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Enterprise Grade Project Management Tools?
"What I'm looking for is some web tool in which everyone involved in a project could make changes in their task's status. (Things like number of hours worked and percent completed.) Preferably, all data should be kept in a relational database for easy data gathering and reporting.
MrProject is a nice app but it's Linux only (so far) and doesn't seem to allow for resource sharing among projects.
ToutDoux, another Gnome app, promised much more, but its development stalled a while ago.
I looked at some of the project management tools I found at Freshmeat, like SiteScape, EPIWARE, ITMS, and A.C.E., but none of them satisfied my needs.
MimerDesk is a web-based groupware environment that has a very promising project management tool. It's not complete yet, but it's the best I could find so far.
So, what do your companies use for project management and how is it going?"
The Post-IT Information Management System developed by the up-and-coming 3M corp. Incredible flexibility and stability. Has beaten all MS products in recent tests.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
And all the little elves are chained to their benches.
When we need a little more output we tell the drummer to increase the tempo and in cases that we are really falling behind we break out the whip.
Sometimes we get the whip out just for the hell of it. It's a great motivator and a lot of fun.
Try VPM (Virtual Project Management) from Scorpiosoft.
http://www.scorpiosoft.com
-psy
Why dont you check out php PHPgroupware
I used it a year ago and was pretty happy with it. You will need an apache web server (or similar) with php and mysql to use it.
Good thing for you that all those things are free. If you are looking for a system to host it on, why not try gentoo
The Ro Factor - Jeep/Linux Weblog
we had the same problem about 2yrs ago. we ended up rolling our own, i strongly suggest you dont do that. its pretty much dead now and only used for generating time sheets. TUTOS is one that we've looked at several times, unfortunatly it too isnt complete yet, but it is progressing. Another one we are looking at is the project management modules being built into the latest CVS version of Horde. While the CVS versions of the framework, email client, filtering system and to a lesser extent the calendar are pretty stable the other stuff is a quite quickly moving target.
I'm me. I think.
KDE's Kollab Server may make the "large" enterprise project management task become a little easier.
Combine that with PHPGroupWare or OPT and a Wiki (Twiki, ZWiki, etc) and you'll likely be all set to go
You will need to do a bit of scripting though to integrate all that, but that should be more convenient than going with a commercial solution (eg MS Project Server) and moulding yourselves into that
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
Have you thought about implementing your own copy of Sourceforge or (the much easier-to-install version) GForge ??
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
It's a little overkill for my shop of 5 (we use dotproject instead), but DCL is a pretty powerful web-based project/ticket management system with nice reports.
http://dcl.sourceforge.net/
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Try Phprojekt. We are deploying this to manage a geographically dispersed volunteer organisation.
The SQL definition file for the MSSQL portion of the Project Database can be modified to work on MySQL.
After that, all you need is the ODBC driver for MySQL.
No problems yet, but I'm not using it extensively, so I haven't had the opportunity to test every feature.
I work as a lead Enterprise Software Architect for a major Fortune 500 company, which through re-organization and prudent management managed to streamline operations, provide the best value and quality of service to its customers and excel in the field. We use a big txt file with write permissions stored on the server that everyone has access to. Whenever the developer or manager completes the project, they are adding a line to that .txt file with description of what was done.
Nader-2004
Have a look at GForge. Here is the blurb from their page:
"GForge is an Open Source collaborative software development tool, which allows you to organize and manage any number of software development projects. It's perfect for managing large teams of software engineers and/or engineers scattered among multiple locations."
"More organs means more human." - Zim
Currently we are at "-2. Contemptuous Arrogance"
Mostly, I think, due to corporate reaction and interpretation of the FDA 21 CFR part 11 guidelines for Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures.
I'm having trouble determining who has the head up their arse further, but so far I think it is our corporate regulatory division. The only thing I can say about their interpretation of Part 11 is "Taliban".
Soon I'll have to have a long beard and a have memorized the Qur'an to have write access to CVS/VSS.
But hey all of this looks good to our internal auditors!
You know..."God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Faithful."Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
And I think you should (read more about TOC on the net), there's a (commercial, expensive) tool called Concerto (not the PBX company) that does the job fabulously. It helped us at a previous job handle a 200-programmer, ~15-project environment with crystal-clear focus on the *important* things, which you can easily overlook when handling a shared gantt with ~10000 tasks.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
Bear in mind though, that I said it was 'source-released'; I'm not sure if it fits the open source definition.
More than mere navel gazing.
Try SuSE's TaskJuggler. While it's not available for Windows you might want to consider using an X client for windows to access it via remote X.
I work for a large public-sector organisation in England. .csv format, but you can't import it. It, allegedly, has a scripting language as part of it, but it's this wierd obfuscated proprietorial version of BASIC that, despite my being pretty handy with VBA, makes no sense to me whatsoever.
We decided that we needed a project management solution for a department of thirty people, hopefully to be rolled out across the entire dvision of a hundred and fifty.
So we got a bunch of consultants in, and they had a look at the options, and they charged us 20k (~$30k) to recommend SureTrak, an entry-level project management system by Primavera. There consultants were so expensive that we could see no possible way that they could be wrong.
Unfortunately, after using the software for two years, and sitll being the only person in the whole division who can uyse it at all, really, I have to say that, IMHO, it sucks.
Nothing about it makes any sense whatsoever. I will not list the many many ways in which it's broken, but trust me, you'd be better off drawing Gantt charts with a paper and pen. You can export data in
For most of the day to day project managemet functions we need, I have to export the data into an actually useful piece of software such as Excel and manipulate it there.
So now our project management system, broadly speaking, consists of 12k worth of software (30 x 400 single licences) which we pretty muich use as a big list of stuff, and a whole bunch of VBA modules I've written over the years to process the data and talk to the finance system.
I've learned a lot about programming, but something tells me that we somehow, despite the expensive consultancy, failed to hit on the optimal solution.
It wasn't until I started work here that I realised that Dilbert was true. And what's up with the invisible GBP signs?
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
Talk about dehumanizing.
Geez.
Sorry for the rant, but this bit of corporate speak is just degrading.
It may be quite early, but you already can do basic stuff with it:
i d= 90742
g em ent/user_interface
http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_
http://openacs.org/projects/dotwrk/project_mana
--AP
I too work in organisation which is adopting CMM. We are on level three and count for about 80 people. I have had some training about CMM, and it seems that though there is a strong tendency for every level to manage things more, through procedures, measurement and checks, I do not really notice an increase in the usage of project management tools. That seems to be only necessary for the software project leaders, of which there are three. Teamleaders seem to make do with Excel. Management of problem reports and change requests is done through Continuus, a versioning and change management system.
The goal of CMM is to improve the quality of the software and be able to better predict the scheduling and budgeting of the software. This could then be used by project managers and project leaders to better manage their projects, but that is not necessary. In all of the courses I had about CMM, project management was never mentioned.
Jurgen
On the commercial side, there are a few options, none of them cheap. Take a look at the Rational suite. One nice touch is only having to purchase the modules you need. The way Rational captures multi-project interactions is by becoming part of your development process, from soup to nuts. Yes, it's a commitment, but it's also your business.
TWiki - here's an example, Parrot. There are plenty of references around explaining the what a wiki is. It is up to you to use it.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
You start out asking for MS Project replacements due to scalability issue, but then you state that you are only considering what appear to be Linux-based solutions. Are you in search of an enterprise-class tool, or a Linux tool? As far as I know, there isn't anything that meet both criteria.
That said, we are a Fortune 100 and we use Niku 6 to track our projects. Niku Workbench (formally known as Project Workbench) is their scheduling tool. It is a little different than MS Project, but the learning curve isn't that bad.
The advantageous of such a suite is that all of the project plans are stored in a central repository allowing consolidated reporting and web-based time entry.
Hope this helps. (Oh, if you do find an enterprise-class Linux project management system, please post it here because I would love to look at it.)
What the temperature? Cubs and Red Sox in the playoffs, and now an Ask Slashdot submitter actually LOOKED for an answer BEFORE Asking Slashdot?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
It is sickening that the same people jumping on the CMM bandwagon will commit their valuable data into a pit of proprietary software. This is very short-sighted and only creates an exponentially-increasing cost as the vendor goes out of business or starts tightening their grip on your testicles.
It sounds like you are looking for an easy eye-candy way of managing data. What's wrong with plain-text e-mail archives? What's wrong with an in-house RDBMS with simple web forms to manage your important metrics? For the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars you could spend on proprietary solutions, you could collect a few idle programmers to collect your CMM requirements and see what database scheme naturally evolves from them. Develop the schema first; the front ends later. Use KISS. If a new requirement arrives, a good schema can be extended rather than rearranged, and SQL queries are pretty damn powerful tools for getting new information and relationships out of the data.
Of course, if your CMM-enabled company can't do even this for the sake of your own infrastructure, I suggest you look for a new job, because the bureaucratic nightmare is just beginning.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Double Choco Latte is part of GNU Enterprise. It has nice screenshots.
Dmoz has a bigger list of project management tools.
I personally have never found one that did what I wanted without making me do too much. That applies to bosses as well.
Nothing beats a good ol' number 2 and a stack of TPS report. By the way, about those cover sheets....
Okay, you said enterprise grade, but you mentioned MrProject. There I can recommend GanntProject at http://ganttproject.sourceforge.net .
It is brilliant. The most important feature from my perspective is that it supports WebDAV, meaning I can share the projects file very very easily.
Did I mention it is written in Java, and can be deployed using WebStart? So you have cross platform support.
You're just jealous, most likely because you're not anybody's resource.
I've used it and basically had a quiet rebellion on my hands in the software development team.
I strongly recommend that you look at how you are currently using MS Project - I love using it to plan projects, but I hate using it to track projects. If you are tracking the project using Excel (which you appear to be hinting at), you may find that a plan which is detailed enough to get your project off the ground is totally unsuitable for people to submit time-cards against (was I working on the fooble component or the integration of the greeble ? I spent half a day longer on the fooble than the project plan says, but my greebling went a lot faster - aargh ! I can't book more than the allocated hours ! Aaargh - I'll ask my manager to extend the number of hours for my foobling - manager loses will to live).
I quite like xplanner - it's designed to work with eXtreme Programming rather than "traditional" project management methodologies. For "enterprise" class, I'd suggest the Rational toolsuite....
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.