We all are looking to be effective, whether in our personal life or in our business projects. That's where project management becomes crucial, helping us organize our time, efforts and resources and not to be overwhelmed by multiple tasks. When building a web app with a task and project management module, web developers often face the challenge of choosing the right tools.

If you're using React in your technical stack and building a team collaboration platform or integrating project management features into your existing application, selecting the appropriate libraries can significantly impact your development process and end-user experience.

In this article, we'll explore the most useful (and maintained) libraries that can help you add project management features to your React project.

SVAR React Gantt

This is an open-source UI component that adds a modern-looking, responsive and user-friendly Gantt chart to your React app. It supports rich customization capabilities and maintains fast performance even with large datasets (here is the demo where 10,000 tasks rendered in 172ms).

SVAR React Gantt offers a comprehensive set of features including drag-and-drop interface for managing tasks on the chart, reordering tasks in the grid, sorting, and zooming. You can fully customize the task edit form, task bars, grid, and time scale to align with your project's specific requirements. Both dark and light themes are available.

When to use:
SVAR Gantt is good for applications that need to manage project timelines visually, such as construction task management, software development sprints, or events planning. Its customization capabilities, eye-catching design and the ability to work fast with a large number of tasks make it suitable for enterprise-grade applications as well as small projects.

Pragmatic drag and drop

Created by Atlassian, Pragmatic drag and drop is a framework agnostic library that allows developers to create drag-and-drop experiences in their applications. The library consists of a core package (written in TypeScript) and optional packages for additional drag-and-drop features. Its incremental structure makes it fast and lightweight since you only use the parts that you need. Many developers appreciate its smooth performance once set up.

Pragmatic drag and drop can be a great help in project management applications, where drag-and-drop interactions are used for rearranging kanban cards. The library powers some of the most widely used platforms like Trello, Jira, and Confluence. The library’s design philosophy prioritizes safety and reliability, making it an excellent choice for larger-scale applications.

When to use:
Pragmatic drag and drop is perfect for creating kanban-style task management tools, where tasks need to be rearranged dynamically, such as in Trello or Jira-like apps.

dnd-kit

This is another solution for handling common drag-and-drop tasks. dnd-kit is a lightweight, modular toolkit for React that uses building hooks (such as useDraggable and useDroppable) to turn your components into draggable elements and droppable areas.

It allows you to customize every aspect of the behavior of your draggable and droppable components and support different use cases: lists, grids, containers, virtualized lists, and more. Also, support for various input methods available: pointer, mouse, touch and keyboard sensors.

Note that currently dnd-kit is undergoing a rewrite with the new release planned in January 2025.

When to use:
In any application that requires virtualized drag-and-drop interactions, like kanban board or simple task list app.

React Big Calendar

Calendars are often used in project management applications, as they enable teams to plan, track, and coordinate tasks and resources. Big Calendar is a React event calendar that uses flexbox for layout instead of classic tables-caption approach. Since most of the layout heavy lifting left to the browser, the calendar shows better performance and responsiveness.

Drag-and-drop functionality is supported via addon, making it easy to manage events directly through the calendar interface. As for the localization, Big Calendar offers four options, allowing developers to use their preferred DateTime library: Moment.js, Globalize.js, date-fns or Day.js.

Developers appreciate its simplicity and extensibility, though styling can require extra effort for complex customizations. Big Calendar provides precompiled CSS files for quick setup but also includes SASS files for advanced customization.

When to use:
Use React Big Calendar for team scheduling, event management, or tracking resource availability. It's a great choice for applications where simplicity and responsiveness are priorities.

FullCalendar

FullCalendar is a full-featured, Google-like JavaScript event calendar with the ability to display events or allocate resources in Month, Week, Day, Year, and List views. I included it in the list because it provides a React component for seamless integration and it is widely recognized as a top-tier library for managing events and schedules in project management apps.

FullCalendar allows you to handle event creation, editing, and deletion directly through the interface. The library comes with extensive customization capabilities, rich API and numerous plugins, such as time grid, resource management, and recurring events. It also offers built-in support for localization (time zones, languages) and compatibility with accessibility standards.

When to use:
Choose FullCalendar for project management apps that require advanced scheduling capabilities, such as managing team workloads, event timelines, or resource allocation. Note that some of the features, like Timeline view and resource management, are available only in the Premium edition (paid).

Recharts

Recharts is a simple and flexible charting library for React, built with SVG and D3. It allows developers to create visually appealing charts with minimal effort.

Recharts focuses on being lightweight, easy to use, and highly customizable. It uses declarative components, making it easy to integrate into React applications and quickly create a variety of charts, such as LineChart, BarChart, AreaChart, PieChart, TreeMap, RadarChart, and more.

Developers appreciate Recharts for its clean API and integration simplicity. However, it may not suit apps with highly complex or real-time visualization needs due to its limited support for advanced D3 capabilities.

When to Use:
Recharts is ideal for project management apps needing clear data visualization. Use it to display project timelines, resource allocation, team performance, task completion rates, or budget tracking. Its simplicity makes it perfect for dashboards and reports requiring interactive or static charts.

React Chrono

React Chrono is a smart and visually appealing timeline component for React, offering flexibility and customization to build stunning timelines. It supports Horizontal, Vertical, and Tree modes that allows developers to display data in a way that suits their application's layout.

React Chrono uses a data-driven API, making it easy to create timelines dynamically while offering options to customize themes and styles to match your brand. Advanced features like nested timelines and slideshow support enhance its versatility, enabling detailed and interactive presentations of information.

When to Use:
React Chrono is an excellent choice for project management apps that need to showcase chronological data. Use it to represent project milestones, team achievements, or task progress over time.

PrimeReact Timeline

PrimeReact Timeline is another component that provides a sleek, customizable way to showcase events, milestones, or workflows in a chronological order. It’s part of the comprehensive PrimeReact library.

The component is highly flexible, offering horizontal and vertical layouts to fit different design needs. You can easily customize the appearance of timeline items with icons, colors, and templates to get the look that you need.

When to use:
The PrimeReact Timeline is an excellent choice for applications where you need to visualize progress or milestones, such as tracking project stages, showcasing historical data, or planning events.

Conclusion

This article highlights some of the top React libraries that can accelerate the development of project management apps, whether you need to add timelines, visualize tasks flow, streamline team collaboration, or integrate charts to your dashboard.

The React ecosystem provides a good selection of libraries for building project management features, from specialized tools like SVAR React Gantt to foundational components like Pragmatic drag and drop. When selecting a library for your React app, consider not just the features set but also TypeScript support, bundle size, accessibility support and compatibility with the latest version of React.

If you have any suggestion to the list, feel free to add it in the comments.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash