Slashdot Mirror
Effective Project Management Software?
thisisvinod writes "Frustrated with the lack of efficient project monitoring features in MS Project 2000, I was searching on the web for something that would suit my needs. I want a tool that would be browser-based, which will allow the PM to delegate tasks to others, against which they can mark the "effort" spent on the task (as hours/minutes), not percentage complete. Along with that, features that would allow creating of tracking reports, sending of email notifications and would also provide integration with empirical data would be quite nice. Any ideas on which tool would provide all this? And I really do think that most project management tools fall drastically short of one thing or another - MS Project is beautiful, but seriously flawed in the monitoring business. I'm sure other Slashdot readers have faced similar problems, and might have good solutions." Update: 07/30 2pm EDT by C : For the curious, Ask Slashdot last tackled this issue in this Linux-specific article, and discussed web-based versions, here. It's been 2 years, any changes?
My key complaint about MS Project (and something I'd like to see as a feature in another package) is the poor project plan distribution mechanism. MS pretty much forces all participants to run Project just to see details of the tasks. We don't want to buy 100 copies for a couple of projects per year. Hence, we print out the whole, stinkin' project plan once a week. Of course, I'm sure there are several php and cgi based project management packages in varying degrees of finish, but I can't sell any of the managers in my company on unloading Project unless all of the functionality is there and the interface is very similar.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.