplest PM tools to use and onboard new members. But once your squad grows, so will its requirements. And Trello will fail to meet those requirements because it lacks structure.

In Trello, you only have a kanban board with multiple columns representing statuses to which cards are assigned to. Initially, when your squad is small and the workload is less, this simplicity will allow you to add a small number of cards and painlessly move it around depending on progress.

But as soon as your squad grows in size and your workload increases proportionally, your boards will appear to be overflowing with cards. This will make it insanely complex to grab a hold of what’s going on and who must be doing what. Because when your software lacks structure, your buildout process will lack clarity.

Zepel’s hierarchy and structure to your rescue

Zepel consists of Squads that can be created for each of your teams in your organization. Within each squad, you can create features. And within each feature you can create work items namely, user stories, tasks, bugs, and enhancements. This allows you to track advancement at a task/bug/user story level and see its impact on the entire feature as a whole.

Zepel also provides a functionality called List that enables you to create miscellaneous work items that are not part of any feature. This structure forms the hierarchy of Zepel.

Tip: To plan features efficiently by ensuring that no product specification is left out of the product backlog, create and maintain a feature document with the aid of templates.

Problem 4: Can track only task cards in a Board, not features

Tasks are a basic, small unit of work in a buildout process. While building software using a PM tool, for making the whole buildout process easy, the product gets broken down into features that get further broken down into tasks and subtasks to be worked on.

Although it is integral to be able to monitor the completion of each item, having a quick overview of the feature’s progression, on the whole, is equally essential to assess the velocity of the web development process. Additionally, having a feature progress monitoring functionality can help swiftly judge whether the feature can be shipped in time.

Trello does not provide the functionality to keep tabs on the onward movement of a feature(s) but only to monitor the cards and subtasks. Thus, this missing functionality makes planning sprints more time consuming as you can’t get a quick glance of a feature’s overall advancement.

Track feature progress with Zepel

Zepel, unlike Trello, enables you to quickly have a look at the progression of a feature. Use the Progress functionality in Zepel with different views, including the kanban board view, to monitor the completion of a feature.

Now, you can have an insight into the pace at which your squad is working and whether the feature will get shipped within the stipulated deadline.

Problem 5: Gaining visibility of the entire development process is hard

Being a product manager, you must have complete visibility of which team member is working on what work item and how far they have completed it. Only when you have this sort of visibility can you monitor progress and facilitate the smooth functioning of the entire squad.

Complete visibility of your product team’s work enables you to evenly distribute work, identify bottlenecks, and resolve conflicts due to dependencies if any. This transparency that allows you to step-in wherever and whenever required is difficult to achieve with a tool like Trello.

Since attributes such as the ability to have an overview of a feature’s advancement and an in-built dashboard are absent, Trello is less than ideal to attain complete visibility of the web development process.

Gaining complete visibility with Zepel

To help product managers gain 100% visibility and transparency, Zepel offers a number of features.

Boards in Zepel consist of a handful of filters such as assignees, tags, etc., to aid in monitoring the progression of a specific team or an individual member. You can go one level up and keep tabs on a feature’s forward movement using the Progress view. Above all, use the dashboard feature to get a pulse of what the entire squad is working on.

Problem 6: Impossible to build customer-focussed software

At the end of the day, customer satisfaction is supreme and all that is built is built keeping them in mind. For this purpose, all companies big or small collect customer feedback and analyze this feedback to build customer-focussed features for their software.

Apart from Sentry and Zendesk integrations, Trello offers no functionality that enables you to gather customer feedback from various external sources such as Intercom, Canny, GitHub Issues, etc., and input it as a card other than manually doing so. Sounds exhausting and time-consuming, right? It is after all your project management app’s purpose to make managing work easy for you and not difficult.

Trello doesn’t do justice in this aspect. And that’s precisely why it is impossible to build customer-focussed software with Trello.

Building customer-focussed software with Zepel

To bring in all your customer feedback and requests from various sources such as Canny, Intercom, etc., and also make internal requests, Zepel has a functionality called Streams.

With Streams in Zepel, you can not only gather all your customer feedback as requests in one place but also organize them and delegate them to appropriate features in your squads. This helps prioritize what to work on next and build features with context. Thus, as a product manager, Streams will help you realize a seamless engineering handoff.

By using Streams, you will be on a trajectory to achieving a 100% customer satisfaction rate.

Problem 7: Collaborating on product design changes is hard.

There’s no agile implementation without team collaboration. And an important aspect of collaboration in web buildout is suggesting changes to the UI, which isn’t an easy job. Especially with the current situation where squads are working remotely, collaborating and communicating changes to the UI is becoming frustratingly difficult.

The project management app that you’re using for web buildout must not only support file sharing to share your design files but also provide some functionality to enable teammates to provide their non-technical feedback trouble-free. And the best way to communicate this feedback is in the form of visual feedback.

Trello, unfortunately, does not provide any feature to address this problem

Effortless collaboration and making UI changes with Zepel’s chrome extension

Zepel Capture is a chrome extension that was built using Zepel’s public APIs with the sole purpose of making collaboration on UI and making changes to it simple.

Using this chrome extension, team members can screenshot any page on their screens, edit and annotate the image, and add the edited image as an attachment to a new item in Zepel.

Now, you needn’t dread miscommunication of feedback between teammates. Because with Zepel, this feedback gets conveyed as visual feedback with the aid of annotated screenshots.

Problem 8: Pricing

Trello offers a free plan and 2 paid plans. The free plan supports the collaboration of unlimited users but comes with a catch - only a limited set of features can be accessed. And since most of the key functionalities in Trello are available only in the form of power-ups and third-party integrations, you are forced to adopt a paid plan.

You can avail any one of the two plans - business class starting at $ 9.99/user/month billed annually or $12.50/user/month ** billed monthly and an enterprise plan starting at **$17.50.

#### Zepel is value for money

For a project management software that misses several major functionalities in web engineering, especially the agile capabilities, Trello is not worth the money. On the other hand, Zepel provides an affordable pricing plan with sufficient key features and no feature restrictions even on the free plan.

Therefore, you can get more value for a lesser price with Zepel.

	Trello	Zepel
Plans	Free plan and 2 paid plans - business class starting at $9.99/user/month billed annually and enterprise plan starting at $17.50.	Free plan and paid plan starting at $5/member/month billed annually or $7/member/month billed monthly. Zepel Streams starts at $40/month billed annually for unlimited members.
No.of users (free plan)	Unlimited users	5 members are free forever
Feature restriction	Yes, feature restrictions are present in the free plan.	No feature restriction

If you are an existing Trello user looking to switch to a PM tool that supports agile web development, use Zepel's one-click Trello import and try Zepel for free.

Asana Vs Trello Vs Monday: What’s your best bet in 2021?

Ranjali Roy — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 21:50:29 +0000

Asana, Trello, and monday.com are 3 popular software that are battling it out to be your must-have PM software. But who’s going to emerge as the winner?

I have pitted them against each other, compared them in detail based on key aspects a PM application should have, and have given my final verdict.

But before that, let’s have a quick overview of the three apps.

Asana - The project management solution centered around tasks

Asana is a widely-preferred versatile project management platform that was founded in 2008 by former Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Facebook employee Justin Rosenstein.

Here, everything revolves around projects and tasks. So, for every project you create, you can create tasks and subtasks, prioritize them, allocate them, and manage them. Asana, in a nutshell, is the quintessence of task management.

Asana’s strength, however, is its collaboration capability where it enables you to not only keep all your work items in one place but also your conversations under one roof.

Conversations feature in this app aims to remove the need for team communication apps like Slack, Hipchat, etc.

But when it comes to agile capabilities, other than having a basic kanban board, this software doesn’t support the implementation of other agile frameworks like scrum. This makes it less ideal for software development teams who like getting things done the agile way.

Key capabilities to help accomplish your work

Task-oriented functionalities like description, assignees, due date, tags, comments, and file attachment
Rules feature enables automation of routine processes
Different views such as list, board, timeline, calendar, and workload to track progress
Portfolios feature to monitor all project initiatives in one place
Conversations feature keeps all conversations under one roof
A good deal of integrations with in-demand applications like Slack, Jira Server, Miro, Gmail, etc

What's best in this software

The Portfolios feature is a great option to keep track of all your initiatives in one place.
You can automate and streamline your routine processes with Asana’s Rules feature.
Asana provides version control to help you keep tabs on all the changes made to your software code.
You can integrate Asana with over 160 third-party apps.
Asana’s Conversations enables you to keep all your work items and conversations under one roof, removing the need for external apps like Slack, Hipchat, etc.

What's missing in this app to manage your work effortlessly

Asana lacks agile capabilities to implement other frameworks such as scrum whereas Zepel has Boards, Sprints, and more.
Asana doesn’t allow a nestled view of all the tasks and subtasks like Zepel does.
You cannot add multiple assignees to a task.
Unlike other tools, Asana doesn’t offer the task dependencies feature in its free plan. Asana can get pretty expensive and has a steep learning curve and there are better, cheaper, and easier to onboard alternatives to Asana out there.

Asana pricing

Asana’s plans include a free version that allows you to collaborate with up to 15 members, having a limit on the number of functionalities that can be accessed.

However, you have the option of choosing any one of the following paid plans to get access to all the features: Premium plan costing $10.99/member/month (paid annually) or $13.49/member/month (paid monthly) and **Business plan costing $24.99/member/month (paid annually) or $30.49/member/month (paid monthly).

Contact the sales department for an enterprise plan.

Trello - The kanban tool to collaborate effortlessly

In 2011, Trello was founded by Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor with a design that mimics your office board with sticky notes.

Trello is a classic kanban board software that represents projects and sticky-note-like cards that represent tasks. A Trello board is divided into columns such as Todo, Doing, and Done to represent statuses of each process, which can be edited to suit your needs. The cards are assigned to appropriate columns and as progress is made, each card is moved from Todo through Doing to Done.

When Atlassian - the maker of Jira - acquired Trello in 2017, companies started comparing Trello vs Jira. Being a simple software with not many functionalities, small squads opted to begin with Trello and later switch to JIRA once their company grew.

However now, organizations needn’t worry about having to make such painful jumps as there are plenty of project management software like Zepel, offering the perfect balance that these apps lack.

Key features to help you manage work

Board with editable columns that represents a project
The card is content-rich and represents a task
Collaboration-focussed aspects like description, assignees, due dates, tags, comments, and file attachments of up to 250MB per file
A large collection of pre-existing templates for a variety of team-types
Power-ups available to add on functionalities to boards and cards
Plenty of third-party integrations that aid in connecting with squad favourites like GitHub, GitLab, Slack, etc

What's best in this kanban solution

Trello provides the simplicity of organizing work items on a board.
Visualizing projects via boards enables squads to have a quick view of who’s doing what and how they’re progressing.
Onboarding squads takes less than 10 minutes due to Trello’s ease of use and simple GUI.
Collaborate with unlimited users for free with Trello’s free plan
Trello offers a plethora of power-ups and more than 200 3rd-party integrations with leading apps.
The mobile app is just as good as the desktop version.

What's missing in this kanban app for organizing tasks

Trello is no more than a simple Kanban board that can't be used extensively to implement other agile frameworks, and although you can use Trello for scrum, it doesn’t provide functionalities to implement scrum properly as Zepel does.
It has only a limited set of in-built functionalities that wouldn’t suffice for a software development squad. Despite this, if you pick Trello, you will need to add a whole lot of power-ups and third-party integrations to do basic task handling.
Trello offers just the board view built-in with the rest of the views available as power-ups only.
Trello lacks the task dependency functionality that you find in leading apps like Zepel, which makes tracking conflicts difficult.
Exporting your data isn’t an option in Trello.
Your functionalities are limited if you opt for a free plan but Zepel doesn’t have feature restrictions in its free plan.

Read about the comparison on Asana vs Trello.

Trello paid plans

Trello offers a free plan to bring onboard unlimited users but with limited functionalities. To access all its functionalities, opt for one of its paid plans: a Business plan starting at $9.99/person/month charged annually or 12.50/person/month charged monthly and an Enterprise plan at $17.50/person/month.

Monday.com - The all-in-one suite to handle all your projects

Monday.com, known formerly as DaPulse, is a visually appealing task management software that’s been around for over a decade, catering to both IT and non-IT companies. So, you can bring onboard and collaborate with different departments to work together in one place.

Monday.com’s colourful, attractive, and intuitive UI makes it fun to work with but extremely complicated to use, especially for newbies. You can find tons of in-built functionalities and third-party integrations that enable you to perform a wide range of activities from bug tracking to CRM.

But this results in a lot of clutter that you don’t find in competitor software like Zepel as some of the attributes can overwhelm and distract you from achieving your goals.

Key features to help fulfill tasks for your business

Visual boards for task allocation and handling to meet deadlines
Customizable shareable forms to receive client info
Dashboard and to-do list to aid in tracking individual progress
Automations to customize and automate workflows
Multiple in-built views such as Board, List, Calendar, Gantt (Timeline), Chart, and Workload
Variety of templates for different kinds of projects
15 third-party integrations with widely-used applications like Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, Zendesk, Zoom, etc

What’s best in this PM suite for managing tasks

Monday.com provides a wide variety of functionalities from development tracking to CRM that makes multi-department collaboration easy.
Colourful, attractive, and intuitive UI that makes PM fun.
Monday.com enables you to assign multiple users to work on a task.

What’s missing in this application

Monday.com lacks a straightforward GUI as the current one is convoluted, making the learning curve very steep, especially while onboarding new squad members.
Apart from boards for kanban, monday.com doesn’t support agile capabilities such as Sprints for scrum teams that you can find in Zepel, are absent.
Unlike most of its competitors including Zepel, Monday’s collaboration-focussed task-related aspects can be confusing to get a hang of as they aren’t present in one place.
Task dependencies can be added only via a separate column to additionally be kept track of and not in the item card itself as you’ll find in Zepel.
You can’t find as many third-party apps to integrate as Asana or - Trello but use Zapier to connect with those apps that aren’t available.
An uncomplicated pricing structure. However, a free plan similar to many other PM apps is missing.

Have a look at the detailed comparison of Trello vs monday.com.

Monday.com pricing scheme

Monday.com does not include a free plan but offers a 14-day free trial. As soon as your trial expires, you must pick one of the paid plans that best meets your requirements. The basic plan starts at $8/seat/month billed annually. The standard plan is at $10/seat/month billed annually. And Pro plan costs $16/seat/month billed annually.

For an enterprise plan, contact the sales department of monday.com.

Difference b/w Asana, Trello, Monday: Which of these project management tools suits your team?

	Asana	Trello	Monday.com
Views & Features	Several in-built views namely list, board, calendar, timeline, and workload. More than sufficient features in the paid plan but lacks agile capabilities other than kanban.	Only the Kanban Board view is built-in. Basic limited functionalities in both free and paid plans and it lacks agile capabilities.	Plenty of built-in views such as Kanban Board, Timeline, Calendar, Workload, and List. Has far too many features than needed but lacks agile capabilities like Asana and Trello. The functionalities vary based on pricing.
User Experience & Ease of Use	Fairly simple but requires a bit of time to get a hang of it.	Simple UI that’s the easiest of the 3 apps to learn and onboarding takes only a couple of minutes.	Colourful and fun drag and drop UI but has an extremely steep learning curve.
Collaboration	Can collaborate only 15 users on the free plan. Offers collaboration-focussed functionalities like assignee, due date, comments, etc. Dependencies can be added but it isn’t available in the free plan.	Collaborate quickly with ease with unlimited users. Offers all the basic traditional collaboration-focussed attributes but lacks task dependencies to collaborate efficiently.	Cannot collaborate with users for free as there’s no free plan. Offers the usual traditional collaboration-focussed functionalities but they’re not in one place. Dependencies can be added but only as a separate column.
Integrations	160 integrations to 3rd party apps.	200 integrations and power-ups are available.	50+ integrations with popular software apps are available.
Pricing	Straightforward pricing with a free plan for up to 15 members with limited functionalities and 3 paid plans - premium, business, and enterprise, that starts at $10.99/person/month billed annually.	Simple pricing scheme having a free plan for unlimited users but with restrictions on functionalities and 2 paid plans - business class and enterprise, starting at $9.99/user/month billed annually.	Complex pricing scheme with 4 paid plans - basic, standard, pro, and enterprise, starting at $8/seat/month billed annually.
Best for	IT and Non-IT squads of all sizes, especially the design and marketing squads as Asana ranks high for squad collaboration.	Small startups and small companies that use only kanban and don’t need powerful project administration capabilities.	IT and Non-IT companies that require a multitude of functions from bug tracking to CRM but don’t mind the price.

The final verdict on Trello vs Asana vs Monday: Picking the best project management software

Asana is the right choice for you if you’re looking for a task management tool that takes a task-oriented approach to project administration. You would get a great number of functionalities but you can’t implement agile frameworks other than kanban and you will be paying quite the sum for it.

Meanwhile, Zepel allows you to implement both Scrum and Kanban.

Trello is ideal for your company if you are small, want a PM software that’s a digital version of your office board with sticky notes, and you prefer visualizing your project over powerful project administration functionalities such as agile capabilities.

If visualizing is your priority, you should consider a more powerful Trello alternative.

Pick monday.com if you want a software that is decent at doing everything from task handling to CRM but isn’t the best at anything. Also, if you opt for this app then make sure your squad is prepared for a steep learning curve, spending quite a few dollars, and forgoing the need for agile capabilities that you find in top apps these days.

If none of these project management tools seems ideal, don’t settle for less because several alternatives will not only be easy on your pocket but are more likely to fit your organization’s needs.

Alternative tools to Asana, Trello, and Monday

The pain of sifting through a plethora of project management apps only to find out they don’t meet your needs may lead you to compromise. But don’t adjust now, only to regret it later.

If you like Asana, Trello, and Monday.com but are looking for a better application, here are a few alternatives that are likely to meet your standards.

1. Zepel

Zepel is the perfect application for software development. Zepel’s UI is straightforward all the while being packed with powerful functionalities from managing tasks to customer requests. You can now painlessly onboard squads of any size in no time.

Zepel’s USP is its agile capabilities that enable you to implement not just kanban, but also scrum. And if you wish to combine both these frameworks, you can do that too.

Check out how Zepel compares with other agile PM apps.

Is that the only thing Zepel’s good at? Certainly not.

Zepel is sought-after by many software development squads because it’s development-friendly, unlike most popular apps. And this is owing to Zepel’s deep integration with git and other similar sources. Most dev squads probably hate PM apps for having to manually update their progress all the time.

And perhaps, sometimes, they forget to update their progress because they’re tired of this boring status update routine and would rather focus on doing what they love - building functionalities.

To prevent this from happening, Zepel lets you set up git workflows so that each time a developer makes progress, their status is automatically updated. You can complete your workflow automation by connecting Zepel with your Slack account to receive real-time notifications of status updates.

What’s more? Zepel additionally takes care of bringing in all your customer feedback from various sources like Intercom, Zendesk, Canny, etc., to help you organize them, prioritize them, and build functionalities with context.

Highlights:

Collaborate with squads of any size
Easy onboarding due to uncomplicated UI
Agile capabilities like Sprints, burndown charts, etc that allow implementing Scrum, Kanban, and a combination of both
Developer-friendly due to deep integration with GitLab, Bitbucket, and GitHub and similar sources
Workflow automation and real-time notifications via integrations with apps like Slack
Gathers customer feedback from multiple sources, helps prioritize it, and build customer-focussed functionalities
Extremely affordable pricing plan!

Pricing plan

Zepel offers a simple pricing plan that does not restrict you on functionalities irrespective of your plan. Your first 5 members are free forever even when you add more than 5 members. The standard plan is priced at $5/member/month when paid annually and $7/member/month when paid monthly.

Check out all the capabilities that Zepel has to offer.

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is a notable competitor in the PM sector to Asana, Trello, and Monday. Being a remote company in the service sector, if views like Kanban or Gantt aren’t your priority, you can opt for this software with confidence.

Basecamp consists of a multitude of functionalities for managing work, including an in-built messaging platform for team collaboration similar to Asana. But some of the attributes shine out like client access and automatic check-in requests for status updates.

Highlights

Messaging platform like Slack for team communication and collaboration, with a forum-like view
Automatic check-ins to get frequent status updates
Client access but with the ability to control what they see
Hill charts to view and track progress
Share files and docs with a storage of 500GB (in paid plan)

Payment scheme

Basecamp pricing includes a free 30-day trial to try out all its functionalities. Once the trial is up, you will be charged a flat fee of $99/month for an unlimited number of projects and users.

Have a look at the list of attributes Basecamp offers here.

3. Clickup

Clickup is a software worth mentioning in this segment due to its continuous efforts to be an all-in-one PM suite, although it is far from perfect.

Clickup comes loaded with functionalities that can get a bit overwhelming and distracting for a software development squad. But there are some pretty cool attributes you can find such as its machine learning capabilities that try to predict who you are likely to assign a task to, time estimates, and so on.

Highlights:

Attractive UI with multiple templates
Rich attributes and multifarious views to monitor progress
Machine learning capabilities (beta stage)
Customization of the app from fields to notifications
Clickup chats to keep all squad-related conversations in one place

Click here for an in-depth comparison of Clickup vs Trello.

Pricing plan

Clickup’s pricing plan has a free forever plan consisting of unlimited users with unlimited tasks but with limited storage of 100 MB. There are 3 paid plans - unlimited, business, and enterprise, starting at $5/member/month when paid annually and $9/member/month when paid monthly.

Here are all the functionalities that Clickup offers.

4. Notion

Ever since its launch in 2018, Notion has been gaining popularity as a productivity app mainly preferred by marketing squads and other non-IT squads.

Notion, at first glance, may seem nothing more than a note-taking app. But having a proper look at it will show you that it is an all-in-one productivity app that lets you use it as a project management solution, data managing app, and more.

What makes Notion attractive is the app’s simplicity, ease of use, and the flexibility to customize the app as per your wants.

Highlights

Simple UI that is incredibly easy to use
Flexible and can be molded any way you want
Powerful note-taking ability with multiple templates
Integrations to many trending applications
Free to use but with feature restrictions

Payment plan

Notion is free to use but the free plan has limited functionalities and allows up to 5 guests. If you want more of them, multiple paid plans range from from $4/member/month to $8/member/month. Check out the pricing here.

View all the functionalities that Notion provides here.

Zepel is the tool tailored for your team: Here’s why

Zepel ticks all your boxes if you’re a software development squad that is looking for a PM app that can:

Collaborate with cross-functional squads of any size
Implement both scrum and kanban or a combination of both
Automate workflow to automatically update dev squad’s progress with its deep integrations
Make the handoff between product manager and engineers easier
Bring in customer feedback from multiple sources as requests to build and ship functions with context
Provide a great affordable pricing plan

Sign up with Zepel today and end your search for the best PM software for your squad, once and for all. You can take the word of 4000+ software development squads for it. :)

Try Zepel for free.

Trello Vs Monday: What’s perfect for you?

Ranjali Roy — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 06:20:12 +0000

It’s 2021 and each of us is striving to begin this new year with a new drive to be more productive.

And to aid that, you’re probably on the lookout for a new product management tool that will help increase your team’s productivity and thereby your organization’s growth.

Trello and monday.com have been two popular tools in the market for a while now but what tool is perfect for your team in 2021? To help you pick the right tool, I have compared the two based on the following key aspects to consider while choosing a tool and then stated the final verdict.

Views and Features
Ease of Use
Collaboration
Integrations
Pricing

But before that, let’s have a quick overview of the two tools.

Quick Overview of Trello

Trello is an out-and-out Kanban tool that is a good virtual replacement for your office board with sticky notes.

You can consider a Trello board as a project and its cards as sticky notes that represent each task. The board is split into columns such as Todo, Doing, and Done to which you assign cards. And as you progress, you move your cards from Todo to Done. The columns can be edited to suit your needs.

Trello doesn’t offer numerous features and views as its competitors do but you can add functionalities via integrations and power-ups.

Founded in 2011 by Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor, Trello was soon acquired by Atlassian - the makers of JIRA. And plenty of teams, on comparing Trello vs JIRA, started with Trello for simple project management and eventually switched to JIRA once their team grew and they needed more functionalities.

However now, with more tools like Zepel that have the perfect balance between the two, teams no longer need to go through the pain of jumping from one tool to another.

Quick Overview of Monday

Monday.com, initially named as DaPulse, has been around in the project management software market for more than a decade now. Many organizations have picked monday.com over the years as it caters to both IT and non-IT teams with the goal of being the only tool needed to boost their productivity.

Monday.com offers a pack of features and integrations in a colorful, attractive manner that aims to help you increase your team’s velocity with a bit of fun. But these features can be overwhelming and make it hard for you to not lose sight of your task at hand. And if you’re new, the learning curve is quite steep, making onboarding difficult.

In all honesty, despite its efforts, Monday is far from perfect. And now, there are more remarkable tools available in the market that would be a better fit for your team. I have covered in this article 5 significant alternative tools that are of a higher standard than monday.com (and Trello).

We’ll get to those alternatives soon but prior to that, let us look in-depth at the comparison between Trello vs Monday.

Views and Features

Trello
Being a Kanban tool, this management tool doesn’t come with many features and views. Here are the key features you can find in it:

Flexible Kanban boards
Content-rich cards with a lot of task-related information like assignees, due dates, etc.
Customizable workflows
Pre-existing templates for different kinds of teams
3rd-party power-ups for additional views
100+ integrations to third-party apps

As for views, Trello comes only with the Kanban Board view built-in for free. It does have a Calendar view and Map view in the paid plan.

Use its “power-ups” to get additional views like list, Gantt, and Calendar free.

Monday
Monday.com on the other hand offers so many features. In fact, you might even say there are far too many features. Here’s a list of the key features that Monday offers:

Boards with flexible columns
Multiple in-built views to track progress
Customizable shareable forms to receive client info
Automations to customize and automate workflows
Variety of pre-existing templates for any team
Activity logging and Time-tracking capabilities
Dashboard with insightful reports to analyze work performance
Integrations to a huge number of 3rd-party apps
Mobile app for on-the-go work management

Unlike Trello that requires power-ups for viewing your projects in multiple views, Monday.com has several built-in views available at your disposal such as:

Board
List
Timeline (or Gantt)
Calendar
Workload
Chart

Winner of this round: Monday.com, based on the number of features and views.

Ease of Use

Trello
Trello is perhaps one of the easiest tools to use with a simple drag and drop UI. You can simply drag and drop tasks from one column to another. This way you can streamline your task workflow and keep it straightforward.

But that’s pretty much everything you can do with Trello.

Monday
Monday.com provides a very fun user interface filled with colors. Although it also offers drag and drop functionality, the abundant features present makes it overwhelming for newbies to get a hang of it.

It can be hard to concentrate on your goals with so many features out there.

Winner of this round: Trello, hands-down.

Collaboration

Trello
Trello provides the basic collaboration-focussed features like assignees, descriptions, comments, tags, due dates, and so on. You can bring onboard an unlimited number of users for free in Trello. So your entire organization can collaborate with ease on this tool.

But the features are limited and so unless you’re a small team that doesn’t require a lot of features, it can be a bit frustrating. Also, an integral aspect of collaboration - dependencies, is missing.

Monday
Monday.com does offer similar collaboration-focussed features like Trello but it isn’t available all in one place. The task card isn’t uniform and it differs from the view you’re in. This can get really confusing.

Dependencies can be added to tasks but only as a separate column that you additionally need to keep track of.

Unlike Trello, you can’t onboard and collaborate with unlimited users for free. In fact, there isn’t a free plan on monday.com. Let’s get to the pricing aspect soon.

*Winner of this round: Trello, simply because you can collaborate with unlimited users for free!

Integrations

Trello
Trello has over a hundred integrations to several of the most popular tools you’d need for your workflows. You are also provided with public APIs you can use to integrate and interact your software product with.

Here’s a list of some of the commonly used tools you can and might want to link Trello with:

GitLab, Bit Bucket, and GitHub
Slack
Automate.io
Mailchimp
Freshdesk
Dropbox

Monday
Monday.com too provides the facility to integrate with so many widely-used apps through its third-party integrations. These include software development apps, CRM apps, marketing apps, and even other apps available for project management.

Take a peek at a few of the major apps you can integrate Monday with:

GitLab, Bit Bucket, and GitHub
Microsoft Teams
SurveyMonkey
Zendesk
Jira
Google’s apps like Google Drive, Gmail, etc

Note: For those apps that are missing, you can connect both Trello and monday.com with them via Zapier.

Winner of this round: Neither; it’s a tie.

Pricing

Trello
Trello has a comparatively simple pricing scheme and offers a free plan with unlimited users but restricted features.

Monday
Monday.com has a complicated pricing structure without a free plan. Here’s what the pricing looks like.

*Winner of this round:*Trello, only because it has a comparatively uncomplicated pricing scheme and it allows the onboarding of unlimited users for free.

Final Verdict on Trello vs Monday

On the whole, Trello is a simple tool to manage your product development, but perhaps too simple. Trello is right for you if you’re a small organization that needs no more than a kanban board with sticky note-like cards.

Have a look at these kanban board templates to help you implement kanban in the best way possible.

Trello is ideal for design teams and small teams who prefer visualizing the product development process over powerful project management capabilities.

Meanwhile, monday.com in a nutshell is a jack of all trades, master of none. So despite being a flexible tool with many features, you’re most likely to get overwhelmed by all those features available to you that you probably don’t require for a software development team.

Don’t let those distract you and lose sight of your goals!

If you’re unsatisfied with Trello and monday.com, worry not because there are far superior software tools out there that offer much more than mere task management.

Alternatives to Trello and Monday

Trello and monday.com are decent software to manage your tasks but there are more powerful alternatives available in the market.

Here are a few recommended alternatives to check out.

1. Zepel

Zepel is the right blend of straightforward and powerful functionalities that will enable your team to onboard painlessly. And build and manage quality software products that your organization aims to deliver.

If you’re seeking a tool to implement Agile, Zepel enables you to implement both Scrum and Kanban with ease.

See how Zepel compares with other agile PM tools.

What makes Zepel worth the shot is its deep integration with git and other similar sources, making it one of the most developer-friendly PM tools. So, if your dev team is tired of updating their progress or fails to keep you in the loop, Zepel will do it for them.

It’s a win-win, right?!

That’s not all! Zepel goes a step further and brings in all your customer feedback from other sources like Zendesk, Canny, etc., to help you prioritize and build features with context.

The icing on the cake is Zepel’s pricing that doesn’t restrict your features even on the free plan. Additionally, Zepel doesn’t charge a penny for the first 5 members forever no matter how many members you add.

Zepel’s standard annual plan starts at $5/member/month and its standard monthly plan starts at $7/member/month.

Key Highlights:

Simple UI that eases onboarding
Agile capabilities like Sprints, burndown charts, etc that allow both Scrum and Kanban implementation
Developer-friendly due to deep integration with Git and a variety of similar sources
Gathers customer feedback from multiple sources and helps prioritize it
Great pricing plan!

Trello vs Monday vs Zepel

	Trello	Monday	Zepel
Views & Features	Only the Kanban Board view is built-in.Simple limited features in both free and paid plans.	Many built-in views available such as Kanban Board, List, Calendar, Workload, and Timeline. Has more features than required but the features vary based on pricing.	Perfect balance between the two with features like Sprints for Scrum and Kanban board. And has an in-built List view and Board view to help manage your software development Squads. Using Streams in Zepel, you can build customer-focussed software. It allows you to bring customer requests from multiple tools and prioritize with context.
Ease of Use	Extremely simple and straightforward drag and drop UI. But lacks the power to implement agile with its half-baked agile capabilities.	Colorful and fun drag and drop UI but can be quite complicated and overwhelming, especially for newbies.	Powerful tool with more than just dragging and dropping functionality that is easy to grasp. You can create and manage user stories, tasks, bugs customize your workflows and automate them.
Collaboration	Collaborate unlimited users for free with ease. Offers traditional collaboration-focussed features but lacks dependencies to collaborate efficiently.	Cannot collaborate with unlimited users and there’s no free plan.Offers traditional collaboration-focussed features but they’re not in one place. Dependencies can be added but only as a separate column.	Zepel lets you collaborate and onboard members painlessly with no restrictions on features. Add dependencies and perform all the traditional collaboration-focussed functions.
Integrations	100+ integrations and power ups are available.	Monday also offers over a 100 integrations.	Customize and automate your workflows with Zepel’s deep integrations with Git and other similar sources.
Pricing	Simple pricing plan with free plan for unlimited users with unlimited tasks but with restrictions on features. Offers 2 paid plans - Business class and Enterprise that start at $9.99/ user/month billed annually.	Complex pricing with 3 paid plans - basic, standard, and pro, starting at $8/seat /month billed annually. Also includes an enterprise plan.	Straightforward pricing plan that benefits everybody. Zepel is free forever for the first 5 members without feature restrictions and from the 6th member onwards, it starts at $5/member/month billed annually.

Have a look at all the features that Zepel offers here.

2. Clickup

Clickup is a noteworthy alternative to Trello and Monday as it aims to be the all-in-one suite for project management. And therefore it offers abundant features while trying to keep it simple. It can get a bit overwhelming and distracting for a software development team.

But it definitely offers some powerful features like its machine learning capabilities that tries to predict who you are likely to assign a task to, time estimates, and so on.

Clickup’s pricing scheme has a free plan and 3 paid plans - unlimited, business, and enterprise. Free forever plan enables you to add unlimited users and unlimited tasks but with limited storage of 100MB. The other paid plans start at $5/member/month when paid annually and $9/member/month when paid monthly. Check out the complete pricing plan here.

Key Highlights:

Fairly easy to use UI
Abundant features and multiple views to track progress
Machine learning capabilities (beta stage)
Available on multiple devices
Traditional task-related features like description, due date, assignees, etc.

Here’s everything that Clickup offers.

3. nTask

nTask is an increasingly popular tool for project management, catering to both IT and non-IT teams, available today to help you manage your tasks and workflows. Just like all other PM tools, nTask does all the traditional task-related functions like assigning tasks, setting due dates, etc.

But nTask provides features like timesheet management for employee time tracking and meeting management that makes it a desired tool by so many teams.

nTask’s pricing model includes a free plan with unlimited workspaces and tasks but limited storage and only 5 members per workspace. The pro plan starts at $1/member/month.

Key Highlights:

Traditional comprehensive management of tasks that includes assignment, deadlines, prioritization, organizing, and sharing
Timesheet management for employee time tracking and cost incurred
Meeting management feature to schedule and keep track of meetings
Alerts, reminders, and notifications available to help teams stay on track
Issue management and risk management capabilities

Check out all the features nTask offers.

4. Hygger

Hygger is a free project management software that is a notable alternative to Monday. With Hygger, you can not only do your regular task-related functions but also implement the popular agile frameworks - Scrum and Kanban via the boards available for it. However, there are better scrum tools available in the market if scrum is your preferred agile framework.

Task management via these boards can help identify bottlenecks at early stages. Overall, Hygger is an impressive choice for a software team that focuses solely on product development.

Hygger’s pricing plan has a free plan for up to 5 members and a paid standard plan starting at $9/member/month for 6-100 members. An enterprise plan with discounts is available for more than 100 members.

Key Highlights:

Live activity stream with the statuses of tasks and employees’ work logs
Quick overview of task with a unique URL to view a task’s status
Release management to plan and track releases
Versions management to combine tasks belonging to a release
Public APIs to build solutions on Hygger

View all the features that Hygger provides here.

5. Asana

Asana has been a crowd favourite project management software for a while now. And it is primarily because of its team collaboration capability where it enables you to keep all your tasks and conversations in one place. It is pretty similar to both Trello and Monday. Read about how Asana compares with Trello.

There are plenty of features, templates, and views available that make managing tasks easy but it comes with a price (literally!). This tool can get pretty expensive and has a steep learning curve. And there are more desirable and cheaper alternatives to Asana with an easier onboarding process.

Asana pricing comes with a free plan for up to 15 members but with restrictions on features and a standard paid plan that starts at $13.49/member/month.

Key Highlights:

Traditional task-related features of assigning tasks and viewing progress
Hold conversations with team members in one place
Share files up to 100 MB size per file with unlimited storage
Receive email updates each time an edit is made in a workspace

To see the entire list of features that Asana offers, click here.

Why Zepel is a cut above the rest

Zepel can be the simple yet powerful go-to PM tool for your software team and your organization that you’ve been on the lookout for, regardless of the size of your squads.

With Zepel, you can go from planning to shipping quality software painlessly. What’s more, you can also bring in and manage customer requests to ensure that the features you build are customer-focussed. And this way, your product on the whole is customer-centric.

Sign up with Zepel and you'll get more than just a tool; you'll get a team. 4000+ software development teams vouch for it. :)

Try Zepel for free.

How to Merge Pull Requests on GitHub to Merge Branches

Ranjali Roy — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 07:19:40 +0000

When coding collaboratively, suggesting changes becomes a regular affair. Creating pull requests and merging them after a review is the best solution to prevent developers from stepping on each other’s toes.

With Merge Pull Request, GitHub allows you (the reviewer) to go through the suggested changes. From here, you can choose to apply them or add comments to make further changes to the code.

It is particularly useful as it helps merge code from different branches and make sure the code that gets deployed to production is bug-free.

By carefully reviewing the suggested changes before applying them, the risk of jeopardizing your code can be greatly minimized.

Now, let’s dive straight in and learn how to Merge Pull Requests.

Before You Begin

We previously saw how to create a new branch.

But before we jump in, let's take a quick recap on what a base branch and a head branch is.

The base branch is the branch you wish to merge the approved pull requests into i.e apply the suggested changes to while the head branch is the branch that contains the suggested changes. Most often, the base? branch will be the master branch.

So, make sure that you thoroughly inspect each pull request, resolve conflicts if any, and only then merge the changes into the master branch.

Because, at the end of the day, the master branch should contain only the up-to-date final version of your code.

You can use these 5 Git workflows to ensure that no conflicts arise while merging.

Merging a Pull Request on GitHub

Follow these simple steps to merge a PR on GitHub:

1 Open the main page of your repository on your GitHub account in your browser and click on the Pull requests tab.

2 Now, you’ll be shown a list of all the pull requests that require reviewing. Click on the pull request of your choice.

3 You will be able to have an overview of the details of the pull request under the Conversation tab.

4 Select the Files Changed tab to view the suggested changes.

5 A. Once you’ve viewed the changes, you can either go back to the Conversation tab to perform Merge Pull Requests by selecting one of the 3 options using the dropdown.

5 B. Or you can click on the Review changes button on the top right corner and you can choose to comment, approve or request further changes.

6 If you disapprove of the pull request, click on the Close pull request button at the bottom of the page.

Tip: Delete the head branch after merging to keep your repository tidy. :)

Selecting the Merge Pull Request options

Let us understand all the 3 options available to perform Merge Pull Requests in GitHub before selecting one:

1 Merge Pull Request
2 Squash and merge
3 Rebase and merge

Merge Pull Request or Create a merge commit

Merge Pull Request option, or the create a merge commit option, is the default option. Clicking this will merge all the commits in the PR, suggested in the head branch, into the base branch.

In this illustration, the head branch gets branched off from the second commit in the base branch. Some changes are suggested as new commits in the head branch and they must now be updated in the base branch. By Merge pull request, the commits get added to the base branch as depicted in the image above.

Note: You need to have the write permissions in the repo.

Squash and merge

Squash and merge combines all the commits in the PR into one single commit and then merges it from the head branch into the base branch. This way, your history can be made more clear and streamlined.

In this illustration, it can be noticed that the head branch gets branched off from the base branch’s second commit. And two new commits are added to the head. By Squash and merge, both these commits get squashed into a single commit and then merged into the base branch as shown in the image above.

Note: You not only require write permissions in the repo but your repo must also allow squash merging.

Rebase and merge

Rebase and merge adds all commits (in the PR) from the head branch individually to the base branch, without merge commit. For all those hotfixes and one-off commits that can’t be merged into other commits, this is your go-to option.

As seen in the illustration, the base branch gets branched off in the second commit to form the head branch. A little while later a new commit gets added to the base branch. Meanwhile, commits are made in the head branch.

By Rebase and merge from base branch to head branch, the base of the head branch gets rebased. That is, now, the head branch gets branched off from the third (new) commit so that the new commit is included in the head branch. And then, the commits in the head branch get applied.

Now, to update the base branch with the latest commits in the head, rebasing is done from head to base as depicted in the image above.

Note: You need write permissions in the repository and your repo must allow rebase merging.

How to Automatically Merge Pull Requests

Auto-merge is a feature offered by GitHub that lets PRs automatically be merged into your base branch if the required criteria set for your branch are met.

To set this up, follow the steps below:

1 Navigate to the Setting tab under the main page of your repository.

2 Under the Options tab, scroll down to find and enable the Allow auto-merge button under the Merge button section.

Note: This auto-merge feature of GitHub is currently in the beta stage and is subject to change.

As a developer, it is essential to have a developer-friendly PM tool to complement your development workflow.

Zepel is one of the most developer-friendly PM tools providing deep integration with GitHub.

Now, you needn’t bother doing the boring routine work of status updates as Zepel will take care of it for you. Instead, you can focus all your time and energy on building state-of-the-art software products.

All you’ve got to do is use Zepel’s suggested branch name when you create a new branch.

And if you want to get real-time notifications of your team’s progress updates, simply connect your Slack with Zepel.

That’s not all. You can even open a PR from within Zepel!

Hate manually updating your progress in your current PM tool? Try Zepel for free and leave this boring grunt work to us while you concentrate on the important stuff and increase your development velocity.

If you're not fully convinced, see how Zepel compares to other agile project management tools and check out why 4000+ teams prefer it over others.