Stop 11 · BA Tools & PlatformsTopics · 7/8

Project Management Tools Overview

In short

You'll move between companies, and each one swears by a different tool. One startup lives in Trello, a bank lives in Jira, a marketing team in Asana. Knowing the main styles helps you get comfortable fast.

Beyond Jira — tools like Asana, Trello, and Monday.com are common at smaller or less technical organizations, useful to know since BAs often work across companies with different tooling preferences.

The purple blob holds a notebook in front of a cork board with pinned blank cards and coloured strings.

Think of it like this

How families track chores

One family uses a fridge whiteboard. Another uses a WhatsApp group. Grandma keeps a notebook. All three get the groceries bought. The best tool is the one the household actually uses every day, and the same is true at work.

Watch it happen

Simple board vs software-delivery tracker

Simple boards

Trello, Asana, monday.com style
Quick to set up, easy for anyone
Light on dev workflows and reports

Delivery trackers

Jira, Azure DevOps style
Sprints, story points, custom workflows
More setup, steeper learning curve

Simple boards suit small or non-technical teams. Software teams running Scrum usually need a delivery tracker.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Boards

Cards in columns, like Trello. Great for visual, lightweight tracking.

Lists and timelines

Tools like Asana mix task lists, due dates and timeline views for planning across teams.

Work grids

monday.com and Smartsheet feel like smart spreadsheets with statuses, owners and automations.

Same ideas everywhere

Tasks, owners, statuses, due dates, dependencies. Learn those concepts and any tool takes a day to pick up.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Pushing the team to switch to your favourite tool in week one.

Do this instead

Learn the tool the team already uses. Suggest changes only after you understand why they chose it.

Oops

Tracking the same work in two tools 'just in case'.

Do this instead

Keep one source of truth for tasks. Duplicates drift apart within days.

Your mission

One project, two tools

~35 min

Quick check

You join a small marketing team that uses Trello happily. What should you do as their new BA?

Go deeper

1Explore 2 project management tools beyond Jira and compare their approach to tracking work.
2Learn that tool fluency transfers faster once you understand the underlying concepts, not just one UI.
3Understand smaller organizations often use lighter-weight tools than enterprise-standard Jira.