Senior Advisor to the CEO| PMISterling, Va, United States
Hi Guys,
I'm going to be working on a comparison matrix for web-based PM tools - things like Project Basecamp or Liquid Planner. Do any of you have experience looking at these?
I am a big fan of web-based tools now. Given the fact that most of us have Internet access most of the time, and the fact that most projects are involving diverse teams (multi-company, multi-country), I really prefer to put project tracking tools out on the web.
I have been personally using dotProject (http://www.dotproject.net/) for myself for a few months. It is limited in functionality, but it is 100% free and open-source. When this tool gets better scheduling, budgeting, and resource-planning support, it will be real competition to the commercial tools. Right now its collaborative features are great, and it is suitable for managing large groups of smaller projects.
On the commercial side, I strongly recommend looking at Daptiv (formerly eProject), and Bijingo. Both are very solid tools. They have advanced scheduling and multi-project tracking features, and can interface with desktop tools through an MSP-file interface. It is amazing how well their web-based scheduling features emulate a desktop project management client.
Another interesting tool is Portfolio Intelligence from 3 Olive Solutions. It is the only tool that I know that can set up multi-project, portfolio-oriented views, without requiring a lot of detail on individual project schedules. It really focuses on the portfolio, not the individual project. I find that real-life companies often lack the maturity to have a consistent scheduling approach, and Portfolio Intelligence might be easier for them to implement and more effective, than one of the scheduling-based packages. Saving Changes...
Joe MooneySenior Technology Project Manager| Independent ConsultantOviedo, Fl, United States
Our clients, and our company, focus entirely on either MS Project or Primavera. Our clients in particular want to be able to view status and plans via dashboards. This is addressed either through some custom coding or in some cases the implementation of the Primavera Portal.
I used eProject many years ago, but at that point it was more of a repository for project artifacts than a tool for managing projects. Saving Changes...
Christine (Sellers) MorrisExecutive Director| Transperfect Life Sciences SolutionsRaleigh, Nc, United States
I used Vertabase for about 6 months for my team in mid-2007 - we managed about 35-40 active projects across the program, and tracked support/maintenance over the period as an overall project with individual tasks to get a good baseline for what we were spending our time on... What I liked best was the ability to provide a program-level Gantt Chart, the ease of scheduling resources across the program, and the reporting capabilities (especially when using the timesheet function - to track estimates against actuals).
They are a great group of folks - very knowledgeable about PM & easy to work with - they have grown up a lot (as a company and a product) since I worked with them, and I happened to notice that they incorporated many of our specific feature requests in the latest version.
Even though I use an in-house based tool now, Mark still stops by to visit when he is in town :) Saving Changes...
Michael BrownProject Manager| JPMorganChaseDeerfield, Il, United States
We've been using MS Project Server 2007 for the better part of 9 months now, early adopters to the 2007 version, after having piloted the 2003 product. We have approximately 600 users reporting time and tracking progress against 400 active project plans at any one time. I'd be glad to share our experience with anyone interested.
Saving Changes...
Steve HillPrinciple Consultant| LiquidHub IncReading, Pa, United States
I'd like to add another product to the mix, Botonomy's "ProjectPipe". I’ve used it a few times because of its ability to synchronize with my desktop version of MS Project (required by nearly all my clients). It’s an incredibly versatile tool designed for small to mid-sized companies. I particularly like that it has a workflow editor and allows for the storage of supporting documents as part of the on-line project library. Saving Changes...
Paul ParkerScrumMaster (CSM)| PricewaterhouseCoopers (formally BearingPoint)Tampa, Fl, United States
Dave,
I've used Danube's ScrumWorks Basic and Pro for the past 2 years. Both are great PM tools for Scrum teams/projects. Of course the Pro version has a few more bells and whistles to make a ScrumMaster's and Product Owner's life a little easier. The advantage of this tool is that it was developed with Scrum in mind and not an add-on or afterthought. Saving Changes...
Sorry to be WAY behind on the thread, but now that I read this, perhaps you all would like to hear about http://smartsheet.com. It's an incredibly powerful MS Project equivalent, though fully web-based. It supports many of the editing (like a simple cut and paste) features that MS Project does not.
Key features are:
Collaboration - access-level/permissions
File sharing
Task delegation
Task progress updates per collaborator
Project Portfolio Management - project nesting (folders)
Exporting and importing MS Project and Excel, and publishing to PDF, among other formats.
Ah, but, "I wish my company would trust the Internet"... security of your crown-jewels does pose a challenge for this service. This does not preclude direct discussions with Smartsheet themselves.
One last thing, Smithsonian Institute recognized the Chairman, Brent Frei as a "Pioneer in Technology" while he was CEO of Onyx Software Corp. a highly regarded CRM software company.
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