Project managers stand at the heart of game development, and their job isn’t the easiest one. In this article, we’ll talk a little about project management tools for game development — software that makes the job of being the bridge connecting the team and the client just a tiny bit easier.
A project manager’s job in game development is multi-faceted. These people need to be astute, capable of multitasking, and great at communication. They coordinate the team, distribute tasks, monitor all the processes, and relay all the necessary information to the client in a timely manner. To do all this effectively, project managers need tools. We’ve written up our top-10 list to help those curious in the position or starting off in it.
Top 8 project management tools for game development
If you ask a project manager what their dream tool looks like, chances are you’ll hear that such software need to help them with:
- Task distribution (who is doing what and when)
- Task prioritization
- Deadline adherence monitoring / Time management
- Communication (with clients and with the team)
- Game documentation (GDD, requirements and specifications, etc.)
- Planning
- Reporting
It also needs to be intuitive and easy to use, so that all this multitasking could preferably fit into a standard workday. Sounds a bit like a dream, right? Well, here are some examples that come close to perfection.
#1 Trello
Trello is probably the most well-known project management tool in the developer community, alongside Asana and Jira. It’s a simple Kanban board software that allows adding and assigning tasks, as well as moving them between people. It’s also possible to share boards outside your team by making them public — a neat feature when crowdfunding or when you need to show the progress to stakeholders not directly and constantly involved in your game development.
The best thing about Trello is that it’s simple. However, its drawback is also the simplicity. Or, to be precise, it’s the fact that any extra features or integrations you might need in Trello are to be connected separately. This might be a bit of a hassle in a piece of project management software for game development when the project manager already has a ton of work to do.
As a tool for a simple game project management where you don’t need any extra bells and whistles? Trello is perfect.
Supported platforms: Web, Mac, Windows, Android
Pricing: Free for basic features, Standard ($5 or $6 per user/month), Premium ($10 or $12.50 per user/month), and custom Enterprise plans for more.
#2 JIRA
JIRA is a project management software that’s totally different from Trello — which was also purchased by JIRA owner, Atlassian, in 2017. Basically, where Trello is great for indie game developers and companies working on small games, JIRA is a tool with functionality to manage medium-sized and big projects.
Among JIRA’s features, there are not only Kanban boards but also Scrum boards, roadmaps, backlog management, cross-project dependency tracking, and more. Where Trello is great when you don’t need “bells and whistles”, JIRA is the option for those who need a lot of those extra features.
As project management software for game developers, JIRA offers the following:
- Bug tracking and reporting
- Attaching files to tasks, useful for artists and game UI/UX designers to keep the team up to date with visuals
- Comments for quick and trackable feedback on each task
JIRA also integrates with numerous other software, among which are Slack, GitLab, GitHub Cloud, and Google Workspace. Finally, Atlassian’s impressive collection of software is also integrable with JIRA.
Supported platforms: Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, Android
Pricing: Free for up to 10 users and basic features, Standard ($8.15 per user/month), Premium ($16 per user/month), and custom Enterprise plans for more.
#3 Plaky
One of our project managers’ praised tool, Plaky is a highly flexible and customizable piece of software. One of its best features for game development is the option to set up user roles that have differing levels of access. This is extremely useful when outsourcing certain tasks to third-party contractors, with whom you’re not planning to share internal information.
It’s possible to use Plaky for Kanban-style project management, but it also has a Table View if that’s what a team prefers. Moreover, even different teams working on the same project can set up the viewing as they prefer and not collapse the system for everyone.
Supported platforms: Web, iOS, Android
Pricing: Free for unlimited users and all basic features, Pro ($3.99 or $4.99 per user/month), and Enterprise ($8.99 or $10.99 per user/month) for extra features.
#4 Asana
Feature-wise, Asana is somewhere between JIRA and Trello. Same as these two, it’s one of the game development project management tools for Agile teams using either Kanban or Scrum boards.
Asana is great for teams that develop games continuously, as their “day job” of sorts. That’s because Asana’s flagship feature, Workload, makes it easy to monitor and manage the load on team members. With careful management, it’s easier to both avoid developer burnout and to make sure all employees have something to do.
Supported platforms: Web, Mac, Windows, Android
Pricing: Free for teams up to 15 people and a basic set of features (which is still quite decent); Premium ($10.99 or $13.49 per user/month) and Business ($24.99 or $30.49 per user/month) plans for extra people and features.
#5 Codecks
All the software above on this list is universal, as in, used for both game and non-game software development. Codecks, however, is one of the project management tools for game development specifically. It was created with not only PMs and devs in mind but artists as well.
Even its interface is game-y, easy to comprehend and displaying necessary information for each task right on the card’s “face”.
Codecks’s task management plays out like a game of trading cards, hence the name. You have “decks” — tasks that everyone on the team can see, and “hands” — tasks visible only to the person performing them.
Decks can be for anything, basically, like separate decks for each type of mechanic in the game, for example. Or for art. Or for bugs. Name it.
When the task is complete, the “hand” is played. Sounds fun, right?
Then there’s “milestones” — a feature where you have the whole timeline for your game development, and you can easily set up deadlines for each task and monitor their completion. In mobile game development, where it’s the usual practice to show demos to stakeholders periodically, this is quite useful.
Supported platforms: Web
Pricing: Free for up to 5 users and 5 projects, Plus (€5 per user/month), Pro (€9 per user/month), and Enterprise (€15 per user/month) plans for anything beyond that.
#6 HackNPlan
Another project management tool created specifically for game development, this one only for teams using Kanban boards.
In HackNPlan, boards are by default divided into categories specific to game development, including art, animation, sound besides the standard development, UI/UX, testing, etc.
In a nutshell, it’s a fairly traditional Kanban-style project management software but tailored for game developers. It has easily moved cards with tasks, dependencies, reports, and other standard features.
But in addition to that, HackNPlan also has a fairly unique and quite valuable feature for game development: an ability to create and keep a game design document (GDD) in the project management software. In most other project management tools for game developers, a GDD is an externally hosted document that might be linked or otherwise connected in the PM tool for monitoring.
Supported platforms: Web
Pricing: Free for personal use and basic features, Personal Plus (€5 per month) for extra features, and Studio (€8 per user/month) for, well, game development studios.
#7 MeisterTask
Back to generalist project management tools that can also be used for game development. MeisterTask is quite simple and intuitive, and it integrates with a number of other useful project management tools for game development. It has a dashboard, a timeline (Gantt-style), time tracking, reports.
The biggest benefit of MeisterTask is that you can automate repeating stages in workflow and create templates for recurring tasks. This can make the work of a project manager a bit easier.
Supported platforms: Web, iOS, Android
Pricing: Free for up to 3 projects and basic features, Pro (€11 per user/month), Business (€22.50 per user/month), and custom Enterprise for more.
#8 Wrike
The last on our list, Wrike is another generalist project management tool made with simplicity in mind, though it packs more than one would expect when hearing the word “simple”. In particular, it’s great for third-party tool integration, meaning you can add features necessary for your game project.
Wrike offers Kanban and Gantt-chart view options, automation for repeated workflows, analytics and reporting, and custom request forms. A noteworthy feature here would be the trendy Generative AI, here trained for project managers to use on project plans and brainstorming.
Finally, Wrike has templates for different teams, including Creatives, which is a valuable feature in game development project management tools.
Supported platforms: Web, iOS, Android
Pricing: Free for limited tasks, Team ($9.80 per user/month) for 2–25 users, Business ($24.80 per user/month) for 5–200 users, and two custom plans — Enterprise and Pinnacle.
How to pick the best PM software for your game development project?
Choosing project management tools for game development requires serious consideration — changing software mid-project is no easy task, so the decision better be well-thought-out. What things do you need to take into account?
We suggest you include into your decision-making process these factors:
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Price. As you can see above, prices for software differ quite a bit, especially if you think about them in the long run. Game development is almost never a quick process, so it’s important to see in perspective. So ask yourself — what’s your budget and how big you plan to grow with the team and with your game’s scale?
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Feature set. Do you want your project management tool to be tailored to game development specifically, or is a generalist tool good enough for you? Which features are the most essential to you, and is there software where they’re better executed or included in a cheaper plan?
For example, a GDD integration in HackNPlan is a fairly unique feature, but it’s not like you can’t replace it with a link to a Google Doc in JIRA if features in JIRA suit you better overall. On the other hand, if you plan to crowdfund for your game development, the external sharing of progress Trello has might be irreplaceable.
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Your experience. And your team’s experience as well. If you’re new to project management, you might want to choose a tool with fewer features that is less complex to navigate. However, if you aim to go big with your game, consider a tool that will accommodate your game’s future updates — and get experienced with that tool.
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Methodology you work with. If you’re working with Agile, it’s best to choose your project management software to support Sprints as well as Scrum or Kanban boards.
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Customizability. While the development process for games has the rails it runs on, each team working on games is unique. Consider customization needs to make the development process smoother and more friendly for all people involved.
Our experience with project management tools
At Mind Studios Games, we’ve tried multiple tools throughout the years to find what suits us best. In the end, we came up with a blend — we use JIRA as our main project management software for game development, combining it with Google Docs and Sheets for documentation. Our project managers are also fond of Plaky, and we sometimes employ Trello for smaller projects.
These tools are behind most of our games these days. If you have a game in mind and are lost in the options for how to manage its creation, we hope the list above gave you some insights.
On the other hand, you can also outsource to a project manager with ample experience and whatever tool they use, they’ll be proficient enough with it to make any team comfortable. Like our project managers do.
