I wear two hats at work. I run people ops and I run projects. It’s messy some days, but it’s also kind of fun. I’ve used BambooHR, Rippling, Gusto, Lattice, Asana, Jira, Monday.com, ClickUp, Harvest, and Slack. Yes, all of them. I’m Kayla, and I learned the hard way what actually works when HR and PM collide. If you want to hear a different “two-hats” tale, the first-person story of a project engineer vs project manager made me laugh in recognition.
My setup: a small team with big plans
We’re a 35-person creative and dev shop. Designers, engineers, and a sales crew. We used BambooHR for people data and PTO. Gusto for payroll. Lattice for reviews. Asana for tasks and timelines. Jira for sprints. Harvest for time. Slack for the chatter. Later, we moved HR to Rippling because of laptops and app setup. I’ll explain.
You know what? The stack looks heavy written out. It felt heavy too. But it also kept us moving when things got weird. For anyone looking to see how other teams architect similar stacks, the case studies on PMO Network are worth a scroll. The most on-the-nose comparison for my world is this down-to-earth HR and project management mashup that echoes the same tool chaos.
A launch week that tested both
We hired a senior designer right before a website launch. Not ideal. I used BambooHR to send the offer and kick off onboarding tasks. It pushed her start date to the org chart and PTO calendar. I liked that part. Clean.
Meanwhile, in Asana, I spun up our “New Hire” template. It had tasks like:
- Order MacBook through IT (we switched to Rippling later; that part got smoother).
- Create Google Workspace and Figma access.
- Set up Slack channels and pronouns in profile.
- 30-60-90 plan with three simple goals.
Day 1 hit. The laptop arrived on time. But Okta didn’t. She sat with a loaner for three hours while I chased a missing SSO token. I felt awful. Reading the play-by-play in I hired a project manager—here’s what actually happened convinced me I wasn’t alone in those first-week jitters.
That same week, our client changed the hero video. Twice. Asana’s timeline view made the shift clear. I slid the “QA pass” by two days and pinged the team with the rule “if date moves, update owner.” Slack alerts dropped right in the project channel. It kept the noise down.
Tiny note: BambooHR synced her PTO to Google Calendar, which showed up in Asana workloads. So I didn’t put a kickoff on her first Friday by mistake. That sync? Gold.
If you’re curious about how much more efficient things can get when your HR platform and project tool are intentionally connected, this overview of integrating HR and project management tools uses BambooHR and Asana to show exactly where the time savings kick in.
When time off hits your timeline
July happened. Everyone wants sunshine. Two engineers sent PTO requests for the same sprint. BambooHR put it on the calendar. I saw the clash early.
So I did three things:
- In Jira, I cut the scope by two tickets. One was a risky API change. It moved to next sprint. Fine.
- In Asana, I shifted the milestone three days and set a comment rule: “No silent date changes.”
- I sent the client a short note: “Two devs are out. We’re shipping the core feature Monday. Extras on Wednesday.” They said thanks for the heads-up. No drama.
Multi-location teams feel this even harder, as spelled out in managing projects across a retail chain.
The lesson? HR calendars and PM dates must talk to each other. If they don’t, you’ll trip.
Reviews, goals, and… too many tools?
Our performance review cycle hit right as we planned Q4. Lattice asked for goals. Asana had goals and projects. And guess what? I typed the same goal in both. Twice. Such a time suck.
I tried linking them by adding Lattice goal names inside Asana custom fields. It worked, sort of. But updates still felt manual. Lattice is great for feedback and 1:1s. I love the review templates. Simple. Fair. But it’s not a project tool, and that gap shows when goals meet tasks. For a structured way to bridge that gap, I got a lot from this review of project cycle management training.
When we moved from BambooHR to Rippling, I liked how it handled app provisioning. One click, and new hires got Slack, Google, Figma, and even Zoom roles. That saved me an hour per person. But Rippling reports were quirky. CSV columns came in odd orders, and I had to clean them in Sheets before a board meeting. Small stuff, but annoying when you’ve got five minutes and cold coffee. Speaking of complex rollouts, the candid notes in ERP project manager—my honest take after three go-lives are a masterclass in keeping giant systems on the rails.
Stuff that made my life easier
- Asana rules and templates: I had a “Project Kickoff” template with owners, due dates, and a risk checklist. After three launches, it felt like muscle memory.
- BambooHR PTO → Google Calendar: Simple visual. Saved me from booking folks who were literally on a plane.
- Harvest time entries on Asana tasks: Not fun to set up, but clean for client billing. “Design: Homepage – 3.2 hours.” Done.
- Slack + Asana notifications only in project channels: Reduced DMs. Reduced stress.
If you’re brand-new to this balancing act, the rapid-fire lessons in I tried a project management boot camp read like cliff notes for surviving week one. And for anyone toggling between admin and delivery tasks, the reflection on being both project coordinator vs project manager nails the nuance.
A tiny digression: I keep a shared “Week in Review” doc in Notion. It’s just three bullets: what shipped, what slipped, what’s next. People read it while waiting for lunch. It keeps hearts clear and rumors quiet.
The parts that drove me nuts
- Jira for non-devs: Our designers hated it. The fields, the statuses, the sprints… it felt like a maze. We kept Jira for backend. Everyone else stayed in Asana.
- Double entry across HR and PM: Goals in Lattice, dates in Asana, PTO in BambooHR, time in Harvest. It’s easy to lose the thread.
- Monday.com as “one tool to rule them all”: We tried it. It can do HR-ish workflows and projects. It looked neat. But onboarding checklists felt clunky, and our managers missed simple review tools. We moved back.
- Rippling support: Good product. Support replies sometimes lagged a day. If a new hire can’t log in, a day feels like a week.
What I’d pick for different teams
- Under 20 people: ClickUp or Monday.com can cover tasks, light HR flows, and time. Keep it simple. Add Gusto for payroll and call it a day.
- 20 to 75 people: A true HRIS plus a real PM tool. BambooHR or Rippling paired with Asana is a sweet spot. If you write code, keep Jira for dev only.
- Heavy client billing: Harvest with Asana works. Or use ClickUp’s native time. Just make one source of truth for hours.
Industry tilt changes everything too—the healthcare lens in my life as a clinical project manager or the property-focused view in my life as a real estate project manager show how the same frameworks flex.
Quick gut scores from my desk:
- Asana: 9/10 for teams with mixed roles.
- Jira: 8/10 for dev, 5/10 for everyone else.
- BambooHR: 8/10 for clean HR basics.
- Rippling: 9/10 for IT and apps, 7/10 for reporting.
- Lattice: 8/10 for reviews and growth.
- Harvest: 8/10 for billing peace of mind.
- Monday.com: 7/10 as a generalist. Tries to do too much for us.
A small thing that mattered
We added one Asana