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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?
MS Project is beautiful, but seriously flawed in the monitoring business.
:-)
Also seriously flawed in that you need IE on Windoze to use its web access features.
You might want to check out Tutos. Dunno if it has all the features you want, but it's free and open source. Add what you need!
reech bee-yond ur clip-0n
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.
Yeah, an AC got this one first... SourceForge. OSDN's advertising it all the time at the top of /. at least. Check out the Portal Edition; it looks like it may be what you're looking for.
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
One company who make wonderful product management software is Welcom-- www.wst.com.
I don't know if it fits your specific access requirements, but I do believe they have web browser access.
MS Project is "project for dummies". Its sorta a project management program, but not a real one-- not flexible, not standards based, and not used by professional project managers.
The WST software is really well done, really scalable, and really libertating, especially if you've been forced to use MS Project in the past.
Yes, I am a happy past customer, but not a paid spokesmodel.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I use many of the projects at sourceforge.net , but this may not be the best example of the SF capabilities.
Many of the smaller projects don't really use the bugtracker or task manager, and simply use SF.net as a file hosting and download location (See Sawfish for an example.
Overall, not that impressive. But as I said before, the small projects on SF.net may not be the best example of what SF can do for me and my organization (We run several java-based websites with thousands of files each. Currently we use Rational's Clearcase for SCM, but don't really have much of a Project Mangement software system).
Does anyone have a large project which uses SF for product management, bug tracking, etc?
I would love to see a SF example or demo on a large, active project.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Also seriously flawed in that you need IE on Windoze to use its web access features.
[Leave it to MS to never miss an opportunity to turn a great concept on its head to leverage the rest of their product line:) The folks at MS who actually implemented the web access feature in Project must have had the breath knocked out of them at the "IE specialization".]
Nevertheless, the concept of web based project management is still a really good one. Not only for read-access to view what's going on, but also to help formulate project plans.
I prefer to spend my time programming, but have had brushes with project planning exercises and noted the dearth of good open source alternatives to MS Project (which, practically, seems to require some training in order to learn the quirks of how to use it.)
The most intriguing development I've seen is out of the Horde Project (a PHP framework for web applications).
They mention something called Nag that came out 1.0 on June 11 of this year, but I don't know what it's really like.
But I can see where having an XML database for projects that is accessed via PHP would be a good thing. That, and having some SVG enabled browsers (and server code) to create and view Gantt charts on the fly.
Since I'm throwing buzzwords and wishlists about, I may as well suggest that WebDAV would be a great part of such a tool because it would offer a good means for collaborative authoring of project plans, which is really how the best ones get done. (The worst ones are guesses and dictats that make everyone mad.)
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Intranet module of above has projetcs/tasks/tickets functionality all with calendars & billing, time sheets and history tracking, user comments and customer/partner access, automatic mailing of reminders.
Requires AOLServer + Oracle or PostgreSQL. Free in all senses -- http://openacs.org/.
Gant charts are not there, though :^)
--AP
I am engineer recently turned project manager (hiss)... and I was fed up with the lack of web based tools to facilitate project management. From my perspective, one of the most important things a PM does is facilitate communication betweem team members and groups working on a project. MS Project is great for scheduling and ghant charts, but does nothing to really help in the way intra-team-member communication.
So, I got fed up and wrote my own application. It does not do scheduling. But it does offer a lot of tools and functionality to keep people up-to-date on a project and its status. It grew from the idea of providing an automated/dynamic "project page" that could be posted to our company's intranet... it grew and grew in scope to what it is today - which incorporates simple document management, team member management, release management/tracking, etc.
http://majordojo.com/pmi/
^byrne :/
Most OSS projects are organized an operate differently from commercial projects. In OSS projects, the project plan is generally a fairly vague list of tasks with some rough prioritization and a little discussion of how they are interrelated. This is completely different from a typical commercial project, where the timeline and budget have to be worked out in advance, often before approval to begin the project is even received. This provides the need for tools like Project, which can take a list of tasks with defined intertask relationships and resource assignments and compress and level them to produce a tight project plan (well, actually it takes a lot of work by the user to make it tight, but the tool helps a *lot* by helping to avoid certain kinds of insane assumptions -- unless the user explicity requests the insanity 'cause the boss says we have to shave another month off, but I digress).
What OSS projects do need is a way for widely distributed folks to be able to sign up for tasks and report progress, and there are a few different solutions out there for this problem (which other posters have mentioned).
The strength and the weakness of the volunteer, community development model is that people write what they themselves need, not what others may need. In many cases, the needs of the developers are shared by many others. In other cases, they're not, and for those types of software volunteer development is unlikely to bear fruit.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
MS Project Web Access is not browser-based, though. It is Windows-based, requiring Win98, Win98SE, WinMe, NT4SP6, Win2000 or WinXP as well as Internet Explorer 5.01 or later.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.