Data visualization can make IT operations and tasks so much easier to understand. Rather than being faced with walls of data, simple charts can provide key information quickly.
This is especially the case during real-time processes for monitoring purposes, where information needs to be provided in a quick and easy to understand manner.
However, data visualization has also become the norm for a whole range of other processes, from presentations to workflows, to project management and business intelligence.
Ultimately visualization will provide clear indicators of trends from large sets of data, or present otherwise important information such as core tasks or assignments in management processes.
The key to visualization is simplicity in the presentation, no matter how it is applied, and while there are industry specific applications of visualization, we'll present the best in general software platforms that can work in the widest range of situations.
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Image Credit: Quire
If you need to manage and visualize projects but don’t require advanced functionality that is unnecessary and clutters your project management, Quire might be your tool of choice.
Quire works by letting you map out tasks and thoughts in a simple to-do list format that can easily be rearranged and assigned to team members. Once tasks have been defined in the app, you can visually organize and assign these tasks using a Kanban board built into the system. The software makes it easy to flip between task lists and the Kanban board as needed.
The beauty of Quire is that it also offers a number of visual representations of your task list that you can choose from, including pie charts, project summaries and graphs. All the basic visual representations are there except for Gantt charts, the one strike against this platform. Overall, though, Quire delivers a streamlined project management interface that nicely strikes a balance between simplicity and power.
Image Credit: Casual
There are many ways in which you can visually organize your project. If your preferred style is flowchart-based organization, you’re going to love Casual.
Instead of Kanban boards or Gantt charts, Casual is built exclusively around a single flowchart interface where you organize projects by drawing lines between tasks, and assign team members to each step in the flowchart. Each team member gets a task list based on the flowchart, but essentially project managers that use Casual track progress through the single-pane flowchart.
Casual is easily the best solution if you prefer the flowchart format and have a project that can be represented in that format. If you want a range of charts and other ways to organize or manage a large team, however, Casual is not for you.
Image Credit: Asana
Asana is one of the web-based project management leaders, and with good reason. You get most of the project management tools you expect with the platform, including task lists, Kanban boards, calendar format, conversations and Gantt charts.
You manage projects by entering tasks on a task list, with manual or auto assignment to team members. A Kanban board makes organization of these tasks easy, and a timeline (read: Gantt chart) visually shows the progress of the project.
While task management is quite visual, and most project managers will feel at home on the platform, Asana lacks a chart dashboard for tracking progress metrics in other visual representations. So this is visual management, but it isn’t strong on visual data representation.
Image Credit: Wrike
If Gantt charts and dashboards are your thing, Wrike should be on your project management shortlist.
Wrike makes it easy to create tasks and workflows, and then manage these tasks visually in a Gantt chart or calendar format. One feature that’s great about Wrike is that you can visually create custom workflows for your project.
Data visualization is also a strong point for Wrike, which lets you set up custom dashboard items that visually show the progress of key project metrics. In one quick view, you can see the status of each area of the project.
Furthermore, Wrike is highly scalable, with many integrations to other platforms and support for large teams.
Image Credit: Targetprocess
If you want everything in your project management software, including a host of data representation options, Targetprocess is for you.
Taking a dashboard approach but also working in Kanban and Gantt chart formats, Targetprocess basically gives your project the full suite of features. Complex task lists can be configured and rearranged, and it comes with a multitude of data representation views that can be added to the dashboard for quick progress assessment.
Targetprocess is geared towards agile software development projects, and it can be overwhelming in its feature set and clunky in its interface, but this solution visually represents data in more ways than rivals, and does everything a software project manager could want.
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