Does anyone know a specific.... 1

[smsinger3]

Hello. I am a web developer who is researching project management software for our organization. I have seen a few products, but none seem to fit our needs. Do you know of any specific products that meets our criteria. They are:

1) Both the project manager and team member can schedule tasks. Typeically the project manager may schedule the milestones, and everyone else schedules the individual tasks.
2) The team members should be able to see the entire schedule for their project.
3) It must keep track of hours worked per week on each milestone per team member.
4) Reporting must be done on an employee and/or project level.

"Nice to have" features would be:
1) Easy to use (duh...)
2) Enable the user to write their own status reports to managment every week.

Thank you very much in advance for your suggestions!!

Regards,

Steve

 

[BNPMike]

You just described Microsoft Project.

 

[planetant]

Yes, well it has been argued that Project is not easy to use.

I'm looking around at alternatives as well. Have you found anything?

 

[smsinger3]

We have Project at our company and everyone hates it with a passion. Here's what I found so far:

"Track-IT" (

http://www.dovico.com)

- I thought this could fit our needs, except the tasks appear in alphabetical order and not the order you want to perform them. Although, I like the fact that there is both a web and windows version of the product.

"Enact" (asp.enact.cc) - I started playing with yesterday night. So far it seems ok, but the terminolgy is different than what I am used to. I'm still checking it out and I don't know the pricing.

If anyone else has any suggestions, let us know!! Thanks!

 

[planetant]

Here are some examples of what I found:

Enact - Lovely piece of enterprise sofware I used in my old job, had some issues, but seems well-supported:

http://www.netmosphere.com/

Creative manager Pro - Dont seem to have upload from Project capability, this might be a problem:

http://www.creative-manager.com/tour1/tour7.asp

Dont know much about these yet
Infowit:

http://www.infowit.com/benefits_B3.asp

First Manager:

http://www.1stmanager.com/

Project Vision:

http://www.internalsystems.com/

TurboProject:

http://www.turboproject.com/

Milestones Products:

http://www.kidasa.com/

 

[planetant]

I never used Enact for estimating and reporting functionality. Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

[planetant]

Oh, yeah there is also Primavera Products:

http://www.primavera.com/

 

[smsinger3]

Just curuious since I am evaulating Enact - what were your issues with Enact?

 

[planetant]

Mostly, I loved it, but I didnt like how it wasnt connected to email. By this I mean, that if yuor task is overdue, I woul dhave liked an email sent out, 'Check out your tasks in Enact' or something. That is the one thing that is attractive about Project Server - it connects to Outlook so, its not something that people have to keep open on their desk top.

Also, there was an issue in understanding more than one project at a time - it didnt really have a master project functinality, which is a killer if you are supporting versioning or more than one line of code or lots client stuff. Again, this might have changed. Project couldnt realy do that well until recently as well.

Also, I never used it for budgeting, estimating and reporting, so I have no idea how it works for that. In other words, I dont know if there is the same baseline functionality that say Project might have, stuff like that. I'd be very curious what yuo find out about that.

But everyone (and that is not true for Project) liked using it, understood the interface, and was able to use it. It worked on Mac, which I understand that Project Server doesnt...?

 

[planetant]

sms, someone posted this somewhere on this site as well:

http://www.projectmanagertraining.com/art_software.html

 

[planetant]

Aagh, I know I keep dribbling it in, tell me when to stop, but I got this as well off another message board:

Open Source Tools - phProjekt and DotProject.
"They were very similar, with only a few minor differences, mainly with the interface, but definatley both worth a look.

 

[planetant]

sms, what do your people like and hate about Project? Do you have Project Server? We have Project but I'm evaluating Project Server.

 

[thedaver]

Plantant, you're addicted to this thread.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/