5 Free Apps That Make Project Management Easier
Putting together a project plan can sometimes seem more daunting than completing the project itself. When you need to track each step of a project, along with your costs, staff, and other factors, you probably need a project management application.
Tue, June 30, 2009
Computerworld — Putting together a project plan can sometimes seem more daunting than completing the project itself. When you need to track each step of a project, along with your costs, staff, and other factors, you probably need a project management application.
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Project management applications are usually centered around Gantt charts, where each step in a project is represented as a bar in the chart. These visuals are linked to lists of the resources tied to each task (such as the person, team, company or another entity responsible for doing any given job). Everything is synchronized to a calendar, which updates you on the progress that your project should have achieved at any given time during its life cycle.
It's a simple idea, actually. Yet project planning can be intimidating, especially if you're unfamiliar with the methodologies behind it. As a result, learning to use project management applications can be a project in itself -- and you have to pay for the privilege.
For example, because of its brand and its place in the market, Microsoft Office Project is a popular choice for beginners. But at $600, Office Project is expensive, especially if you just want to use it for some simple projects, or if you're not sure you really need a project management app.
For this roundup, I'll take a look at five free alternatives to using Microsoft Office Project. None of these are from major software companies -- four out of the five are open source while the fifth, jxProjects, is advertising-supported. On the one hand, this means that you don't get the amount of hand-holding that you would from a commercial product. On the other hand, these products often employ more innovative methods than commercial software.
In this roundup, I'll examine what each of these applications offers, how easy each is to use and how useful each choice may be for those unfamiliar with project planning.
Although Gantter.com is Web-based, it has no online collaboration features. Rather, Gantter.com is meant to be used like a standalone desktop application.
Like a desktop application, Gantter.com loads up in only a few seconds; feedback from clicking through its menus and functions was so snappy I hardly noticed that I wasn't using a standalone application.
The user interface resembles the look and feel of Google Docs -- so much so that I found myself instinctively looking for the ability to save my plan to my Google Docs account.
