When your business starts to grow, there will come a time to hire staff, assistants to assist with your day-to-day operations. Whatever your circumstances, having the ability and tools to manage your projects effectively will be an important factor in the success of your business. Traditional project management tools include Gantry charts and highly detailed project schedules. They are complex and less flexible. But today’s web-based project management software tools are capable of offering much more than these traditional methods of monitoring projects. It allow a members of the team to access the tools and interact with other project members online. Some of them are:
TWproject (twproject.com)
TWproject is a simple, friendly and reliable web-based project and groupware management solution published by Italian software house ‘Open Lab’. It was a perfect flexible solution for your business ranging from micro to blue chip enterprises. It comes with several features such as project planning, task management, time tracking, document management and bug tracking.
It has a beautiful dashboard. You can find your project’s overview there. This overview contains information such as upcoming deadline, event progress outlines, resource allocation, logs and expenditure. It also comes with an easy to grab interactive Gantt chart.
The basic principle that every project lead adopts is to complete project with limited inexpensive as well as non-excessive resource. TWproject team is well aware of this principle. They provide interactive workload and plan view which allows project manager to provide resource based on its availability.
From the point of view of team member, agenda screen was a blessing. It allows them to check their work load, share agendas and files, communicate and prioritize their tasks. It keeping everyone connected.
It also allows project team to attach document. These attachments can be downloaded later. Moreover it allow user to connect folder(s) to a project in single click. It is really a wonderful feature that I like.
I had tested much project management software. Some of the tested project management solutions are tested below. From this experience, without any doubt I can say TWproject is distinct from all of this. Because it is very simple. It is very easy to understand. Some project management solutions that I tested provides complex options, which are hard to understand. Users may consume large portion of time to study these options itself.
You can either install Twproject on your server or get your dedicated service on Amazon cloud. TWproject is available for windows, linux, mac and It’s installation procedure is simple and easy. Price of TWproject local version ranges from 3.75 € to 1.5 € a month. For amazon version the price ranges from 31 € to 403 € a month. Moreover they also offer a 15-day free trial period. A detailed price chat is attached below.
It supports multiple languages such as English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. TWproject team still works hard to introduce more languages. Apart from all of these, most attractive thing is 24x7 customer support. Customer care executives are well experienced and reliable. They also provide basic course for beginners at lowest price. So try it. It is precious.
Basecamp
Basecamp
by 37signals is one of the most popular tools for managing projects online.
Projects can be managed through a shared dashboard, complete with the ability
to upload and share files, send messages, document milestones, create to-do
lists, and track time spent on projects.
One of
the benefits of Basecamp is its friendly user interface. It can also be synced
with other 37signals tools like Highrise for managing your contacts, Backpack
for organizing your business, or Campfire for chatting with group members.
Basecamp
is a good option for those looking for a friendly project management interface
and collaborative elements.
ActiveCollab
ActiveCollab
is another popular project management and collaboration tool suited to both
small businesses and corporate One feature of ActiveCollab that
appeals is the ability to set up the software on your own server. This feature
will allow your business to have greater control over its activities.
ActiveCollab
provides good documentation on using the software from the perspective of a
user, administrator, or developer. It also has an Invoice module as part of its
tool.
ActiveCollab
is a solid solution for those who want to have greater control over their
project management software.
Central
Desktop
Central
Desktop has all the essential features of a web-based project management tool –
the ability to manage projects, share online documents, and tools for team work
(e.g., create Wikis, blogs, and forums). For an additional monthly fee, it
also provides a service to host online web meetings and conferences. Plans
range from a free option up to an enterprise solution. Date storage is limited
for the free plan or low monthly plans.
Central
Desktop would be a good project management choice for businesses who want extra
features like online web meetings.
There a
extensive range of project management software tools available on the market,
each with its own particular range of benefits and features. It is not easy to
select one. Most project management tools provides all common services. It is
better to choose the basic plan and upgrades your project management software
accordingly changing business requirements.
Project Manager (ProjectManager.com)
I have used quite a few different project management packages. Few of them are noted above. They all offer the basic set of functionality and some have a few additions. But most friendly project management system that I had found is Project Manager (projectmanager.com). It is one of the popular online project management software that even used by NASA for their Mission to Mars project.
As for any other website, you need to create an account to use Project Manager. Figure below shows various tariff plans for Project Manager.
You can also create a trail (valid for 30 days) account without paying. If you don’t have an account, please Sign-Up now.
Once I completed the registration, I had logged in the Project Manager (PM). My expectation about Project Manager is that, it’s just another project management system. I don’t expect anything new there. But once I logged in, the very first thing that attracted me their interface. Compared to all other project management system that I use, Project Manager Interface is pretty slick and well-arranged. They give all the necessary start-up options in a single window. They have personalized dashboard. It’s something that I haven't expected. There are different options to create projects, open existing projects, import and exporting projects, administrative options etc., I am sure that, even for a person who is not familiar with any kind of project management system can use this software easily. It will have a minimal learning curve.
I strongly believe that, Project Manager is the one promising scalable software for business managers and teams. As I mentioned above it have a variety of options. For your convenience I had attached a video below. In this video I will go through almost all options. So please watch it. It will help you to get an idea of Project Manager.
I think the reason behind the wide success of the Project Manager is because of the easy to use, fair pricing, issue or risk tracking options and multi-lingual support. It also provides features like resource management, scheduling etc., Compared to all other online project management system, its processing is smooth. It requires minimum time to load pages. At the same time it is flexible and can be used to manage numerous projects from multiple devices across geographically dispersed locations. So it’s an added feature for the team having members from multiple locations. In addition to all this Project Manager provides good volumes of education and training for users.
But it also has some drawbacks such as forecasting features, document workflow tracking and have no apps for android and windows 8 devices. However, Project Manager is an online service; users can get new features as soon as they are released.
If you are looking for an online project planning tool, then this is the right one that you can use. It is very flexible. It helps to plan project regardless of your industry. It can also accommodate multidimensional projects. To be more clear, you can use your account to plan and manage construction of the house, managing an IT project or running a business.
Project planning step is the first and most important step behind all successful projects. Applications like Project-Plan which helps you to do this planning. It comes with all the necessary features and tool, which helps you to build project plans, create tasks, scheduling each step, assign work to people, adding milestones, creating notes, track project status and issues.
All the users first try to create a plan. Creating project plan is very simple in projectplan.com. It has all the options to create flexible, consistent and multi-user plans without consuming much time. As already mention it can manage multi-dimensional projects. Your project may be small or large, or it may take one week or many years to complete. But you need only the same project managing system to track, share and analysis your project.
If you already created a plan in Microsoft Project, Excel or Word, can be imported very easily which help to save re-entering time. It also includes all the features that found in Microsoft Project in much smarter and more convenient way. All the options are well arranged and customized based on user interest, so that you can see them quickly. Because of this higher order customization you can plan your project even within minutes.
Its task managing capabilities help you to define various tasks that to be done in your project and schedule their starting and ending days. It also helps you to calculate, allocate resources and wrap your tasks together. It allows user to create detailed lists of task in a single page. It also supports task hierarchies. Task hierarchy is one feature that I never found on any other project planning tools. The user can first enter their project tasks and later "Indent" feature to create a hierarchy or group related tasks together. Similarly the "link" feature helps to define connections between multiple tasks and to see dependency of each task. It also provides color coding features, which help users to choose different colors to mark those tasks which are critical to the project. In this way you can prioritize each task. And it also enables you edit or update these tasks partially or completely when required.
One other notable feature of project-plan is scheduling. You can create professional-looking project schedules that impress your team as well as your client. These schedules can be shared and print quickly. The Project-Plan allows you to schedule project activities, tasks, resources, equipment, materials and team member meetings. It is the only online project management tool that support tracking your actual plan (i.e. actual time on finishing task) and baseline views (i.e. planned time) at the same time. That means it will tell you, whether any of project phases is delayed or ahead of your expected time frame. In this way, you track and correct timing of each project phase and record the percent complete or the amount of effort consumed for your project in real-time linearly.
It also has advanced features like Gantt Charts. This Gantt chart tool comes with unique features that allow you to monitor planned, actual and baseline views all on the same screen.
Moreover it supports most Microsoft applications such as project, excel, word and Google services like Gmail, docs, calendar etc. You are allowed to import and export data between these tools. It also provides 24 x 7 supports free to the customer. All the executives are well-mannered and trained. They help you solve issues quickly. And these features are all available at a very economical rate. The figure given below shows the rates of various plans of Project-Plan.
Gemini (countersoft.com)
Please remember that good planning is the backbone for success of any project. So spending money to buy a project management service is not wastage. It in fact helps you a lot to save money by reducing unwanted expenses in a closed time frame.
ProjectPlan (projectplan.com)
Another project management application that I had used is the Project-Plan. It is one of the fastest growing online project management software. It has a huge volume of customers all over the world. It been used by blue-chip Company, government and private organization like Volvo, Admirals bank, Fujitsu, Metropolitan Police Department (MPDC), Boeing, Telecom, US Defense, Horizon Power, World vision, Federal Aviation Administration Bureau etc.
If you are looking for an online project planning tool, then this is the right one that you can use. It is very flexible. It helps to plan project regardless of your industry. It can also accommodate multidimensional projects. To be more clear, you can use your account to plan and manage construction of the house, managing an IT project or running a business.
Project planning step is the first and most important step behind all successful projects. Applications like Project-Plan which helps you to do this planning. It comes with all the necessary features and tool, which helps you to build project plans, create tasks, scheduling each step, assign work to people, adding milestones, creating notes, track project status and issues.
All the users first try to create a plan. Creating project plan is very simple in projectplan.com. It has all the options to create flexible, consistent and multi-user plans without consuming much time. As already mention it can manage multi-dimensional projects. Your project may be small or large, or it may take one week or many years to complete. But you need only the same project managing system to track, share and analysis your project.
If you already created a plan in Microsoft Project, Excel or Word, can be imported very easily which help to save re-entering time. It also includes all the features that found in Microsoft Project in much smarter and more convenient way. All the options are well arranged and customized based on user interest, so that you can see them quickly. Because of this higher order customization you can plan your project even within minutes.
Its task managing capabilities help you to define various tasks that to be done in your project and schedule their starting and ending days. It also helps you to calculate, allocate resources and wrap your tasks together. It allows user to create detailed lists of task in a single page. It also supports task hierarchies. Task hierarchy is one feature that I never found on any other project planning tools. The user can first enter their project tasks and later "Indent" feature to create a hierarchy or group related tasks together. Similarly the "link" feature helps to define connections between multiple tasks and to see dependency of each task. It also provides color coding features, which help users to choose different colors to mark those tasks which are critical to the project. In this way you can prioritize each task. And it also enables you edit or update these tasks partially or completely when required.
One other notable feature of project-plan is scheduling. You can create professional-looking project schedules that impress your team as well as your client. These schedules can be shared and print quickly. The Project-Plan allows you to schedule project activities, tasks, resources, equipment, materials and team member meetings. It is the only online project management tool that support tracking your actual plan (i.e. actual time on finishing task) and baseline views (i.e. planned time) at the same time. That means it will tell you, whether any of project phases is delayed or ahead of your expected time frame. In this way, you track and correct timing of each project phase and record the percent complete or the amount of effort consumed for your project in real-time linearly.
It also has advanced features like Gantt Charts. This Gantt chart tool comes with unique features that allow you to monitor planned, actual and baseline views all on the same screen.
Moreover it supports most Microsoft applications such as project, excel, word and Google services like Gmail, docs, calendar etc. You are allowed to import and export data between these tools. It also provides 24 x 7 supports free to the customer. All the executives are well-mannered and trained. They help you solve issues quickly. And these features are all available at a very economical rate. The figure given below shows the rates of various plans of Project-Plan.
So please sign-up today and enjoy the existing project management tool. If you register today, you may get your first 30 days free of cost.
Gemini (countersoft.com)
While discussing project management software it is essential
to discuss some other category, nothing else issue tracking systems. Gemini is one of the most popular software in this category. It was developed by
countersoft. It is perfect web based issue and bug tracking system as well as
project management solution. It provides lot of features, of which scrum &
agile project management, issue, bug tracking and help desk are major features. It also has
several other features such as managing requirements; convey user stories and
quality checks. It uses C#, ASP.Net as front end and uses Microsoft SQL database
server as its back end, as a result it will provide decent performance than any
other project management solutions tested in this post. Moreover users can
easily Integrate Gemini Bug Tracking software with Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft
Outlook, and Subversion. It is available in two versions, local server version that can be downloaded and
installed on your pc and cloud or web version. In addition to all this, it was
available most amazing price. Its cost around $85 for local version and $10 for
cloud version. Figure show below give overview of price & schemes of
countersoft’s Gemini.
A detailed review about Gemini is posted separately at
eTechlic. To read it please clicks here.
Please remember that good planning is the backbone for success of any project. So spending money to buy a project management service is not wastage. It in fact helps you a lot to save money by reducing unwanted expenses in a closed time frame.