Project Management Tools: Trello, Asana, Jira and Excel

Project management tools hold the plan, the tasks, the conversations and the status in one place, so nobody has to ask "what's the latest?" The four you'll see most often in U.S. small and mid-size businesses are Trello (simple boards), Asana (tasks, timelines and cross-team work), Jira (software teams running Scrum or Kanban) and good old Excel or Google Sheets. No tool fixes a bad process, but the right one makes a good process easy to follow. This lesson compares them, shows how to choose with numbers, and covers the Excel formulas every PM should know.

1. Know the options
2. Score them
3. Measure progress right
4. Use Excel well
5. Roll it out

Step 1: what each tool is good at

Other popular options include Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, monday.com and ClickUp. Most of these tools offer a free plan or a free trial for small teams, but plan limits and prices change often, so check the vendor's pricing page before deciding. And notice that the tools overlap: Trello and Asana both have boards, Jira has timelines, and Excel can do almost anything if someone builds it.

Step 2: choose with a weighted decision matrix

Feature lists are endless; what matters is what your team needs. A weighted decision matrix forces that conversation:

1. List the 4–6 criteria that matter most and give each a weight (the weights add up to 100%).
2. Score each tool from 1 to 5 on each criterion, ideally after a short trial with real work.
3. Multiply each score by its weight and add them up. Highest total wins, unless there's a deal-breaker.

An 8-person marketing agency in Charlotte, North Carolina, runs client campaigns with fixed launch dates. Here's its matrix. The scores are the team's own ratings for its needs after a two-week trial, not an objective ranking of the products:

For example, Asana's total is 4 × 0.30 + 5 × 0.25 + 3 × 0.15 + 4 × 0.15 + 3 × 0.15 = 1.20 + 1.25 + 0.45 + 0.60 + 0.45 = 3.95. Asana wins for this agency because timelines carry a lot of weight. A software team with different weights could reach a completely different answer, and that's the point.

Step 3: measure progress correctly

Whatever tool you use, someone will ask "what percent done are we?" The tempting answer is to average each task's percent complete. That's wrong when tasks have different sizes: finishing a 1-day task counts as much as finishing a 20-day one. Weight by duration (or by budget) instead. In Excel, with durations in E2:E7 and percent complete in G2:G7:

Simple average (misleading):  =AVERAGE(G2:G7)
Weighted by duration:         =SUMPRODUCT(E2:E7, G2:G7) / SUM(E2:E7)

Take the bakery launch from the scheduling lesson, two weeks in. Durations are 5, 6, 5, 7, 3 and 5 workdays (31 in total) and progress is 100%, 50%, 100%, 40%, 0% and 0%:

Simple average: (100 + 50 + 100 + 40 + 0 + 0) ÷ 6 = 48.3%
Weighted:       (5×100 + 6×50 + 5×100 + 7×40 + 3×0 + 5×0) ÷ 31
              = (500 + 300 + 500 + 280) ÷ 31 = 1,580 ÷ 31 = 51.0%

The gap here is small, but on projects with one huge task and several tiny ones it can be 20 points or more. You'll take this idea further with earned value in Level 4.

Step 4: Excel essentials for project managers

If you're using Excel or Google Sheets, these are the formulas that do most of the work:

Keep spreadsheets honest with three habits: one tab per purpose (tasks, risks, budget), inputs in one color and formulas in another, and a "last updated" date at the top. For simple budget bookkeeping basics, see our guide to bookkeeping for small business.

Step 5: roll out the tool so people actually use it

Most tool rollouts fail for human reasons, not technical ones: updates keep happening in email and chat, and the tool slowly goes stale. A simple 30-day plan helps:

1. Week 1Set conventions firstAgree on project names, columns or statuses, who creates tasks, and what a "done" task needs. Write it on one page.
2. Week 1Load one real projectNot a demo. Use a live project so people see their own work in the tool from day one.
3. Weeks 2–3Run meetings from the toolShare the board in the weekly meeting. If an update isn't in the tool, it didn't happen.
4. Week 4Review and adjustAsk what's annoying, remove unused fields, then decide whether to roll it out to more projects.

Common mistakes

(a) Trello: 5×0.4 + 4×0.3 + 2×0.3 = 2.0 + 1.2 + 0.6 = 3.8
    Asana:  4×0.4 + 3×0.3 + 4×0.3 = 1.6 + 0.9 + 1.2 = 3.7
    Sheets: 3×0.4 + 5×0.3 + 3×0.3 = 1.2 + 1.5 + 0.9 = 3.6
(b) Trello: 5×0.3 + 4×0.3 + 2×0.4 = 1.5 + 1.2 + 0.8 = 3.5
    Asana:  4×0.3 + 3×0.3 + 4×0.4 = 1.2 + 0.9 + 1.6 = 3.7
    Sheets: 3×0.3 + 5×0.3 + 3×0.4 = 0.9 + 1.5 + 1.2 = 3.6

Summary

• Trello is simplest, Asana balances timelines and boards, Jira serves software teams, and Excel is flexible and great for numbers.
• Choose with a weighted decision matrix built on your team's real criteria and a short trial.
• Measure overall progress with a duration- or budget-weighted percent complete (SUMPRODUCT).
• WORKDAY, NETWORKDAYS, SUMIF, COUNTIFS and conditional formatting cover most PM spreadsheet needs.
• Roll tools out with conventions, a real pilot project and meetings run from the tool.

Next lesson: Quality, Change Control and Monitoring. You'll plan quality, process change requests without chaos and report status with clear thresholds.