Backlog

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Project Management Software is software that is used to plan, schedule and allocate resources for projects. It assists Project Managers in controlling costs, managing budgets, and documentation. It ensures smooth and efficient tracking of the project. It also allows for collaboration and coordination between the project stakeholders. There are many types of project management software that can be used in many several ways. The main purpose of a software management application is to plan and track the different tasks associated with the project. Some of the functions can include but are not limited to project planning, task management, calendar and contact sharing to ensure easy communication, document sharing and communication, bug and issues management, time tracking.

Backlog is a project management and collaboration software tool that is easy to use, and work with. It promotes high productivity, simple project tracking and greater visibility. With the help of this tool, development teams can collaborate on design and marketing to produce and release high quality projects at an efficient and faster rate. It consists of different pricing options: free, standard, starter and premium depending on your needs. This pricing system enables you to first experience and try the tool for free and depending on how it fits your needs you can purchase a plan accordingly.

Backlog helps you achieve your goals with various features that assist in keeping people on track, staying in the loop, keeping track of progress and enabling conversation. These features are enabled by the various tools available to use within Backlog:

• Wikis: Project members can create, edit and access wikis to maintain project details

• Gantt Charts: High level view of the project in a visual form

• Task Hierarchy: This allows you to create parent and child tasks for the workflow in an organized manner

• File Sharing: Allows you to keep track and maintain all files in the workspace

• Mobile Apps: With the inclusion of the mobile app you can create, comment and update tasks on the move

• Jira and Redmine Importer: This allows you to migrate from Jira and Redmine to backlog with ease

• Version Control: Allows you to collaborate on code with ease

• Burndown Charts: Visualize the progression of your project without having to read through each issue

• Bug Tracking: Track issues and bugs easily to ensure smooth running of project

• Comment Threads: Discussions, comments, concerns within tasks as they’re being worked on

Backlog is a very easy tool to learn and use. Once you create an account you are directed to your dashboard. The dashboard has a welcome video that walks you through the different features, how to use and interact with the software and serves as a really informative tutorial on the overall use of Backlog. The overall user interface is extremely simple and very aesthetically pleasing. The colors, font style, size, graphics and the overall flow of the software makes it extremely easy to navigate through the different features and tools. Image 1 is a screenshot of the dashboard. We can see how easy it is to add users, add projects and add issues as they are highlighted in yellow and are easy to locate. Since the navigation is simple it will save time and be quick and efficient to create new projects, add users as well as add issues amongst other features.

The right side of the dashboard contains all the recent updates, which allows you to quickly understand and see the current progress of the project. You can also import calendar and collaborate and fix and schedule meetings and other events with other users which is extremely helpful. The navigation bar at the top contains a lot of other tools and all of these features are very easy to find and incorporate into the project. The search bar at the top also enables you to directly search and find what you are looking for in a quick and efficient way.

Once you have created a project your workspace view of your project looks like Image 2. It is once again extremely pleasing to the eye, has a good layout and is very well coordinated. The status, milestone and category can be easily edited, added and worked on and is easy to monitor the overall progress. The left pane has options to adjust the project settings, Gantt chart look through issues and other features. Overall, extremely easy to navigate and go through.

Another important feature of backlog is that there is a mobile app version of backlog. Having a mobile app version of a project management software can be very handy. It allows you to create, assign and schedule tasks, track the different tasks, discuss different comments and questions, view latest pull requests and add files on the go to name a few features. These are things you can do on the go! This is extremely appealing as we might not always have access to our laptop/computers. Having a mobile version ensures accessibility to all. The user interface of the mobile app is also very aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. User experience is an important factor to consider with all software. This is because once we are able to fully understand and grasp the tools, features of the application, only then can we use the application to its full potential and even suggest improvements and make the most of the experience.

Overall, I spend about two hours getting myself familiar with Backlog. I liked its simplicity and easy to use design. I found its User Interface particularly appealing as it made the project easy to follow, track and less intimidating overall. Managing a project can be very stressful and intimidating but having a tool like this allows easy project management that tracks the different milestones, issues, concerns easy to follow along with. The built in board, gantt charts are very important tools and features that help the project go smoothly. The mobile application that goes hand in hand with the website is also extremely useful to have. The different pricing options give you some flexibility as well. A project manager and scrum master can make good and effective use of this tool to allow for the continuous agile process smoothly through all the different features.

Resources:

https://www.techopedia.com/definition/13132/project-management-software

https://backlog.com/