PPC Project Engineer is one product in a suite of products formerly known as Platinum Process Continuum. The company was bought by Computer Associates a while ago (1 yr +...?) but I don't think the name of the product has changed.
The suite of products includes Process Engineer, Project Engineer, and a web based project management tool (I forgot the name) - as well as a BUNCH of reference material ("libraries, kernels, templates") on project management.
*Process Engineer lets you build your own project processes, deliverables, templates, WBS's. There are basic methodologies that come 'canned' with the tool - waterfall, incremental, client-server, rad (but I think they call it something else). You can cut and paste from these to customize your processes or you can create 'em from scratch (if that excites you). The gantthead website is similar (but not nearly as robust - sorry gantthead!) in terms of the process library it has as well as the project accellerator.
*Project Engineer lets you put all that stuff to work on a "real" project. In my opinion, if you're brand new to project management but have a lot of initiative and ambition, the tool can actually make you smarter - you're not going to be a wiz-bang project manager but you'll probably survive your first project. You'd really need to know how to use the tool though - I don't think it's particularly easy to navigate through.
The web tool is pretty cool though. It allows the Project Manager to manage, communicate, update, etc. the whole project across your intranet-which is incredibly helpful if your project team is scattered across the country or doing the East coast/West coast thing. It's also very cool for managing communication with stakeholders. Sr. Mgmt. can enter the web site from anywhere/anytime (within the limits of your configuration) to get updates. Saving Changes...
