What is the primary tool for planning managing and tracking your self development process

1

monday.com

Best for simple workload and capacity planning

monday.com is a flexible platform to help teams communicate in context and get a birds-eye view of outstanding projects, available resources, and projected timelines. monday.com’s smart design and straightforward interface mean teams can get started planning timelines, assigning project ownership, and managing any project in minutes.

monday.com offers various views to represent data, so each team member can work according to his preferences. With workload view, you can easily see who’s able to take on more work and who’s not. Gain insight into your team’s work capacity and make adjustments to timelines or ownership accordingly—no matter where you are. The monday.com app gives you the flexibility and power to run your team on the go. You can organize your daily work, projects, and teams all in one place.

Monday.com has over 40 integrates with apps like Slack, Excel, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and others, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

Pros

• Color coded status great for resource overviews
• Easily create boards dedicated to operational resource tracking
• New features being rolled out regularly
• Quick learning curve

Cons

• Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
• May be too robust for small teams
• Comparatively complex pricing rubric

2

Kantata

Best all-in-one resource planning, timesheets, and project financials

Kantata is a well-rounded tool that bridges the core planning, execution, project accounting, and analysis systems in a single operating environment. It has modules for project management, accounting, resource management, business intelligence, and team collaboration. On top of this, it offers a system of dashboards, live time and expense tracking features, a great documenting system. And all of these best-in-class features are delivered through straightforward and minimalistic design.

Kantata ticks off all the boxes when it comes to RM features. The resource management module offers real-time utilization and margins at the project and even the task level. Some key features include resource forecasting, capacity management, skills management, scenario planning, and role-based planning.

Drilling down into its other features, the BI suite module supplies built-in reports, custom reporting, trend analysis, data visualization, as well as data integration with other systems. The software also provides more accounting tools than many others, with project costing, project and task budget management, real-time utilization and margin tracking, invoicing, rate cards, and robust integrations into back-end financial systems. It also has some good contextual collaboration features to communicate in both private and public discussions around tasks, projects, and many other project objects.

I could go on and on about Kantata’s features because there really are too many to list—it’s a comprehensive RM suite, that, despite requiring time to truly master, has been recognized as being easy to use and learn. What’s more, the company leverages its professional services expertise as part of their offering, making available their Kantata BI Consultants who can build reports specifically for your business. As well, they provide some great training resources that can help mitigate the risks and costs of implementation.

Kantata takes a unique approach to integrations. As part of their “API-first strategy”, they’ve built a solution that doesn’t require a third party in order to integrate with any apps. They provide an integration platform (called M-Bridge) that’s designed to simplify integration between Kantata and other business apps like CRM, HCM, and financial software. On top of the M-Bridge platform, Kantata provides several pre-built integrations with these tools: Expensify, G Suite, Xero, Salesforce, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Slack, Concur, Dynamics 365, Qualtrics, Quickbooks, and Sage Intacct.

Kantata offers plans to meet your needs. Choose from resource management to complete PSA with advanced BI. To receive accurate pricing information, contact Kantata directly.

Pros

• Easy capacity management
• Distinguish between soft and firm allocation
• Good reporting functionality for resource data
• Resourcing fully integrated with master planning

Cons

• Custom reports can be difficult to create without training
• Proofing solution is an add-on
• Advanced features are available only in the Premier and Enterprise editions of the application

3

Elapseit

integrated resource planning and task tracking solution that you can actually use from small details to the big picture

elapseit is a SaaS platform where two of the most needed and used features in project management – task management and resource planning – are integrated and interconnected in a unique way that will make workforce management a lot easier.

The resourcing system takes vacations and bank holidays into account and is designed to help you avoid resource over and under-allocation. Bank holidays can be defined per location so you can grow worldwide without worries. You can define custom vacation types with different numbers of vacation days and keep track of them. All this can happen with or without an approval workflow. Each person’s timesheet is pre-filled based on the allocation, and you can generate multi-language invoices based on hours submitted and approved.

elapseit is smart enough to let you know in seconds if you have enough resources to take a new project on board based on the “Available Capacity” report, so forecast is a breeze. You can check the resource utilization along with many other reports. You can even see the income your resources generate by checking the profitability report.

The task system integrates seamlessly with the resource planner, so anytime you are looking at the allocation planner you are also seeing how many tasks any of your team member is working on, what is their status, if there is any blocker or if they are working on tasks that are not part of an allocation on that project.

In a nutshell, elapseit is a powerful project and resource management software with fully integrated features. These include resourcing management & forecast, task management with Kanban boards and Gantt charts, time-tracking, time-off management, invoicing, reports, document management, all together in a secure user experience. It’s the best option for all company sizes and project types. The price starts at $14USD/user/month.

Pros

• Integration of tasks management and resource planning
• Mobile applications (iOS and Android)
• Prefilled timesheets based on allocations
• Multilanguage: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
• Clear, intuitive data interface

Cons

• The complexity of the interface might be overwhelming at first until you get used to it
• Dashboard could be more customizable

4

Runn

Best for managing and tracking resources in real-time

Runn is a real-time resource, demand, and capacity planning tool with integrated time tracking and powerful forecasting capabilities. Get a bird’s-eye view of all projects and people to instantly spot overbookings and identify resourcing patterns. Collaborate with co-workers to stay up-to-date and on the same page with remote teams.

Scheduling allocations is easy and intuitive in Runn–simply drag-and-drop to create project phases and allocations. Flick between monthly, quarterly, and half-yearly views to plan for the short and long term. If you don’t have the right person at the right time, use placeholders to define the requirements for the project.

Runn makes resource management dynamic and visual. Watch the charts and reports update as you plan out your work. You can see visualizations of capacity, workload, availability, and billable and non-billable utilization. Drill into different roles, teams and tags to compare trends and understand which groups are overbooked. Plan out tentative projects to see how your resourcing plans might change if the work gets confirmed.

Track projects, view forecasts, and get relevant metrics within Runn. You’ll have up-to-date data in one place to keep tabs on insights like utilization, project variance, and overall financial performance. Use Runn’s built-in timesheets to understand how much time was worked compared to what was planned.

Runn integrates with Harvest, WorkflowMax, and Clockify for importing project, client, and people data and syncing time entries. With Runn’s API, you can build your own integration to send data across your favorite tools.

Try Runn free for 14 days, no credit card required. Runn has three pricing plans: Free for Startup (5 or fewer people), $10 per person for Pro, and custom pricing for Enterprise. There is also a 20% discount on annual plans.

Pros

• Drag-and-drop resource scheduling
• Intuitive utilization reporting and forecasting
• Easily identify overbooked/unavailable employees
• Over-budget predictions
• Powerful API

Cons

• No offline or mobile time tracking
• Limited number of integrations

5

Clickup

Workload and box views that help you see what your team is up to and their capacity to take more work

To manage resources, first, you need to know what your people are up to. ClickUp has a solution for you in their workload and box views. Both of them are dedicated to resources and complement each other, letting you make better resource management decisions.

Both views are available on all ClickUp plans and can be added using the ‘+’ sign next to your other views. On the one hand, the workload view will show you a timeline with each resource on a separate row and visually show you how close they are to their full capacity.

On the other hand, the box view displays individual boxes for each resource and detail on tasks they are working on, time estimates, and even sprint points.

ClickUp offers native integrations with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.

ClickUp is free with limited storage for an unlimited number of users. Paid plans start at $5/user/month and offer a free trial.

6

Float

Best for digital agencies and production teams

Float is for teams who want robust and powerful resource management software that’s also unfussy and easy to use. Over 4,000 of the world’s top teams use Float, including Deloitte, Ogilvy, BuzzFeed, and MetaLab. Its simple, visual design and rich feature set make it the perfect choice for teams big and small.

Scheduling in Float is easy and intuitive. Create new projects quickly, and assign them to your team within seconds. The schedule view gives you an accurate, high-level overview of your team’s availability and capacity, and you can drill down deeper using Float’s search and filter functionality. Set custom work hours, import and assign public holidays, schedule time off, assign custom tags like location and skills to your people and projects, and set a scheduled status to let everyone know when you’re working from home or remotely, or what you’re up to on a particular day.

Updating your schedule is simple, with a right-click menu full of editing shortcuts, a click-and-drag feature that lets you reassign and update tasks, and a lightning-fast interface that can handle an enterprise volume of people and projects.

Real-time reporting lets you track your resource utilization, monitor project budgets, and forecast your team’s capacity. Add time tracking to access pre-filled timesheets and compare your team’s scheduled hours with the actual time spent on tasks.

Float has a range of dedicated integrations that play well with your existing apps. Sync and schedule your Jira, Asana, Teamwork, or Trello projects and import your Google or Outlook Calendar events directly onto your schedule in Float. Stay on top of schedule changes via Slack, email, or mobile push notifications.

Float is free to try for 30 days, and you get unlimited access to both resource planning and time tracking features. After that, it’s $6 per scheduled user, per month, or $10 with time tracking. Float also has volume and yearly subscription discounts available.

Pros

• Easy-to-use resource editing tools
• Team availability management
• Project phases and milestones for planning
• Mobile app for iOS and Android
• Built-in time tracking with pre-filled timesheets

Cons

• Updating staff/personnel list takes time

7

Resource Management by Smartsheet

Best for advanced and custom workflow automations

Resource Management by Smartsheet, a high-level project, and resource management software, helps teams make confident decisions about project planning, team capacity, budget forecasting, team utilization, and hiring needs in real-time.

The tool’s unique project and resource matching feature allow users to match team members to projects requirements according to different criteria like disciplines, skills, availability, and more. Resource Management by Smartsheet also offers built-in timesheets, mobile time tracking, and expense tracking. Users can create project reports by filtering project data, get insight into historical data, and see forecasts on team utilization, actual vs. planned time reports, budget tracking, expense reports, and projects in the pipeline.

Resource Management by Smartsheet easily integrates with a variety of internal workflows and software suites. Additionally, it provides a flexible API and Zapier integration that can connect with top operational tools for analytics, communications, project management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and finance.

Resource Management by Smartsheet’s basic plan starts at $25/user/month.

Pros

• Combines time tracking and resourcing
• Able to forecast resource utilization
• Skills database helps resource allocation
• Intuitive for keeping timesheets and assigning hours

Cons

• Initial resource set-up is time consuming
• Needs better data visualization
• Bulk project edits don’t apply to resource field

8

Hub Planner

Best for midsize and large companies

Hub Planner is a resource management software with a full suite of scheduling, time entry, and reporting features. The core feature is the simple and usable Scheduler, which allows for project and resource planning and visualization. Users can drag and drop to plan projects and schedule resources. The tool also offers a multi-function menu, powerful filtering, and a dynamic team capacity bar. Multiple view modes allow for both high-level birds-eye views and granular views of projects.

Hub Planner has a powerful reporting engine with 70+ pre-formatted templates. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in a template, you can create reports from scratch.

Hub Planner also has a number of inline workflows for timesheets, requesting vacation time, and a slick resource requesting & approval option. Their Unassigned Work feature is great for scheduling and forecasting ahead of the pipeline, and users can create custom fields at the resource or project level. Users can also customize schedule notifications and reminders.

They’ve taken a modular approach so you have the option to add or remove extensions to the base product, allowing teams to increase functionality or turn off bits they don’t need. Inline integrations with Basecamp, Slack, iCal, REst API, and Zapier are available.

Hub Planner offers a pretty extensive 60 days free trial with everything included. There is an extensive knowledge base with tutorial videos, and their customer support is excellent.

Licenses begin at $7 per month, per resource with annual discounts available.

Pros

• Excellent capacity planning & forecasting
• Search filter for available resources with skill sets & location
• Powerful & precise built-in reporting
• Easy toggle between user/group

Cons

• Need to click into modal for more details on events/projects bookings
• Editing Custom Fields requires manual input or help from Hub Planner support
• Need an API or intermediary for MS Teams

9

Saviom

Best for enterprise resource and workforce management

Saviom is a leader in powerful and configurable resource management software. It has helped many organizations reduce their resourcing costs by at least 10-30% and enhance profitable utilization by 10-20%.

Saviom’s comprehensive ERM suite helps optimize the modern workforce and protect them against growing market uncertainties. It comprises several modules such as multidimensional resource scheduler and planner, advanced forecasting and capacity planning, real-time Business Intelligence, integration with other business applications, and more.

Saviom’s ERM solution enables agile resource scheduling with a Gantt chart style view using simple drag and drop functionality. Besides, the enterprise-wide visibility of the tool helps you identify and allocate the right resource to the right job. Additionally, using modeling and simulation techniques, the tool helps select an optimized resource plan and enhance ROI.

Using the forecasting and capacity planning module, businesses can forward plan pipeline projects and bridge the capacity vs. demand gap proactively. Moreover, you can optimize your workforce by maximizing the profitable utilization of every resource. The tool also helps businesses achieve the desired level of maturity as per the organization’s need.

Firms can improve their organizational health index using real-time Business Intelligence. They can build customized portals, dashboards, analytics, and reports using the tool’s highly configurable and expandable capability. The tool allows you to maintain a single source of truth by seamlessly integrating with your existing systems.

With a tiered pricing model as customizable as the tool, Saviom’s power and lite licenses operate under role-based access, ensuring you retain full control over data.

Pros

• Multidimensional resource forecasting & capacity planning
• Highly configurable & customizable RM solution
• Real-time resource optimization, modeling & simulation
• Highly flexible real-time reports, analytics & dashboards
• Seamless integration with other enterprise applications

Cons

• There is a learning curve as the tool comes with extensive features
• More suitable for medium to large enterprises
• Pricing is available only on request

10

Resource Guru

Best low-cost option for beginners

Resource Guru offers some solid features including: visual calendar style interface, custom views, fields, and filters, availability indicator, drag and drop resources, scale view, see utilization, reporting, overtime tracking, data import, and phone support.

Resource Guru makes sense of the gong show that is resource conflict resolution: resource management and team collaboration is built in to make resource booking more straightforward, with clash management, leave management, and a waiting list to prevent over-booking. It helps project managers make bookings simultaneously with no chance of stepping on each other’s toes. Clashes are automatically prevented.

Helpfully, each staff member gets their own resource dashboard so they can log in and know exactly what they should be working on. And to monitor business performance, powerful reports help identify which projects and clients are being over-serviced and help to monitor team utilization and help with future capacity planning. Resource Guru costs from $2.50/user/month (they offer a 30-day free trial).

Pros

• Availability bar for capacity planning
• Clash management for unintended overlap
• Attractive and flexible UI
• Daily resource summary emails

Cons

• Very affordable per-user rate
• Unable to sort resources by experience level
• No copy-paste of resource tasks