Our favorite Kanban board was invented in the 1940s, the Gantt chart in 1915, and project management as a field began around 1958. It has been over 60 years since project management began, yet there haven’t been many changes.
Our day-to-day work changes significantly every six months, especially after ChatGPT launched in 2022. While almost everyone started using AI in various areas, its use in project management remains limited.
In this article, we will explain how traditional project management might not be enough anymore and discover how much efficiency can be gained by adopting modern project management.
Table of contents
What is Traditional Project Management
Traditional project management is a structured approach to plan, organize, and manage projects. It follows a linear approach where each stage requires a lot of manual work before moving to the next.Â
One of the most commonly used methodologies in traditional project management is the Waterfall approach.
Waterfall Approach
Waterfall is suitable for projects with clear objectives and deliverables. It follows a linear and sequential process which makes it difficult to add changes or meet evolving requirements.
Requirements gathering: This is the phase where the project requirements, goals, and scope are defined and documented.
Design: The product architecture, features, and functionality will be completed in the phase.
Implementation: The actual work of building the product will be done in this phase.
Testing: The product will be tested rigorously by the QA team to make sure it meets the requirements.
Deployment: The product will be deployed and released to the end-users.
Maintenance: Some products require frequent maintenance, some required occasional maintenance which will be carried out in this phase.
Framework in Traditional Project Management
A traditional project management framework is a set of processes that helps project managers to successfully execute the projects. It includesÂ
Project initiation
Planning phase
Execution steps
Tracking
Project closure
Project Initiation
After stakeholders approve the project scope. Project managers initiate the projects and they make sure from stakeholders to project members everyone has the visibility of project charter.
Planning Phase
Project managers will allocate due date, assignee and reporter of the project with a solid plan to achieve the project scope by managing resources and minimizing risks.
Execution Steps
Once the team starts working on the project. Project managers start to manage people and resources, meet stakeholder expectations, and ensure the project stays on track.
Tracking
Project managers track each and every task manually to know the bottlenecks and risks associated with the projects. Some project management tools provide reports to make this tracking process easier.
Project Closure
Once the project scope is completed and delivered. Project managers will document every information that is associated with the project for future reference and close the project.
The framework in traditional project management involves a lot of manual work for stakeholders, project managers and project members.
Traditional Project Management Tools
Traditional project management tools like Jira (2002), Basecamp (2004), Asana (2012) were built to support projects, but their foundational designs are decade old. These tools lack features that align with modern project management needs.Â
Comparison between Jira, Basecamp and Asana
Feature | Jira | Basecamp | Asana |
Task Management | Advanced | Basic | Advanced |
Subtasks | Unlimited levels | Single level | Single level |
Kanban Boards | Advanced | No | Basic |
Scrum Boards | Advanced | No | No |
Gantt Charts | No | No | Yes (Timeline view) |
Calendar View | Yes | Yes | Yes |
List View | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Collaboration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
File Sharing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Real-time Chat | No | Yes | No |
Comments & Discussions | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Message Board | No | Yes | No |
Team Calendar | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Workflow & Automation | Yes | No | Yes |
Custom Workflows | Advanced | No | Basic |
Automation Rules | Advanced | No | Basic |
Custom Fields | Advanced | No | Basic |
Time Tracking | Built-in | Basic | Via integrations |
Reporting & Analytics | No | No | No |
Workload View | Yes | No | Yes |
Progress Tracking | Advanced | Basic | Advanced |
Free Tier | Limited | No | Basic |
Why We Need Modern Project Management
In traditional project management all the tasks have to be done manually and teams rely on email for communication. Which is often unsuitable for project communication.
We can’t expect everyone to reply to emails on time, since they are already overwhelmed by tons of tasks. Also people write emails in a formal professional way which will take more time to send.
Modern project management tools like ClickUp and Swatle by default have real time messaging which allows you to communicate instantly in personal and group communication.
Features in Modern Project Management
These four primary features make organizations to move towards modern project management
Workflow automation
Conversational task creation
Remote work considerations
AI assistance
Workflow Automation
Modern project management tools like Swatle enable teams to set task dependencies, create workflows and repetitive tasks which will eliminate mundane tasks.
Conversational Task Creation
Action items that arise naturally in conversations can be directly captured as task with Swatle, eliminating the need for manual copy pasting.
Remote Work Consideration
Organizations started moving to remote work, modern project management tools support remote work by considering time zone and asynchronous collaboration.
AI Assistant
AI is playing a major role in all the fields but not in project management. Imagine involving AI in project management will reduce a lot of manual work. It assists you with task creation, execution, planning, forecasting bottlenecks and risk way before.
Swatle is the only project management tool that has an AI assistant to make your even easier.
Swatle AI assistant assists you in writing crisp task summary and description which will reduce miscommunication and take your worries away by writing the perfect task summary and description. It helps you create subtasks for all the tasks to help your team complete tasks faster.
It also provides an accurate time estimation for all the tasks which helps your team plan their day better.
Unlike traditional project management tools, Swatle has inbuilt real-time messaging where Swatle AI generates icebreaker to smooth conversations and it also rephrases your message to increase clarity.
Additionally Swatle provides you a personalized chat bot you can utilize as an assistant for all your tasks, which will eventually reduce a lot of manual work for us.
Modern Project Management Tools
ClickUp launched in 2017 and Swatle launched in 2024 both tools have more similar features.
Comparison between Swatle and ClickUp
Feature | Swatle | ClickUp |
Portfolio management | Yes | No |
Project management | Yes | Yes |
Task management | Yes | Yes |
Subtasks | Unlimited | Single level |
Message board | Yes | Yes |
Conversational task creation | Yes | Yes |
Personal conversation | Yes | Yes |
Group conversation | Yes | No |
Kanban board | Yes | Yes |
Gantt chart | Yes | Yes |
Team Calendar | Yes | Yes |
Assigned vs completed task report | Yes | No |
Workload Tracker | Yes | Yes |
Time tracking | Yes | No |
Reporting and analytics | Yes | Yes |
Progress tracking | Yes | Yes |
AI personal assistant | Yes | No |
AI task estimation | Yes | No |
AI subtask creation | Yes | No |
AI task summary and description generation | Yes | No |
AI icebreaker questions | Yes | No |
AI message rephrase | Yes | No |
Free tier | Yes | Yes |
Conclusion
Adapting to the modern project management tool Swatle will give you a massive advantage. Swatle assists you from project start to finish helping you complete tasks 10 times faster with minimal room for error. Try Swatle now - It is free for up to 5 users. also Swatle has 14 days free trail.
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