Market Summary

The market for project and task management tools has been growing steadily over the last couple of years and as shown in the chart below, they are expected to continue growing at least throughout the next 7 years.

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The global project management tool market is estimated to grow three fold from $2.3 billion in 2019 to approximately $7.0 billion in 2027.

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Taking a look specifically at the German market gives us an impression of how significantly Atlassian’s Jira prevails over its competitors in terms of market share. Jira itself makes up almost half of the market.

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Similarly, the global task management tool market is expected to increase almost threefold from $1.7 Billion to $4.5 Billion from 2018 to 2026. Below is the list of the key players on this market (in no specific order), according to Fortune Business Insights - a market research company:

  • Microsoft Corporation

  • Upland Software, Inc.

  • Atlassian

  • RingCentral, Inc.

  • Pivotal Software, Inc.

  • monday.com

  • Asana, Inc.

  • AZENDOO

  • Quick Base


ASANA versus MONDAY.COM

The purpose of this blog post is to shed light on two of the most novel project/task management tools to have breached this market, Asana and monday.com, how they are positioned on the market, their unique selling points and how they differ from earlier comers like Jira and Trello.

Asana, founded in 2008, is one of the leading cloud-based project and workflow management solutions with its headquarters based in San Francisco. Valued at $1.5B after its fifth funding round of $50M, the company claims to have more than 50,000 paying customers including IBM, eBay, Uber, Overstock, etc. as of 2018.

monday.com, based in Israel, came along a bit later in 2012, but its adoption has been growing fast. Having received a total funding of $234.1M after four rounds, monday.com has proven its performance in making project management more efficient for big customers like Costco, Universal, Adobe, Uber, etc. Rather than narrowly defining itself as a mere project management tool, monday.com is versatile and provides flexible functionalities around task management using a loose concept - pulse - that can be adapted for a wide range of workflows and activities.

While comparing Asana against monday.com might shed some light on the tools’ individual feature sets, in order to illustrate how they’re positioning themselves on the market, we’ve chosen to juxtapose them against two other very popular solutions: Atlassian’s Jira and Trello.

Besides the easily noticeable UI/UX differences, i.e. Asana’s and monday.com’s UIs seem more sophisticated while Jira’s and Trello’s are trying to be more simple and straightforward, a lot of other dissimilarities lurk beneath the surface. In order to support the undecided user in making an unbiased decision for their next project management tool, we’ve created the following overview of the tool’s capabilities and features:


  ASANA   MONDAY.COM   TRELLO   JIRA  
EXAMPLE USE CASES - Project tracking
- Workflow management
- Task prioritization
- Team collaboration
- Resource management
- Product development
- Time management
- Event planning
- Portfolio management
- Remote work
- Project tracking
- Task management
- Workflow management
- Product management
- Marketing campaigns
- Product development
- Creative workflows
- Customized workflows
- Resource management
- Time tracking
- Portfolio management
- Team collaboration
- Task prioritization
- Project planning
- Remote teams
- Team collaboration
- Project tracking
- Development workflows
- Customizable workflows
- Knowledge management
- Product management
- Generic Issue tracking
- Almost any conceivable business case with a well-defined process, through its customisable workflows and issue types
HOSTING OPTIONS Cloud-based Cloud-based Cloud-based Cloud-based
On-premise Data Center / Server (Server to be removed in 2024)
TARGET CUSTOMERS - Individuals, teams, startups, SMBs, large enterprises, non-profit organizations
- Most popular in IT / Business services industries.
- Any type of business
- Well-suited for SMEs
- Most popular in business services field
- Individuals, families, schools, functional teams
- Most popular in IT / Business services industries.
- Any type of business
- Well-suited for SMEs
- Most popular in IT
PRICING SCHEMES Three price schemes:

- Basic - Free: includes task lists, Kanban boards, calendars, app integrations, for teams up to 15 users

- Premium - €10.99/user per month with annual contract: all basic features plus timelines, advanced searches, and custom field creation

- Business - €24.99/user per month with annual contract: all basic and premium features plus portfolios, Workload, forms, automatic proofing, and Adobe Creative Cloud integration

- Enterprise - customized
Dependent on the number of team members
With 14-day free trial:

- Basic: €8/user per month for up to 40 users. Unlimited project viewers, unlimited boards, iOS and Android apps, 5 GB file storage limit, 1 week activity log limit, and 1 dashboard limit

- Standard: €10/user per month for up to 40 users (annual plan). All basic features plus 50 GB file storage limit, unlimited activity log, 4 guest accounts, timeline view, calendar view, advanced search, custom forms, integrations, and additional 4 dashboards (5 in total)

- Pro: €16/user per month for up to 40 users (annual plan). All basic / standard features plus unlimited file storage, unlimited guest accounts, time tracking, chart views, formula columns, private boards, and additional 15 dashboards (20 in total)

- Enterprise: All features plus 30 dashboards (50 in total), audit logs, user session management, advanced account permissions, 1-on-1 training, and a customer success manager - contact sales for prices
Three tiers of pricing:

- Free: unlimited boards, lists, cards, members, checklists, and attachments as well as one Power-Up per board. Attachments up to 10 MB or any file linked from Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or OneDrive

- Business: $9.99/user per month (annual plan). Includes all features in the free version plus unlimited Power-Ups and allows attachments up to 250 MB

- Enterprise: $17.50 or less/user per month (annual plan). Includes all features in Business Class plus additional security measures and support, and personalized assistance
For Cloud:

Small teams up to 10 users:

Free version available - all features relevant to agile and workflows with 2GB storage, except advanced, project-level, and auditing/security features or professional support

All teams:

- Standard plan: maximum $7/user per month (up to 10,000 users), for every 100 users added the rate decreases - site limit of 1, 250 GB file storage space, local support

- Premium plan: maximum $14/user per month (up to 10,000 users), for every 100 users added the rate decreases - standard features plus advanced security features, audit logs, site limit of 1, unlimited storage and 24/7 premium support

- Enterprise plan: contact sales team, unlimited users, sites and storage, 24/7 enterprise support
SUPPORTED FUNCTIONALITIES        
Task Lists ✔️ ✔️ (check-list available in each card, not for overall backlog items) ✔️
Task Boards ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
Gantt Charts ✔️ ✔️ on Business and Enterprise plans via integration/add-on
Shared Calendar ✔️ ✔️ on Business and Enterprise plans via integration/add-on
File Sharing ✔️ ✔️ via integration/add-on via integration/add-on
Time Tracking ✔️ ✔️ via integration/add-on ✔️
Budgeting ✔️ via integration/add-on
Resource Mngmt ✔️ ✔️ via integration/add-on via integration/add-on
APIs RESTful API GraphQL-based API RESTful API RESTful API
INTEGRATIONS - Dropbox
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Microsoft Outlook
- Slack
- Google Calendar
- Everhour Reporting
- Trello
- Mailchimp
- …
- Dropbox
- Slack
- Jira
- Microsoft Outlook
- Zendesk
- Google Office Suite
- Trello
- Basecamp
- Mailchimp
- …
- Dropbox
- Adobe XD
- Slack
- Jira
- Salesforce
- Confluence
- Gmail
- Google Drive
- …
- Dropbox
- Adobe XD
- Slack
- Git
- Trello
- Gmail
- Excel
- Microsoft Outlook
- Confluence
- Bitbucket
- …
DOMAIN MODELS Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban Scrum, Kanban, also open with customizable workflows Open with a Kanban board style Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban and open also with customizable workflows

Based on our experience with managing projects and steering product development in the IT sector, we’ve devised an additional set of criteria, that show typical scenarios we’ve encountered and how well they can be modelled using each tool.

  ASANA   MONDAY.COM   TRELLO   JIRA  
Modelling Sprints in Scrum Modelling sprints is possible with addons, (for example Asana sprint burndown chart).

Does not provide a embedded generated burndown chart now but velocity estimation and performance tracking are possible using custom fields.
There is a template for Scrum with 2 week period for each iteration (sprint). Utilizes also the concept of story points with describe effort to complete tasks in days and based on this reporting, planning and burndown charts for each sprint is possible. Period choice is open, no default set period. Sprint duration can be set explicitly (i.e. 2 weeks). Report generation, planning of future sprints, velocity determination based on story estimates also possible because of this.
Searching and Filtering Basic filters: incomplete/complete tasks, own tasks, due dates, assignees, priority.
Basic filters: filtering boards in terms of Sprint, name of the items, responsible persons, status, priority, estimation, epic, etc.
Currently only for searching titles of cards (search feature in the top left) is available as part of Trello offer. More sophisticated filtering and search can be built as extension.
Basic filters of boards, but also including sophisticated option to auto hide something after N days (for example in Kanban view we can hide completed items after 2 weeks). JQL for complex queries.JQL can be further improved upon with addons.

Flexibility of workflow configuration Elements of workflow are created, named directly in view, without the option to highly customize them separately.
Elements of workflow are created, named directly in view, without the option to highly customize them separately.
Elements of workflow are created, named directly in view, without the option to highly customize them separately.
Hierarchical and structural where elements are highly customizable and configured separately, giving more convenience in mass configuration and ease in automation of workflows.

Workflow can be created in diagram view (workflow engine), allowing simple workflow build at one place and automatically applying workflow in boards/lists.

From any type of issue, the workflow can be built from different stages free of choice. We are free to define when certain stage starts, who checks and approves.

Automation Automation includes rule that specify actions to be taken in case of events happening to pre-defined dependencies. Actions include: set dates, add persons/followers, assign tasks, change priority, move tasks to sections, as well as customized rules users can define themselves.
Automation is defined as rules that specify the dependencies between actions with respect to statuses, assignees, dates/time: change status, notify someone, change date/time, create items, create new boards, updates, archive something, change assignee, etc. There is a possibility to link items across boards or cross-board actions in automation.
Automation is defined as rules in Butler command building feature using natural language. Here relations between actions are specified with respect to content/item, team members, dates/time, or to link cards, mirror actions on tasks (cards) that have dependencies.
Automation is available with built-in rule templates and also option to completely flexibly build / customize rules.

Some of the most popular use cases: closing parent task upon closing sub-tasks, closing relevant issues and notifying users upon bug fixes, cloning and assigning issues, etc.

Epic concept in Scrum Use of portfolios to group projects (features) and tasks (issues) instead of epics, can be confused with actual project concept which is higher-level.
Epic is only a tag (text) for grouping issues together, for assignment only. It has to be added manually for issues/subtasks.
Epic card is available as a free add-on (limited). Otherwise, epic is not a predefined concept and needs to be manually set.
Epic is a defined concept and has predefined relation with other concepts like projects, issues, etc. It is not only for assignment, but it is an issue itself and can be tailored to needs and inherit all issue features/functionalities.
DevOps metrics Integration with Microsoft Azure DevOps, GitHub, and Bitbucket available via third-party workflow management offer called Unito, not on Asana itself. Enabled account linking to GitLab account and back. How the two support/follow up with each other is defined by automation rules, i.e. When an issue is created in Gitlab, create an item and sync future changes. No readily available integration of DevOps tool. Integration via third party add-ons is required. Enabled account linking to Bitbucket account and back. High level of integration where addition of branch in issues, management and creation of branch can be done directly in Jira, and vice versa for Jira issues in Bitbucket.
Task dependencies Dependencies can be set inside the task, where we mark the current task as dependent on one or more tasks (links added). Changes in timeline of a dependency task will lead dependent ones to shift automatically.
Dependencies can be set directly for each issue/subtask (item level) in list view.

Dependency is set by defining rules based on the context of required dependency and assigning the rule(s) to the corresponding subtasks, dictating when and how it should be carried out.

Dependency system lies in checklist and sub-item features inside every card: add in a checklist on the dependent task (card) a link to the dependency task, and add a link in the attachments of the dependency task back to the dependent one. This is mostly to represent the order of the two tasks (blocked/blocking).

Use of Issue Links in every issue and add the link for issues. Doing this we can dictate if a task is blocked until another is finished. The dependencies can be automatically detected. Issue Links may cover more purposes than just dependencies, for example, to link duplicate issues, related issues or webpage.

Which one to choose for your next project?

The selection of a tool for managing your project or workflow may depend on a number of criteria: use cases and current infrastructures, required scope of functionalities, consideration of cost against budget in light of planned features, level of workflow customization, and style of work. Asana and Monday, though pretty new compared to the other two, have been rising in popularity for their highly visualizing character with a focus on feature delivery. However, Atlassian products still have the first coming advantage, a specifically tailored tool for software development projects of agile methodologies, easily scaled and used in organizations of different sizes. As a result, selection of your next project management tool would require a deeper look into management or tracking purposes, the extent of framework delivery for the respective purposes, supported models, and collaboration or work styles, as well as how they fit into your technical and financial requirements.



Post header background image by Markus Distelrath from Pixabay.


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