We don't launch too many new survey topics in our Business Choice and Readers' Choice series every year, but sometimes there are topics too good, so perfect for the office, we can't put them off any longer. That's the case with project management tools that keep teams on task, and the exploding world of online collaboration services that keep those teams in constant communication.
Project management is nothing new—the first version of Microsoft Project goes back to the mid-1980s when it was still available on DOS. It made the leap to Windows in 1990. That's 28 years ago, and it's still going. The goal with project management is all in the name: give management a handle on multiple people or teams working on multiple projects, so it all happens under budget and before deadline. (That must happen somewhere, right?)
Collaboration apps and services are a little different. They're all about communication, keeping the lines open in the office so individuals and teams can stop with all the voicemails, emails, and worst of all, the meetings (so. many. meetings!). We think of them as productivity apps for teamwork.
That said, from the looks of our survey results, it doesn't appear that PCMag readers—the people taking our surveys—are necessarily madly in love with this category of software. The project management side received only enough response to include five products (two from the same vendor) and only three collaboration tools made the cut. None managed an overall score above 7.5. That's a solid C grade—passing—but just barely. That said, it was enough for us to gauge exactly which products are the winners in these areas.
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Project Management Tools and Online Collaboration Services
With over 30 years of experience, this was Microsoft Project's category to lose. But it didn't. Because of Project, Microsoft is taking home the Business Choice award. Albeit not with a super-high score—it only managed to earn an 7.1 (out of 10) overall, which is on the low side for winners of any of our surveys.
The winner on the collaboration side is the hot "new" kid on the block. Slack has only been around for a few years. It started life as a chat system in a failed game, but the company pivoted into work communication and has done nothing but collect investor money and new customers ever since. It's the winner for collaboration tools with a 7.5, the highest overall score of any product in this survey.
We combined the list of project management and online collaboration tools above, because there's significant overlap in a lot of the products. Many offer a combination of services. Asana is a perfect example, with plenty of management and communications, but that didn't help Asana much, as it only got a 6.8 overall score.
Microsoft is in a weird state with this survey. It not only has the traditional Project product for tracking teamwork, but it also has a direct Slack collaboration competitor called Microsoft Teams (which scored about as well as Project did). Plus, it has a second project management tool, Microsoft Planner, which comes with some Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions.
Planner, however didn't score well at all, coming in at the bottom of almost all the ratings, including earning an epically negative NetPromoter score (NPS) of -42 percent. (NPS are based on the likelihood to recommend rating; they extrapolate how many people are talking up a product versus bad-mouthing it. Any brand with an NPS that low is getting verbally eviscerated by its users.)
Atlassian's Jira is another collaboration tool that scored okay, just behind Slack in most areas, although it was ahead of Slack in satisfaction with tech support, earning an 8.3 compared to Slack's 7.4. With its focus on software developers, Jira's probably not for every office, but obviously it would behoove those making apps and programs to give it a shot.
Note that Slack and Jira were the only products in this survey to get positive NPS ratings, at 16 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
Bringing up the rear, but ahead of Microsoft Planner at least, are a trio of tools. Asana, which scored responses for both collaboration and project management, didn't manage to impress much with either. Trello's claim to fame (survey-wise) is that it managed the highest likelihood to recommend score at 7.4, but still had enough detractors to get a negative NPS. Smartsheet was middle of the road in every category—but that kept it ahead of Microsoft Planner, at least.
See all of our survey results for Project Management & Online Collaboration Tools.
Recommended by Our Editors
WINNERS: PROJECT MANAGEMENT & ONLINE COLLABORATION TOOLS
PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Microsoft Project
When you're a software title with 30+ years of service to the business world, you're probably very good, and also likely, you're from Microsoft. Project is the part of MS Office that keeps teams on track, and from the ratings it earned, it's also the clear leader with users and managers in the project management world.
COLLABORATION SERVICES: Slack
It may seem like you've been using Slack forever, but it's a relative newcomer. It doesn't matter. Slack still earns accolades other collaboration services can only dream of. It scores equally or better in every category against other collaboration tools, making it the best pick to keep your teams in touch.
Methodology
We email survey invitations to PCMag.com community members, specifically subscribers to our What's New Now mailing list. The surveys are hosted by SurveyGizmo, which also performs our data collection. This survey was in the field from September 4, 2018 to September 20, 2018.
Respondents were asked to rate their project management and online collaboration tools using multiple questions about their overall satisfaction with the solution, as well as experiences with technical support within the past 12 months.
Because the goal of the survey is to understand how the email marketing solutions compare to one another and not how one respondent's experience compares to another's, we use the average of the email marketing solutions' rating, not the average of every respondent's rating. In all cases, the overall ratings are not based on averages of other scores in the table; they are based on answers to the question, "Overall, how satisfied are you with your project management tools (or online collaboration provider)?"
Scores not represented as a percentage are on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is the best.
Net Promoter Scores are based on the concept introduced by Fred Reichheld in his 2006 best seller, The Ultimate Question, that no other question can better define the loyalty of a company's customers than "how likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" This measure of brand loyalty is calculated by taking the percent of respondents who answered 9 or 10 (promoters) and subtracting the percent who answered 0 through 6 (detractors). (For more, read PCMag's Top Consumer Recommended Companies for 2018.)
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Thanks to contributing editor Ben Gottesman for his assistance with this story.