project management software advice

laoisman11

Hi,

Not sure this is the right forum for this question (mods, feel free to move)....

I am looking for a software for project management, and specifically for a program which will allow mulitple projects of varying time lines and multiple staggered tasks (i.e. tasks will not be continuous, there will be a time delay between them).

I realize that this can be achieved on many types of software, but they appear to involve a "one-by-one" approach where you have to enter each task and assign a time, but when you have 20+ projects with 20+ tasks in each, this is very cumbersome. Many of the software de not appear to flag when you have put, for example, more than 20 h work into one day!

Finally, I am looking for an option where I can insert a new task into the project planning at any time to allow for any unforeseen urgent projects which may pop up. This would then automatically defer all other tasks by the duration of time requested.

Cheers for any pointers/advice.

boobar

Have you looked at Microsoft Project?

croo

Most of the open source project planning seem to be simple affairs. OpenProj, for example, is one of the most popular applications and it can read and create MS Project compatible files but as an actual planning tool it seems to be lacking. You can easily create tasks & subtasks with dependencies. You can create Resources and assign them to Tasks but it cannot manage project leveling - though I think if you wish you can purchase this additional functionality. Personally this use of open source as a marketing tool bugs me.

I haven't used MS Project since 2002 and my experiences then was that it was good at creating the initial plan but it didn't manage live project very well - in particular the project leveling aspect you specified when new tasks were added. But 2002 is a long time ago now so perhaps that has improved.

The best open source project tool I tried was called TaskJuggler. But it's a little different in that you primarily create & manage the project using a text editor!?

I used version 2 which included a GUI but it was rewritten from scratch in Ruby for version 3 and now has no GUI - which seems like a strange thing I know but it does generate output for reports & gantt charts in HTML.

So you can use your editor of choice to manage your project but generate HTML files to deploy to a server for everyone else to see.

It's a unique approach in my experience and as a developer originally not too scary but I doubt many manager types would take to it. Though in its defense it does work well! Anyway, I only used it once , its leveling was the best I saw in the open source world. I looked at version 3 recently but I missed the GUI from version 2 so haven't used the new version.

jtedesign

I'd recommend looking at Workgroups. I've used it previously with an organization I do some work with and was pretty impressed with it's PM features, specifically workflow automation and scheduling aspects (which it sounds like you're looking for).

Grog11

i've been using ganttic so far and that has served me well. since i have an "error" with MS, that has been my choice. but i'm always looking around. so far haven't found anything i like, though...

Saotome

I checked the Latitude project management software my friend is using right now for his contracting company. It can have multiple tasks/subtasks within your project, no limitation on its creation. Insertion of tasks/subtasks can be done anytime, which makes it very flexible. And you can link projects/tasks in timesheets, quotes and invoices entries.