There is a plethora of online project management software available. The best of them are sharp, efficient, well thought out, with a great interface (UI) and user experience (UX). But sometimes you can find those few gems that have the power to make you look forward to using them on Monday morning.
Monday all week long
We switched to Monday in January 2018 simultaneously with our adoption of the Scrum method. Since then we've built up a good deal of expertise and deployed it with customers. With this article, we're sharing our enthusiasm for spreading the word about a tool that will, for most teams, change the way they work.
Related content: How to choose a project management solution
Simply beautiful
The quality of an interface is essential. A well thought out interface reduces cognitive load and increases efficiency. Not to mention the importance of UX in the adoption of a solution by users.
The first thing that strikes you about Monday is the simplicity of its interface. The designers have pushed all the mechanisms to perfection. There's no information overload, no excess of actionable elements. Most actions can be performed in one or two clicks, where three or four might be required elsewhere.
Flexible and versatile
Monday integrates an impressive number of functions for its category. As each board (a board is a virtual whiteboard on which to manage the elements of a project) can be composed as you wish, Monday covers a very broad spectrum of possibilities. That's what makes it so unique.
Keep a global view of projects and businesses
Planning the team week
Manage meetings, minutes and decisions
CRM for sales and prospecting
Develop and monitor marketing campaigns
Manage your projects in Agile mode
Managing production processes
Manage HR processes and recruitment
Manage your suppliers
Easily manage third-party commissions
How it works Monday
Monday is presented in the form of boards. When you create a board, you can start with the template gallery or start from scratch. Then you can compose or modify your board at any time by adding columns (with dozens of column types to choose from: status, people, votes, timeline, deadline, texts, check boxes, etc.).
Then, it's child's play: add lines (pulses), move them, reorganize them, assign people to them, add comments, change statuses, files, updates...
The table display is doubled by the very good "Views" mode which allows to display timeline views, kanban tables, create forms, etc.
Transparency first
As mentioned in our article How to choose a project management solution, 2013 research conducted on over 40,000 respondents shows that, above all else, transparency is the number one contributor to employee satisfaction. A culture of transparency is essential to building a culture where people are motivated, involved and accountable. Transparency has a significant impact on morale, performance and - ultimately - the bottom line.
Monday puts transparency at the center. This significantly improves collaboration, information and employee involvement. By default, you don't have to worry about permissions: each employee can access each board and subscribe to it if they want to receive update notifications. You can of course create private boards as well as shared boards to invite customers and partners.
Involving stakeholders
Involving stakeholders, such as your client, early and closely is consistent. For example, when we make a new offer, we create a board (based on one of our models) that will contain all the steps and services as well as the estimated time. This board is then shared with the client who will be able to see and understand our price. And this, even before the establishment of the formal offer; since it is this board that serves as a basis. This transparency has two advantages: the bond of trust is established more quickly and the prices are less discussed.
Obviously the board will then be used for the project. The client retains access since he is a stakeholder, will follow the progress, will be assigned tasks and deadlines.
By involving stakeholders more closely, projects move forward better, deadlines are shortened and collaboration is made more fluid. And most importantly, it's very easy to get them to buy into the software because it's so easy to use. At most, we take 10 minutes to give them a quick overview.
As part of the digital transformation
Software such as Monday is an excellent medium for supporting an organization's digital transformation or, at the very least, changing the way it works. It's a tool that can be deployed alongside what the company already uses; where G Suite and Office 365 replace what's installed. The reluctance to change is then low for employees, and the decision to change easier for management.
Employees are experimenting with much more collaborative processes, exploring ways of doing things that radically improve their work. They discover that there is a colorful world outside of Outlook, Excel and software from the 90's, a bit crumpled by age. On the management side, the economic benefits of more transparency and collaboration are very often touched upon. Add to this a little coaching or workshops on good practices in personal organization, daily routines, agile principles for teams, and you transform productivity and satisfaction for all.
Finally, with the iOS and Android mobile application, Monday remains in the pocket of employees. Work and collaboration is no longer compartmentalized in the office. You offer yourself the mobility of project management in the same way as your emails and your agenda.
New features galore
The developers of Monday developers are adding new features at a rapid pace. Dashboards and automation (both within boards and with popular cloud solutions) are among the latest and most powerful features. Automations take the possibilities for your workflows to a whole new level!
Would you like a helping hand in evaluating and choosing the right collaboration tool?
What about the price?
Monday strangely enough, pricing is based on tiers of users - 2, 5, 10, 15, 20 and so on. Its cost per user will vary between $15 and $8 for the Standard model and between $18 and $10 for the Pro model. A 2-year subscription offers an additional discount.
Once confronted with the all-encompassing gains that this type of solution brings, its price becomes anecdotal. On average, the monthly cost is less than 20 minutes of your hourly cost.
In addition, the versatility of Monday will allow you to save money by regrouping processes previously managed by other software. Depending on the case, production, sales force, collaborative platform for example can be advantageously replaced by Monday.
To try is to adopt
Will you share our enthusiasm? Test Monday free of charge for 14 days (no credit card required). Don't hesitate to contact us for feedback, questions or advice.
Try Monday for free, no strings attached, no credit card required.
