How to choose a project management system: 8 criteria, a tool comparison and a selection plan

A project management system looks like a technical purchase, but it changes the daily work of dozens of people for several years. When the tool does not fit the way people work, they drift back to spreadsheets and email within a few months. The company pays for licences, and the management board still gets a report pieced together by hand in Excel.

The causes are almost always the same and can be predicted. The three we see most often are:

Comparing tools only makes sense once you know what you expect from them. A single page of text, prepared by the COO together with department managers, is enough. That page then becomes the list of scenarios to test with every vendor.

Answer the questions below briefly and specifically. If the answers differ between departments, that is important information – you may find you need two tools, or one very flexible one.

Assess only the three or four tools that made it through the initial screening. Score each criterion in the table below on a scale of 1 to 5, and give scores not after the demo but after testing your own scenarios in a trial version.

Set the criteria weights before scoring, not after. For a services company, simplicity and client access may matter most; for a software company, a precise process and reports on team performance.

On the Polish market, the tools most often compared are monday.com, Jira, Asana, Microsoft Planner and ClickUp. All of them handle a task list and a board with status columns. What sets them apart is who they were designed for, and that matters more than the feature list.

monday.com focuses on visual boards and simple automations that a non-technical person can set up. Jira grew out of software development teams and still serves their way of working best, although since 2024 it has also had templates for business departments. Asana is simpler than both and works well for projects with a clear plan and deadlines.

Microsoft Planner is the natural choice for companies working in Microsoft 365, because it runs inside Teams and Outlook. The basic version is included in most Microsoft 365 plans, but Gantt charts (a timeline with task bars) and task dependencies require a Planner Plan 1 licence or higher. ClickUp combines tasks, documents and chat in one place, which appeals to smaller teams, but it needs more configuration.

The prices in the table below are the vendors’ list prices in US dollars, checked in October 2026. Price lists change several times a year, so check them again before you decide.

Most mid-sized companies fit one of the five scenarios listed below. Treat them as a starting point for a shortlist of tools, not as a final verdict.

Our case study of a furniture manufacturer that replaced four spreadsheets with a single system on monday.com shows what it looks like when orders, production and sales are connected in one system.

Licences are easy to count, so they attract all the attention. Take a hypothetical company where 60 people use the system. At the prices in the table above, annual monday.com Standard licences cost about USD 8,640 (60 × USD 12 × 12 months). Jira Standard comes to about USD 6,106 (at the monthly billing price), and Asana Starter to about USD 7,913.

The difference between these amounts is usually smaller than the other first-year costs. Add the items listed below to the budget and estimate them separately for each tool on your shortlist.

The most underestimated item is your own people’s time. Managers who spend several weeks describing processes and testing the configuration are not doing their usual work during that time.

A sensible selection process takes about six weeks, followed by a pilot of six to eight weeks. That is a lot compared with buying after a single demo, but very little compared with several years of working in the wrong tool.

The decision is made by a team of four to six people: the COO, who owns the process, an IT representative, a project manager and two or three everyday users from different departments. The CFO can join for the cost assessment. A larger team slows the decision down without improving it.

The pilot has to answer one question: do people use the tool without being forced to? Set the measures before you start, so that a few weeks later you are not judging on impressions.

Set a threshold below which you go back to the second tool on your list. This could be, for example, 70% of pilot participants updating their tasks every week. A weak result does not necessarily mean a bad tool – sometimes simplifying the configuration is enough – but it calls for a decision, not for waiting it out.