Best AI tools for software project management

Since the start of the 2020s, the AI and machine learning sector has made huge strides in both its usage and accessibility. As a result, this means it is infiltrating into every field and space imaginable. In particular, it has made its way into the world of project management. Let’s take a look at some of the top AI project management tools on the market.

What does “AI” mean for project management software?

“AI”, in the way of every big-new-paradigm category, has been stretched so far out of shape as to lose much of its descriptive power. Within the domain of project management, AI tends to describe a couple of broad capabilities.

The most common use refers to generative AI, the kind powered by large language models (LLMs) made famous by ChatGPT. For project management tooling, this means features like asking the AI to draft something (maybe a meeting agenda), summarize something (such as meeting notes), create templates, or build lists.

The “other” kind of AI means the ability to provide predictive analysis on work outcomes, or to spot risks, or to understand overall team productivity. Here, the priority is less on reducing clerical work like document drafting, and more on providing insights to project managers and their teams to help them work better.

The best AI tools for software project management

With this distinction in mind, let’s survey the top AI tools for project management currently on the market.

Socratic (paired with Jira)

As the newest company on this list, Socratic was built with AI at its foundation. Socratic integrates with Jira and GitHub, applying machine learning to work activity data to answer the otherwise difficult-to-impossible questions that project managers face. (E.g. “How long will this project take to finish?” “What’s at risk and why?” “Which teams need help?”) The aim is to use data to supercharge technical program management and engineering operations.

With the ability to see historical actuals by person and team, Socratic predicts forecast time-to-complete for any epic, initiative, project or release. It can also help identify team members with too much work and those with spare capacity, as well as how teams are improving and why.

Socratic is free to try. Unlike other integrated planning or metrics tools, Socratic doesn’t charge by number of Jira or Git users (which becomes expensive as teams grow), but rather by seat license.

Jira

Jira is the market leader for project management software. With a Premium subscription, you can access its AI tools, referred to as Atlassian Intelligence. (Get it?) It functions as a generative AI service, creating text for you, although you can also use it to build a virtual assistant that your team can chat with, should they have questions about the company (such as what the policy is on holidays, or how certain documentation should be formatted).

To use Jira’s AI assistant, you need the Premium plan.

Wrike

Wrike is a project management suite that serves many of the same functions as Jira, with a few distinct differences. Zeroing in on its AI capabilities, its Work Intelligence service is a set of tools used to rapidly generate content (such as project briefs, event plans, and pitch decks) and summarize project goals. Its focus is more on writing material, meaning it uses more generative AI, although there are some predictive features built into it, such as its risk prediction function.

You can currently access Wrike’s AI content generation tools with their free plan, however, its AI risk prediction tools are only available on their Business plan.

Notion

Notion is a versatile all-in-one documentation and collaboration tool, which supports some project management use cases. While many engage with Notion to help manage teams and projects, others use it as a way of hosting content, such as webpages, pitch decks, and blogs. Notion recently expanded its features to include AI, mainly in the form of generating written content (rather than predictive tools or analysis). It helps with creating summaries of content and building step-by-step checklists for tasks.

There’s a monthly per-user up charge to add Notion AI to your workspace, although it can be tried for free.

Asana

Asana is a suite of project management tools, which has started experimenting with generative AI capabilities. You can get automated summaries of projects during specific time frames, write summaries with AI, and edit your writing to give it a different tone. They also intend to release workflow planning AI tools as well.

To access Asana’s AI services, it costs $10.99 per user, per month.

ClickUp

ClickUp is another all-in-one collaboration and management tool, with some recently added AI features to help with workflow. Much like Asana and Notion, these capabilities focus on generating summaries and creating templates. Its most sought-after feature is an AI translation service, which is great for those working with international team members. Its AI bot is also good fantastic for answering questions you may have about your own project, such as what certain team members are working on, or what your current sprints look like. However, its data analytics and insights are limited.

To get access to ClickUp’s AI features, it costs $7 per user, per month.

Monday

Monday is project management software that has recently branched out into offering AI solutions. They allow you to summarize information, translate text, improve the quality of already-written text, and identify the sentiment from texts (such as whether it is positive, neutral, or negative). Monday also offers a “custom action” feature, which is where you explain to the AI what you would like it to do. However, this appears to be experimental at the moment, and so it’s somewhat temperamental. Theoretically, you could use this to try and gain data or analytics, but considering how most of Monday’s AI solutions are related to generating and summarizing text, it may not be reliable (or even capable).

Monday AI is available in their Pro package, which is $19.00 per month per seat/user.

Aha!

Aha! is a product & project management suite that places a heavy focus on visualizing your activity and information. It comes with an AI assistant that can both generate text and analyze patterns in written text. In terms of crafting text, it can create drafts for documents, write up minutes from meetings, and make email templates. When it comes to its textual analysis, this can take the form of identifying themes within your documentation, or highlighting specific anomalies.

To access Aha!’s AI assistant, you need to purchase their Aha! Ideas subscription or Knowledge Subscription, which are both $39 per user per month. Ideas gives you access to AI analysis tools, and Knowledge gives you access to text generation.

What should you look for in an AI project management tool?

Here are some points you should keep in mind when it comes to choosing the right AI project management tool for you.

Is it an assistant, or an analyst?

Much of the solutions billed under the AI headline operate as assistants: summarizing meeting notes, parsing ticket titles, recapping team sentiment from the latest standup.

The “other” kind of AI capability, such as Socratic, functions more as an analyst: examining patterns from work activity data to make predictions about the work and/or teams that may need attention, and why.

Both assistants and analysts are useful, even powerful. The question is: which is better for the jobs you need done?

Does it work with your current tooling and workflow?

If you’re a new team or company with no project management tooling, then AI capabilities may well decide which tool you pick. If not—if your teams use, say, Jira today—you’re not likely to switch to a different tool just for its AI capabilities. That’s a disruption that affects every person in the engineering organization (and maybe beyond).

This is why Socratic integrates seamlessly with Jira: answering a raft of hard questions for project managers and engineering leaders, while leaving the team’s current workflow and tooling untouched.

How seamless is the AI?

People of a certain age recall Microsoft Office’s Clippy. Clippy was a first-gen bot assistant that seemed designed to nag and enrage you while you were trying to work. (It was actually named Clippit, though no one ever called it that. What it was often called isn’t printable.) A downside of generative AI is the desire, unsuccessfully resisted by some companies, to turn almost every user action into an opportunity to suggest or guess what they’re trying to do.

Contrast the Clippy approach to something like GitHub’s Copilot, which operates within a developer’s IDE to suggest code snippets and unit tests—a far better experience of bot assistance.

Was the tool built with AI in its DNA? Or has it been “AI-washed” with some generative capabilities as a kind of bolt-on? Any tool trial should make clear the answer.