If there’s one type of web application we continue to see various takes on, it’s the Project Management tool. Each company has their own idea of exactly what works, but often the individuals have their own opinions and it can often lead to project turbulence and occasionally failure.
I am personally a big fan of outliner based project management tools. Unfortunately, there aren’t many or any that include the functionality I’m looking for – think OmniOutliner with sharing functionality. Anyhow, that’s for a separate discussion – what we’d like to know is what your favorite project management app is? What’s been proven to work project after project, day in, day out? What are you major considerations? Is there anything, like me, you’re still waiting to see?
I look forward to also seeing the comments – coming from a world where everyone is using Microsoft Project – I would love to see what web-based tools people are using. Thanks for the post Zee.
My biased vote is for Pelotonics. As soon as I realized that I needed a “trusted system” for my group I started creating it. Basecamp almost got me there, but I wanted to be able to hold people to deadlines with tasks.
I also like the Evernote integration. There is also Google Documents integration coming as well.
Our team is on Solve360 by http://www.norada.com They integrate PM and CRM into one app which supports our entire business process. It’s easy on the eyes and simple to use i.e. not clunky like typical web apps. Highly recommended.
I use dotProject ( Open Source Project Management tool) to work through my projects and timeline.
It also has a ticket system and you can assign support levels to follow those up
I always liked ActiveCollab or the free version called ProjectPier. PP is actually based on AC’s original code.
I have been using DeskAway for quite some time now. In fact it has been with me as an individual freelancer and now when I have my own small company.
Thats the one that works for me…
you get it here: http://www.deskaway.com
yeah, i’ve just signed up – seriously impressed.
I too would second Solve360.
Basecamp!
Amazee- http://www.amazee.com
Sigh, clickable: http://thymer.com
We use, and are very satisfied with, Thymer (http://thymer.com). It is really clean and has a very nice innovative interface. While it doesn’t have outliner features, it’s easy of use comes very close.
Pivotal Tracker for me! It calculates when you’ll be able to deliver your tickets based on the effort input and the strength of your team.
It has a steeper learning curve than most – but it’s truly fantastic once you get to know it. And the fact it’s all ajaxy and content driven instead of page-driven helps a lot!
If someone on your team updates a ticket, everybody’s page immediately refreshes to show the change.
I am using http://www.deskaway.com for collaboration & project management & must say it is an awesome tool. I really liked the tool very much because of its simplicity & ease of use & also the user interface is very clean. Also it gave me a lot of important features which were not provided by the tools I tried before. But this one is almost a perfect project management app.
We’re using activeCollab, great project management application. The best thing is you can host is on your own server!
Any recommendations for freelancers (as opposed to teams)?
JIRA bug and issue tracker works for us. It’s more of an issuetracking then a project management tool, but has lots of (free and paid) plugins to be able to tune it for your own use.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
I’ve started using Huddle since their presentation at Next Web ’09 and have found it to be pretty nifty: http://www.huddle.net/
We build AceProject. It’s affordable, easy to use and most importantly, it gets out of your way lets you work.
http://www.aceproject.com
See the demo: http://demo.aceproject.com
Create a free account: http://free.aceproject.com
To stay organized personally: Omnifocus. This is a mac-only tool that follows the GTD system.
For project management and team work, we love Basecamp. Great to keep folks on the same page.
I’m using project tools from http://www.5pmweb.com Moved from Basecamp few months ago. 5pm looks good and provides a great range of tools within a visually appealing dashboard.
Basecamp!
Because it gets the job done.
How about PHPprojekt? It’s a web software though, not a web service.
http://www.liquidplanner.com/ because the schedule engine rocks and collaboration is awesome.
I use http://www.yutiti.com . It is based on Gantt charts and is a little basic , but they are in beta and I hope it gets better soon.
We have been using Clarizen for a few months now and really like it. It has deeper funcationality than Basecamp which is what we needed for our IT Team, yet it is still easy enough to use for non project managers. It has great visuals of the project timelines with milestones. One of the better features is the email integration that allows for quick updates of projects. Overall we like the balance between easy to use with deep functionality.
We’re using streber-pm (http://www.streber-pm.org/) for a couple of months now. I tried several other systems before choosing Streber.
At first I liked it very much, but after a while it get’s cluttered. I still advise it for small projects though.
As a consultant, I’ve been part of a few different project teams and have tried Basecamp, among others. To me, the Outlook integration, automated reminders, resource allocation and other serious project management features (which can be picked and chosen from as needed) in Project Insight make it the best for the low SaaS price. http://www.projectinsight.net.
5pm (5pmweb.com
) – best interface, hands down!
Basecamp is my favorite. I’ve even created a site dedicated to how much I like it and how to best use it. We use it to organize 100+ projects and hundreds of individuals across the projects and it’s unbelievably simple – although some more powerful features are missing.
No recommendation, but an article on the ideal project management tool: http://www.pmhut.com/what-would-an-ideal-project-management-tool-look-like
My favourite tool is ZCOPE (http://www.getzcope.com). I’m working since almost 10 years as a project manager and most of the methods and tools were too complicated to gain support in the teams. We use ZCOPE with all our customers as it’s very flexible – it works with the minimum of data entered.
Project management 2.0 or agile project management is a development in the right direction. Finally!
We’ve built Glasnost21 (www.glasnost21.com) so are biased BUT because we’ve built it all in Adobe Flex it’s really nice to use. Not clunky or windows like at all.
To Project Management, we’ve added Contact and Image Management because we figured many companies are like ours and our work essentially boils down to dealing with contacts, and handling tasks, comments and documents relating to projects which often include quite a few images. So linking it all together seemed a good idea.
Adding Instant Messaging between users, a rather nice newsletter system, custom branding and easy tools for collaborating with colleagues, clients and suppliers helps give Glasnost, we humbly suggest, an edge.
Please try it out for free at http://www.glasnost21.com
Sorry forgot to answer Steve who asked “Any recommendations for freelancers (as opposed to teams)?” – http://www.glasnost21.com has a special plan actaully called ‘Freelancer’.
Hi. My recommendation as an excellent project management web-app is workforcetrack.com. It’s a handy all-in-one tool that can extremely simplify your work. It’s the cheapest one with such a functionality…
I’d recommend Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com) like Edward did, or Mavenlink (http://www.mavenlink.com), but it really depends on the type of project you are working on.