Project Management software recommendations
Software PM's -- what tools do you use the most in managing your development projects? What software solutions would you recommend?
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
June 18, 2009 9:05 PM
UPDATED:
September 28, 2011 9:14 AM
Answer Wiki:
I use MS Project Professional, Rational Tools (ClearQuest) and HP OpenView Service Center.
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We use Ms Project too, and used <a href="http://www.minuteman-systems.com/">Minuteman</a> in the past, which worked well for us.
There are some open source options, among others, <a href="http://www.dotproject.net/">dotProject</a> and <a href="http://www.project-open.com/">]project-open[</a>. I have used the former for a couple of personal projects, and I liked it.
If it is really small project and the company has MS Server 2003 I use SharePoint to manage my projects as well, there is a good book SharePoint for project management by O'Reilly, this has lead me to set up my own sharepoint site and i use this on my freelance projects (1and1.co.uk does a cheap SharepOint site you can rent for a month at a time).
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Is MS Project pretty standard across the board? Or does the type of project you’re working on influence what software you use?
We use both MS Project and Primavera. MS project for small and independent projects.
Primavera is for large and integrated projects – has nice capabilities/functionality for combining multiple projects and to provide Office and Departmental level summary reports. Of course you may need to plan for dedicated Project Planner type of person for caring and feeding of Primavera!
Both of these need a good level of understanding to gain the best out of them, Primavera has a number of training courses and there is a Prince 2 using Primavera book I have seen, as for MS project it is very simple to set up and use until you need to produce a report of change some thing and then it all unravels very quickly, would suggest you buy a couple of books first off and then start on a small project.
But having said this don’t let the problems put you off, even with the issues it is the best way to manage projects and if you have multiple projects and outsourced staff or home workers there is always MS Project Server, but this is a hole lot of more problems.