The project management space is undergoing significant change and evolution, just like practically every industry and niche market across the world. As the workplace shifts into a more hybrid and remote distributed model, we can expect project management to require new technologies and adaptations that accommodate these changes.
Businesses are moving to a greater reliance and digital and remote teams to complete their work and increase productivity. That means moving scheduling, communication, hours management, and so much more to a virtual space that is easy to use for all team leads. Finding the software and applications that achieve this level of clarity is a challenge because there are a lot of contenders currently in the marketplace.
That is why we have put together a short comparison of two project management tools for Jira – Teamboard ProScheduler and Structure PM.
What is ProScheduler?
ProScheduler is a customized and visual-based project management tool developed by Teamboard. This is a highly adaptable resource planning and management tool that works directly with Jira to streamline your business and project operations from any location in the world. It provides you and your investors with a big picture of current resource utilization and availability so you can plan on future needs and offers a pathway to project balancing based on visual cues.
This modern design visual board allows you to efficiently manage your team’s needs, resources, and communication, all from an easy-to-understand user interface. In addition, you’ll get access to an all-in-one platform for reporting and setting flexible work hours based on the current needs of your project and team availability. This makes it significantly easier to manage freelancers, staff, and other teams in different time zones by creating a central location for all information to run through and be analyzed.
ProScheduler lets you capture those gaps in your current project development so you can quickly fill in any needs with the appropriate resource allocation available. Stop worrying about upcoming holidays or team conflicts over who works more than who by laying everything out in a quick and easy-to-read way so people can see where they can meet the demands of their work while still adjusting for their work-life balance, like sick and vacation days.
Pros of ProScheduler
- Integrates smoothly with Jira as a project management and resource planning tool/plugin
- Easy to understand task planning and time tracking for all team members
- An excellent reporting system for management and leadership needs
- Scheduling and time tracking no matter the current hybrid or remote work model of your business
- Interactive online Gantt charting capabilities
- Easy to manage multiple projects in a single view that simplifies workload balancing
- Generate time-tracking data as needed
- Allows task scheduling and assignment to multiple people or scheduling multiple times
What is Structure PM
Structure PM (Project Management at Scale) is a new addition to the field that works directly with Jira by simplifying the complex data and placing it into easy-to-read hierarchies based on user-defined models. You get a ton of customization on the additional reporting and hierarchies you introduce into the program that helps your back office maintain proper resources after the fact.
The significant advantage of Structure PM is its ability to compare information. You can use cross-project tracking and customizable reports to really see the deep details of every ongoing project you have. This helps remove the manual work of entering in so many notes. Instead, everything is based on a visual spreadsheet vie of Jira that works directly through Atlassian Cloud.
We have to admit the history feature of pulling up older projects for active comparison is a nice touch with Structure PM. Where it lacks is in added features like you would get with Teamboard’s ProScheduler. However, it does have plenty of user-powered addons and reporting that are unique to the application.
Pros of Structure PM
- Unlimited hierarchies with decent project dept for issues, sub-issues, and so on regardless of type
- Decent high-level big picture overview with tasks and milestones easily visible from all projects currently on task
- Access to pre-populated template structures that don’t require you to make everything from scratch
- Organized progress and time trackers that allow aggregate information in relation to other relationships using an agile link or subtask
ProScheduler for the Win!
We’ve got no issue with Structure PM. It is a valuable piece of software that does exactly what it promises it will do for its clients. However, it lacks the full features of ProScheduler. This is a piece of software with way more visual representation of all current tasks, team members, hours, and other resources being allocated in real-time. This alone is enough to propel the software into our leading choice, but you toss on top of that formula the additional Gantt Chart capabilities and future features for budgeting and more coming out soon, and you get an incredibly bespoke and reliable application.
Jira is one of the most popular project management suites out there. Finding a secondary piece of software that integrates smoothly with this interface and interprets that info in a smooth and easy-to-understand way is a massive advantage to driving more efficiencies in your team’s progress.
ProScheduler gives you:
Macro View of Your Status
Everything is laid out in a clean visual interface so you can quickly monitor and react to any changes in your current project management situation. There is no need to struggle to find solutions to scheduling conflicts or new business that comes across your dashboard.
Drag & Drop Capabilities
If you can use social media, you can use ProScheduler. The drag and drop feature allows you to schedule teams, projects, or events by simply dragging over any bookings through the scheduler that then updates you, your team, and your investors in real-time.
Manage Team Organization
ProScheduler has an awesome sideboard where you can organize your resources into teams or roles for whatever project you are currently undertaking. This focuses those people into targeted jobs to complete the work on time and on budget.
Detailed Reporting from Anywhere
The mobile web app from ProScheduler makes it painless to update and schedule any new needs with your team no matter where you are in the world. You could be riding the elevator to your kiddo’s next presentation of Peter Pan while actively moving resources for a new project, and team members across the globe just going to bed for the day will get a notification of the change.
Conclusion
Structure PM is a decent program with unique features that will allow it to grow under specific circumstances, but for our investment, we have to give the upper hand to Teamboard’s ProScheduler. You just get way more capability and bespoke control over your team and the resources being allocated.
Head over to ProScheduler’s site for a view of the latest demo to see how this powerful Jira addon can save you so much time and money. Once you are done, be sure to sign up for their latest news, as updates are frequently being released by Teamboard. This is also a great intro product into the rest of Teamboard’s suite of Jira enhancements that are worth checking out. You’ll be amazed at how easy ProScheduler makes your project management for the future of hybrid and remote working.