Software Production Management

Let’s start talking software tools. Probably, if you work in a big company or an projectized one you will have an enterprise solution like Microsoft Project, Primavera, or Clarity. However there is a lot of small / medium and even big companies without any software tool.

This is the first of a set of posts when I will present how I start my projects when no software support is available. Of course I suppose you will have little help of the IT department to get at least some free/usable servers for your purposes. This one will present a small but useful list of tools and their licenses.

You will find a lot of tools that could make easier your life, but obviously, the success of any software tool is based on the use we gave it. Below you will find a list of project management software tools that I recommend for small/medium projects, all of them are free or open source projects

• OpenProj
  • CPAL
• GanttProject
  • GPL (almost all)
• Open Workbench
  • MPL/Proprietary
• Clockingit
  • MIT/X11
• B-kin Project Monitor
  • Spanish version only
  • Propietary
• Dotproject
  • GPL
  • Documentation site

I think is good enough for now, I don’t want to make expectations about those projects, all of them have their pros/cons. If you have comments, feel free to submit them. The whole idea is to build a knowledge base for those who are starting to use a software tool or are evaluating its use.

We all know that Microsoft products are not the bests in the market -except for the all might Microsoft Excel. But when we decided to move from Microsoft Project 2003 to Microsoft Project 2007 we were not aware of the big problems we will face in the near future.

We all were more than happy with the Microsoft Project Server 2003 -this is a great product, not the best but a great product, I will not blame on Microsoft products. So when 2007 version came out we evaluate the migration and take the fatal decision: UPGRADE

I hope Microsoft refund the company I work for, not only with the product value but also assuming the additional costs we incurred when started using it. We even set a SWAT team inside the company to address the software defects -WOW, could you imagine a SWAT MS Word team in your company to address MS Word defects?

These are the kind of defects we found:

• There is no ability to add persons to a tasks when people already submit their time -i.e. if somebody is included during the task execution you will have to create a new one for the same purpose.
• Do not put blank lines in your project plan -What? Are evil blank lines?

There are more issues that you could even imagine but, I doesn’t make any sense to write them all, probably you will need years to read them all . When you and your team are forced to log their time more than one time (yes we do that every day for every work day of the year) because of PS issues you will see how many defects this product has and will pray to the software gods for solutions.

Probably you remember the great launches of the Microsoft products that demonstrates that they usually promoted/release products without concerns about the quality. Did you remember the Windows Millenium Edition (a.k.a Windows Me)? Probably you don’t. Try to reach it from the Microsoft site, try to even get support, it was deleted from our minds. Probably Microsoft will do the same with PS 2007, so copy this entry in your computers so they will not be able to erase your knowledge.

I’m pretty sure the Microsoft PS team will have a better/decent product in the future but BY THE DATE OF THIS ENTRY PUBLICATION, I will encourage people to not use Microsoft Project Server 2007 -or at least try it before buy it -and when I said try it I really mean it.

LEGAL NOTICE: This is my personal appreciation of the product and DO NOT represent the legal company position. This entry is not related to the company I work for in any way. I’m writing it because I feel frustrated about the poor product as final user and I hope somebody found this entry it useful. BTW, What does PS means? Project Server or Problems Served.

Communications is the key of the success for any project. How you communicate the most valuable asset is a key factor to success. Information is the treasure of these days, our projects need it, used it and deliver it.

How you share your information will give you an advantage. Keep your team, and your stakeholders up to date will make your life easier and your projects formal. Some time ago, and still in many companies, the email is the key of the communication. Unfortunately, when teams grow the amount of emails becomes unmanageable, at the point that you probably will spend more time reading emails than working.

Innovative companies are step further using documentation management systems or even more specific to PM software tools. My sad case, we are using a fancy but nasty software of a well know software company. I don’t want to say names because I feel afraid of the power of one of the richest men in the whole world -if you know what I meant .

But, what if you don’t want to spend a lot of money in a software tool. What if you are starting your project and want to access the best of breath. Easy, Google Docs jump in into the scene to give us all a great tool.

Why Google Docs?

First time I used it I said “simple but powerful”. But know I’m sure I save a lot of time sending and reading documents just by publishing them using Google Docs.

Google Docs will give you immediate and secure access to your documents, and it will provide you great tools like Word Processing, Spreadsheet and Presentation tools. And if you want to address the notification issue and avoid the email rush, voilà it is done: Google Docs has a built-in news feed that will inform at the time you are publishing. And even more, are you afraid about offline periods of time? the you should try Offline Google Docs.

Share without restrictions, make your project communications plan simple with Google Docs.