IT project management software: Key features and comparisons

IT projects work best when they’re managed with software designed for the needs of a technical team. While there are plenty of generic project management platforms out there, many of them won’t be able to provide the specific tools an IT team needs to: 

• Standardize everyday processes like task intake or delegation
• Automate and track their workflows, backlog, and sprints in one place
• Create a secure and rigorous approvals system
• Balance the team’s workload and monitor their capacity
• Continually evaluate and improve their processes for future projects

In this guide, we look at the unique challenges of IT projects and the industry-specific software features that can make them easier to manage. 

We’ll introduce you to our work management platform, Wrike, explain how you can tailor-make a workspace for your IT projects, and show the results our users have seen in two case studies. Finally, we’ll compare the features of five other tools, so you can choose the best IT project management software for your team. 

Unique challenges in IT project management 

Although there’s plenty of overlap between IT project management and project tracking systems used in other departments, technical teams usually have processes that function best when they’re managed with different methods. This is because IT teams can face different challenges when setting up, delivering, and evaluating projects. 

For example: 

• IT projects demand more specialized knowledge from the team and the project manager. They may have to put more work into keeping their expertise up to date and adapting to new tools, platforms, and methods as technology changes more rapidly than in areas like sales or financial services.
• IT projects are interdependent, with multiple systems that need to work together. The integrations and dependencies that IT teams handle every day can need careful, skillful management — and quick fixes if something goes wrong. 
• IT projects need stringent security to protect a company’s data and comply with the latest regulations. This can mean more demanding quality assurance and integration testing before a project can move into the final phase. Often, these rigorous standards have to be applied across a high volume of subtasks, which makes finding a watertight — but efficient — approvals process essential. 
• IT projects involve multiple stakeholders with varying requirements, priorities, and technical knowledge. The process of managing expectations, aligning goals across departments, and communicating needs can be more complex for IT teams, which means their project plans need to include more user testing and change management strategies. 
• IT projects plan for different types of risk. Alongside standard threats like budget or time constraints, IT teams are up against bugs, technological failures, and cybersecurity issues. Their contingency plans need to account for complex and unpredictable challenges, and they may have to be put into action quickly. 
• IT projects demand more flexibility. Because of this unpredictability, IT teams are used to adapting their project plans. This is part of the reason they’re so likely to take an Agile approach to project management rather than using a sequential framework. 

This means many project management apps designed for multiple use cases are not robust enough to manage complex workflows, track the high number of tickets an IT team might receive, or handle how intricately their work integrates with other systems and teams at a company. When you need a tool that can cope with a high level of interdependence, a large task volume, and an exhaustive list of security concerns, Wrike’s IT project management systems are the best on the market. 

Our award-winning work management platform is used by the IT departments at Sony Pictures Television, Moneytree, Flashbay, and De’Longhi, as well as 20,000 other global companies. 

So now, we’ll look at the tools that can help your IT team plan, track progress, collaborate, and complete their projects in one powerful platform. 

1. Wrike: The best project management system for IT specialists 

Wrike is your all-in-one solution for managing your IT team’s requests, tracking your workflows, measuring your progress, and reporting on the success of your projects. 

Let’s look at how our industry-leading features can streamline project execution and increase productivity across IT projects. 

Automation

Automation reduces the number of manual tasks your team has to manage, speeds up progress, and minimizes human error. 

For IT teams, Wrike’s easy-to-use automation rules are particularly effective for jobs like bug reporting and service desk requests, where teams typically have to deal with a constant stream of new requests and repeatable tasks. 

• With custom request forms, you can capture the details your team needs upfront, with options to set compulsory fields, calendars, drop-down menus, and more. You can even set your request forms to automatically kick off a new workflow, create a card for your team’s Kanban board, or add a task to your backlog. 
• With workflow automation, you can automate routine actions like file sharing and status updates, and track tasks effortlessly through the different stages of your workflow. Wrike includes prebuilt, industry-standard IT service management workflow templates for projects, sprints, ticketing, and more. 
• With approval workflows, you can ensure that every task your team completes passes through the same layers of review before it’s signed off. Wrike’s automation rules can notify a designated approver as soon as a task is completed and show them the latest version of the file. We also include tools like a live editor and tagged comments so they can request and action changes clearly, quickly, and smoothly.
• With automated report generation, you can stay in the loop and receive regular feedback on your team’s progress and performance, including project status, budgeting, and accurate risk management alerts based on your capacity, timesheets, and performance. This information can help you respond to the changing challenges of managing projects and continually improve your processes for the future. 
• With templates and blueprints, you can set your workspace to create a recurring task automatically, so the key information and steps are instantly available the next time you have to complete the workflow. 
• With automated task dependencies, you can easily define and connect the tasks that rely on each other. For example, when the end of your testing phase is dependent on completing the tickets in your backlog, you can set the milestone to postpone automatically if the due dates for the bug fixes are pushed back. 

What’s more, when your team works in Wrike, all the information about your tasks and projects — from data on the task status, to the files you’re using, to comments from reviewers — is stored as a central source of truth for your team. All our automations and reports draw on this data, so you can be sure the project overviews that inform your decisions are based on the latest information. 

Find out more: Fly through tasks with Wrike’s powerful automations and AI

Delegation

With a constant backlog of tasks, IT teams need a shared system of delegation and task ownership if they’re going to accomplish their goals. So, as well as giving you a bird’s-eye view of your project, Wrike supplies the granular data you need to assign tasks and resources effectively throughout your project. 

• With your backlog box, you can easily display tasks that need to be scheduled and assigned in one clear chart. Incoming tasks can be sent to the backlog box, you can create tasks and subtasks in the box, and you can drag and drop tasks from the box to assign them — for example, when you’re getting ready for a new sprint. 
• With workload charts, you can view each team member’s time tracking and commitments across all the projects they’re involved in, so you can accurately assess their capacity and optimize workload distribution. With additional tools like task effort estimation, it’s even easier to manage your team’s capacity or reassign tasks if they need extra support. 
• With automated desktop and mobile app notifications, you can let your team know when a new task is assigned to them, no matter where in the workflow they need to come on board. When tasks change status, you can set up an intuitive automation rule to ping the person with the right level of authority to tackle the next stage. Plus, you can set automation rules to remind team members about tasks — for example, when a task sits for a number of days at a certain status or when there’s an upcoming milestone.

Delegating work frees managers to work on strategic tasks while creating the clarity, accountability, and authority your team needs to deliver the best results. This sets the scene for effective team collaboration and provides a fantastic foundation when you need to scale up for new projects. 

Find out more: Maximize efficiency with Wrike’s task management

Integration

Wrike empowers your team by making the tools you need accessible from the task management software you use every day, including other communication and project management tools like Slack. 

Other integration platforms limit the number of apps you can connect to, but the Wrike Integrate add-on connects your work management system to as many different tools as you need. When you remove common integration and gaps with seamless fixes, you can sync all your data and fully automate your workflows. 

• Make integrations work for your team, with more than 400 cloud and on-premises integrations and thousands more using Wrike’s powerful API. Using these tools, you can create systems and workflow automations that will truly streamline your work. 
• Build intuitive, no-code workflows by using prebuilt connectors. Our approachable interface helps developers set up advanced workflows more quickly and easily. 
• Enjoy enterprise-grade security. Wrike securely connects to on-premises applications that sit behind a firewall, and you can limit access for integrations by using roles, permissions, and other controls. Your data is protected with end-to-end encryption and kept private with data masking. Read more about Wrike’s data security policies here. 

The powerful combination of Wrike Integrate and intelligent automations helps you take a revolutionary approach to integration across your organization. 

Find out more: Visit our API portal

Customization 

When you work with Wrike, you can tailor-make a workspace for your IT team. From multiple timeline view features and Gantt chart project roadmaps, to list and table views showing everything your team has coming up, our unbeatable customization gives every team member the tools they need to complete their tasks. 

Spaces define and manage the different teams or departments using Wrike at your organization. Spaces — and the folders you set up within them — group the information that’s relevant to each specific team, so they can access the files they need without distractions. 

• Filter your project data to view the tasks you need to see, the tasks created by you, or to group work by assignee, status, location, or any other variable relevant to your work. 
• Create custom dashboards with widgets to filter your project data. You can create dashboards for departments and projects, as well as personalized dashboards where every team member can monitor the latest project updates, create a to-do list, see the tasks that have been assigned to them in their inbox, and prioritize their work. 
• Use custom fields to give team members a complete picture of their work items. Instead of tracking generic task cards that don’t represent the work that has to be done, custom fields help you gather, store, and track the data that actually relates to your work. Then, you can display this data in your workspace for an at-a-glance overview of the headlines you need to see. 
• Add the essential tools for Agile project management. Many IT teams use Agile or hybrid methodologies when they approach their project planning. To help you maximize responsiveness and flexibility, add Agile templates to your workspace to manage your work and get the most from your meetings. Try the Agile teamwork template, Kanban project template, and sprint planning and retrospective templates to start strong and learn from your experiences. 

With Wrike, you can create a workspace that fulfills all the needs of your IT team. With these frameworks, workflows, overviews, and indispensable security features, project managers can make informed decisions and team members can manage their work efficiently. 

Implementing Wrike is a smooth and simple process, with onboarding to help your team get to grips with the tools and unbeatable customer support. 

More than 2.4 million people have benefited from these features, along with countless other work management tools included in Wrike. 

The success stories speak for themselves. 

Case Study: Moneytree 

Moneytree is a financial services provider with more than 80 branches in the US and Canada. The training, compliance, product development, and IT departments pride themselves on exceptional customer service, which Wrike helps them deliver. 

Moneytree faced issues with a lack of visibility, inefficient tracking, and its approvals process. Wrike was incorporated into its existing processes and unified teams around a single source of truth.

The results: 

• 75% increased project speed from start to finish 
• Scaled to 3x the team size with ease 
• Project manager saved 1.5 hours every week by creating reports instead of updating Excel spreadsheets, and three hours every week with proofing features

Case study: Syneos Health

Syneos Health is a fully integrated, end-to-end biopharmaceutical solutions organization with over 28,000 employees in 110 countries. Relying on emails, Excel, and a network of disconnected task management systems strained the team, but Wrike was the unified and scalable solution they needed. 

With Wrike, the team has full visibility into their project timelines, so they can plan resources, distribute the workload, and prioritize effectively. Global dashboards and custom-built reports keep everyone in the loop and make kicking off new projects a breeze. 

The moment our teams saw Wrike, we heard a resounding ‘yes’ – it was the one system that met each and every one of our team’s comprehensive and complex requirements.

Sherrie Besecker, Creative Technology Manager

The results: 

• 200 tasks issued in Wrike every day 
• 215,000 total tasks executed in Wrike 
• 15,000 successful projects

Ready to see Wrike for yourself? Get in touch with our sales team, and we’ll respond within 24 hours. 

Alternative tools for IT project management 

With Wrike, you have all the project management tools you need to help your team stay on track, plus the robust security, automation, and integration features IT teams rely on. We’ve also seen how Wrike has worked for real IT teams in different companies. 

Having said this, we also know we’re one of many project management solutions on the market, and there are plenty of other tools that prioritize features for IT, helpdesk, and software development teams in their advertising.

Let’s take a quick look at five of the most widely known options so you can make an informed decision for your team. 

2. Asana 

Like Wrike, Asana is a popular work management tool. Asana teams can use calendars, boards, and list views to build workspaces and monitor tasks. As with Wrike, teams can access Asana through desktop software compatible with Mac or Windows, or an app that keeps them up to date on iOS or Android. 

For IT teams, Asana highlights its request, routing, and notification tools, as well as integration and security features. However, Asana tends to fall down when it comes to the cross-department work that IT teams often have to engage in. While project-level dashboards are available, you can’t build a separate dashboard for each team as you can in Wrike. It can also be difficult to carry request forms, workflows, and automations across from project to project, which creates busywork that could be avoided with a more robust tool.

Read an in-depth comparison here: Asana vs. Monday.com vs. Wrike: A detailed comparison

3. ClickUp 

ClickUp is an all-in-one PM and productivity tool for a range of use cases, from human resources, to product development, to marketing and sales. 

Its IT-specific features focus on streamlining workflows and processes to help teams meet their delivery targets. Like many of the tools available, ClickUp covers workflow automation, real-time progress insights in customizable dashboards, and AI-powered reporting. 

ClickUp is known for its user-friendly interface, which makes it easier for teams to navigate. But while it’s easy to get started with this platform, the simplicity translates into some significant limitations for managing complex projects and scaling up. The software can lag as more data is added. It also suffers from limited workload, reporting, and analytics features, which can make it difficult to plan more than a few weeks ahead. 

4. Jira 

Jira is part of the Atlassian Group, which also includes well-known tools like Trello. This platform ranks high on many lists of IT project management solutions because it was first developed for software teams. 

Jira’s project management features have expanded to task management, goal setting, real-time insights, and the Atlassian Intelligence AI, which automatically suggests new tasks. For IT teams specifically, it lists helpdesk features, request and issue management, and reporting tools. It’s worth noting that Jira is also set up to manage Agile sprints, scrums, and Kanban boards.

Although Jira started as the go-to tool for IT and software teams, there are now options that offer better connectivity across different departments. For example, it’s not uncommon for Jira users to have to set up a complex integration or purchase additional tools to enjoy the full functionality across multiple parts of their company. 

5. Microsoft Project 

Microsoft Project is designed to assist project managers with tasks like scheduling, progress tracking, resource allocation, and workload management. It’s included as a free plan with Microsoft 365, or teams can subscribe to MS Project separately on a pricing plan based on features and the number of users. 

MS Project is known for its project templates, task list and management features, and Gantt chart generation. It also integrates well with tools like MS Teams, Outlook, and Excel. 

However, MS Project’s website doesn’t list IT as a specific use case. It tends to silo information, with limited third-party integrations that IT teams need when collaborating with other parts of a business or with customers. It’s also worth noting that this platform is designed primarily for managers and PMO teams rather than as a collaboration tool for the team members deployed to the project. 

 Note: If you’ve been working with MS Project or other Microsoft tools like Excel, it’s incredibly easy to import your files into Wrike. 

6. Zoho Projects 

Zoho is known for its wide range of SaaS tools. This means its flagship Zoho Projects PM software easily integrates with tools to manage the other tasks IT teams might be involved in, like budgeting, invoicing, proofing, and customer relationship management (CRM). 

Zoho lists “software development” as a main use case on its website as well as features for clarifying requirements, tracking progress, reporting bugs, and more. It also includes blueprint and automation features to set a team up for repeatable tasks, a resource management chart to balance workload, and some communication features critical for collaboration, like messaging feeds and forums, customizable notifications, and shared document storage. 

Compared to some other platforms, Zoho’s paid plans are generally affordable for small businesses. If you have a small team using simpler workflows, their features can give you a solid start. On the other hand, if you’re looking to upgrade your software for a more complex project or you’re already juggling a number of intricate workflows, you might do better with a more scalable tool. 

Wrike: The best project management software for IT teams

When you want to centralize the work of your IT team to boost their productivity and hone your processes, Wrike is the only project management tool you need.

With all the automation, delegation, integration, and customization features IT teams need to handle their unique task management challenges, Wrike can help your team members work more collaboratively and efficiently across groundbreaking projects and everyday tasks. 

Find out how Wrike can work for your IT team with a two-week free trial—no credit, no commitment, and no downloads required.