What are the Best Task Management Tools for Software Developers?

Do you know what the best task management tools are that you should be using when outsourcing?

When outsourcing software development projects, developers and project team members often need to collaborate remotely. This can pose challenges when it comes to everything from communication to project deadlines being met on time. However, this doesn’t have to be the case.

At present, several online software tools exist which make remote collaboration altogether easy.

What is the Best Task Management Tool You Should be Using?

The best online project management software applications are those which focus on streamlining communication. Without strong communication, it is easy for project deadlines to slip and general workflow to start feeling scattered and disorganized.

Given the importance of seamless communication, we've made a list of what we consider five of the top project management tools currently on the market.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to software-based project management tools. Founded back in 1999, Basecamp originally took the project management world by storm under the brand name 37signals.

What is Basecamp?

Basecamp markets itself as the best task management tool on the market in terms of communication. This is thanks to the fact that Basecamp combines a full suite of to-do list tools, project-specific message boards, and scheduling tools.

As a bonus, Basecamp also provides ample, easy to navigate storage for project files. This makes it easy for disparate teams to communicate and collaborate. However, Basecamp isn’t for everyone.

Basecamp does cater specifically for software developers. Instead, Basecamp mainly focuses on meeting the collaboration needs of web app developers. Pricing is also somewhat prohibitive, with Basecamp charging $99 per month for accounts capable of serving between five and fifty individual users.

Jira - The Best Task Management Tool for Smaller Dev Teams

Basecamp was one of the first online project management software applications. However, newer project management and project task tracker tools have since come to market. Many of these also fill feature gaps which makes them more appropriate for software developers.

Jira is one of the newest project management tools on the market. Jira is also one of the most fully-featured and budget-friendly. This is thanks to the fact that out of the box, Jira includes comprehensive communication and scheduling tools. Even better, Jira also includes software bug tracking tools and sells itself as helping thousands of developers expedite delivery of projects.

At present, teams of up to 10 people can collaborate on Jira for just $10 per month. That said, prices do increase considerably if larger teams need to collaborate.

Slack - The Best Budget Project Management Tool on the Market

Jira is more affordable than Basecamp when it comes to small team collaborations. However, there are even more affordable options on the market.

Initially released in 2013, Slack provides software developers with a wide variety of collaboration and productivity tools. Slack is also easy to integrate with third-party software repositories like GitHub. Best of all, Slack is completely free for small teams to use, with premium price plans starting at just $15 per month.

Trello

Trello is a software development collaboration tool brought to market by Atlassian. They’re the same team behind Jira which we mentioned earlier. However. Trello offers a variety of features absent from Jira.

Targeted at developers, Trello allows team members to view rendred views of code, complete with branch names and colored tags for easy backlog navigation. Trello also offers a variety of communication, budget, and bug tracking tools.

GitHub

Last on our list, GitHub is one of the Internet’s most well-known collaboration tools for software developers. This is thanks to the fact that GitHub allows users to create and collaborate on an infinite number of software repositories for just $9 per month per user.

Sadly, GitHub is not designed to foster seamless communication between non-developers. For this reason, GitHub is best used in conjunction with other collaboration tools like Slack.