The end of 2019 was also the beginning of something catastrophic: the COVID-19 pandemic. The global pandemic has been responsible for threatening the economy and triggering debates concerning the second recession of the millennium, and for many organizations, it has also resulted in the immediate shift to remote work.

For the last five years, I have worked primarily from home. I also worked from home in the 1990s, attitudes and technology have changed a lot in those 25 years. Now, in response to COVID-19, working from home will be different again in the future. This article explores these past, present and future eras of remote work.

Gone are the days when manufacturing industries, construction and software companies were the only major consumers of project management tools. Every industry has slowly evolved to understand the importance of using a project management methodology to handle all their tasks systemically. ITS, a dental college in Northern India has started managing all their academic activities using Zoho Projects, our project management tool.

Major crises like our current situation is a real-life test of agility for many of us. As we look around at governments grappling with mitigation and businesses of every size pivoting their strategies, we see all of them dovetail back to this mantra: “Responding to change over following a plan.” While everything may feel hopeless at times, there are also inspiring examples of people and organizations who have shown resourcefulness and resiliency in their responses.

With scattered teams across different locations becoming the new normal, project management tools are becoming essential for remote work. At Zoho Projects, we’re always looking for ways to simplify your project management experience. Et voilà! We’ve upgraded and refurbished our Gantt chart feature to include more capabilities, making it easier than ever to work with it. Here’s what you can do with our new Gantt interface.

With the myriad of project management resources available today to ensure organized and successful project completion, one could argue that the need for a personal touch is obsolete. However, as cloud computing and mobile apps have expanded our horizons for task completion, team work is now more important than ever to connect all the dots.

In project management, there is a constant struggle at identifying the best approach for work: the classic Waterfall methodology or the more flexible Agile methodology. It’s hard to find an organization that only follows either one of these. Though there may be scrum purists who would revolt against the idea of integrating Waterfall and Agile approaches, a hybrid process is often what many teams prefer.

The year is halfway over, and we’ve been hard at work improving your experience with Projects. Say hello to an upgraded Zoho Projects that comes with new and enhanced features to give you a productivity boost. Read on to learn more! Lay it all out – Multiple layouts for projects

If there’s one thing the folks at Zoho Projects have learned all these years, it’s how incredibly diverse you and your companies are. You’ve shown us how creative you can be in the way you use our features and the way you adapt Zoho Projects to fit your teams. We’ve kept this diversity in mind as our product has grown and evolved.

Every task in your project has a life cycle—a series of stages it has to pass through from creation to completion. Manually moving tasks from one stage to another can be cumbersome, more so if many tasks in your project have a similar life cycle. Worse still, having to do it repeatedly can make even exciting tasks look mundane.