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Businesses Software

Enterprise Grade Project Management Tools? 54

Posted by Cliff from the here-we-go-again dept.
Gustavo asks: "My company is climbing the CMM ladder and the need for enterprise grade project management tools is growing. Currently we use a mix of MS-Project schedules and Excel spreadsheets, but this doesn't scale when one has a large pool of resources being used on several projects. Moreover, there being Project and Excel files are now scattered all around making it difficult to keep them up-to-date. One option is to go for the MS-Project Server but I was asked to find out if there is something free that we could use instead. Can you help me?"

"What I'm looking for is some web tool in which everyone involved in a project could make changes in their task's status. (Things like number of hours worked and percent completed.) Preferably, all data should be kept in a relational database for easy data gathering and reporting.

MrProject is a nice app but it's Linux only (so far) and doesn't seem to allow for resource sharing among projects.

ToutDoux, another Gnome app, promised much more, but its development stalled a while ago.

I looked at some of the project management tools I found at Freshmeat, like SiteScape, EPIWARE, ITMS, and A.C.E., but none of them satisfied my needs.

MimerDesk is a web-based groupware environment that has a very promising project management tool. It's not complete yet, but it's the best I could find so far.

So, what do your companies use for project management and how is it going?"
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Enterprise Grade Project Management Tools? More

Enterprise Grade Project Management Tools?

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  • The hot new trend.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by E_elven ( 600520 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:39PM (#7205411) Journal
    The Post-IT Information Management System developed by the up-and-coming 3M corp. Incredible flexibility and stability. Has beaten all MS products in recent tests.
  • And all the little elves are chained to their benches.

    When we need a little more output we tell the drummer to increase the tempo and in cases that we are really falling behind we break out the whip.

    Sometimes we get the whip out just for the hell of it. It's a great motivator and a lot of fun.

  • Not free, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by psyconaut ( 228947 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:48PM (#7205478)
    Try VPM (Virtual Project Management) from Scorpiosoft.

    http://www.scorpiosoft.com

    -psy
    • As the parent says, not free but .... http://www.managepro.com/managepro.asp [managepro.com]. We used this tool to control resources (human and material) in a medium project (500 people) and it's top-down approach worked wonderfuly. Each level in the organization would see form the level down what the status of the project is. Check it out, I haven't used MS-Project in a long time, but this product and Computer Associates Superproject were allways superior to the Microsoft offersing. IMHO.
  • Why dont you check out php PHPgroupware [phpgroupware.org]

    I used it a year ago and was pretty happy with it. You will need an apache web server (or similar) with php and mysql to use it.

    Good thing for you that all those things are free. If you are looking for a system to host it on, why not try gentoo [gentoo.org]
    • IMO PHPGroupware sucks. We were using it as a contact management and project management databse My (small) company tried to use it for about 9 months until we got fed up and paid (gasp!) for some Goldmine licenses for contact management. Despite its many, many, MANY stupid quirks Goldmine is much better than PHPGroupware for contact management, for our simple PM requirements Mantis is far better.

      MS Project is light years ahead of PHPGroupware in terms of actually being able to manage a project (or set of
  • we had the same problem about 2yrs ago. we ended up rolling our own, i strongly suggest you dont do that. its pretty much dead now and only used for generating time sheets. TUTOS [tutos.org] is one that we've looked at several times, unfortunatly it too isnt complete yet, but it is progressing. Another one we are looking at is the project management modules being built into the latest CVS version of Horde [horde.org]. While the CVS versions of the framework, email client, filtering system and to a lesser extent the calendar are pr

  • KDE's Kollab Server [kroupware.org] may make the "large" enterprise project management task become a little easier.

    Combine that with PHPGroupWare or OPT [freshmeat.net] and a Wiki (Twiki, ZWiki, etc) and you'll likely be all set to go

    You will need to do a bit of scripting though to integrate all that, but that should be more convenient than going with a commercial solution (eg MS Project Server) and moulding yourselves into that

  • Web-based? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Joff_NZ ( 309034 )
    Have you thought about implementing your own copy of Sourceforge [sf.net] or (the much easier-to-install version) GForge [gforge.org] ??

  • Double Choco Latte (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gunfighter ( 1944 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @01:16AM (#7205982)
    It's a little overkill for my shop of 5 (we use dotproject [dotproject.net] instead), but DCL [sourceforge.net] is a pretty powerful web-based project/ticket management system with nice reports.

    http://dcl.sourceforge.net/

    • I just installed it for the 5th time (test systems) on a mix of Linux and Windows systems. If you run into trouble attempting to load the web page, try two things;

      1. Verify the database port in the dcl/inc/config.php configuration file. Note: If you encounter errors, keep in mind that MySQL often uses port 3306.

      2. For any file paths, make sure that the slash is the same.

      The config.php file has changed some in the CVS release, so be careful if you use it.

  • Try Phprojekt [phprojekt.org]. We are deploying this to manage a geographically dispersed volunteer organisation.
    • My department of 5 people has been using PHProjekt to manage a combination of software development and publication tasks. Unfortunately, we've found that it's clunky enough that it's not being used effectively. Its lack of reminders and deadline enforcement is a problem. We're biting the bullet and shifting over to MS Project (even though in my case it will mean running VirtualPC on my Mac all the time).
  • The SQL definition file for the MSSQL portion of the Project Database can be modified to work on MySQL.

    After that, all you need is the ODBC driver for MySQL.

    No problems yet, but I'm not using it extensively, so I haven't had the opportunity to test every feature.

  • Place where I work (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sir Haxa1ot ( 715348 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @01:25AM (#7206027) Homepage Journal
    I work as a lead Enterprise Software Architect for a major Fortune 500 company, which through re-organization and prudent management managed to streamline operations, provide the best value and quality of service to its customers and excel in the field. We use a big txt file with write permissions stored on the server that everyone has access to. Whenever the developer or manager completes the project, they are adding a line to that .txt file with description of what was done.

  • gforge (Score:2)

    by rizzo ( 21697 )
    Have a look at GForge [gforge.org]. Here is the blurb from their page:

    "GForge is an Open Source collaborative software development tool, which allows you to organize and manage any number of software development projects. It's perfect for managing large teams of software engineers and/or engineers scattered among multiple locations."

  • CIMM (Score:2, Funny)

    by bhima ( 46039 )
    Sorry I don't, because my company has adopted the The Capability Im-Maturity Model (CIMM).

    Currently we are at "-2. Contemptuous Arrogance"

    Mostly, I think, due to corporate reaction and interpretation of the FDA 21 CFR part 11 guidelines for Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures.

    I'm having trouble determining who has the head up their arse further, but so far I think it is our corporate regulatory division. The only thing I can say about their interpretation of Part 11 is "Taliban".

    Soon I'll have

  • And I think you should (read more about TOC on the net), there's a (commercial, expensive) tool called Concerto (not the PBX company) that does the job fabulously. It helped us at a previous job handle a 200-programmer, ~15-project environment with crystal-clear focus on the *important* things, which you can easily overlook when handling a shared gantt with ~10000 tasks.
    • http://www.realization.com is the website. I have talked with these folks extensively. They definately have a product which will support the TOC approach to project management. This approach will help focus resources, provide real information on trouble within a project, and between projects.

      Implementing this is not easy, because you will have to have solid processes to use the tool, and it is not directly a software development methodology. However, if you have the $$ and really have an interest in
  • but ASP.net [asp.net] has a free, source-released implementation of a project management tool. Needs IIS and MS-SQL 2000 to run, and pretty easy to modify/adapt.

    Bear in mind though, that I said it was 'source-released'; I'm not sure if it fits the open source definition.

  • I work for a large public-sector organisation in England.
    We decided that we needed a project management solution for a department of thirty people, hopefully to be rolled out across the entire dvision of a hundred and fifty.
    So we got a bunch of consultants in, and they had a look at the options, and they charged us 20k (~$30k) to recommend SureTrak, an entry-level project management system by Primavera. There consultants were so expensive that we could see no possible way that they could be wrong.
    Unfortu

  • Stop Calling People Resources (Score:3, Informative)

    by EvlG ( 24576 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @05:54AM (#7206941)
    Talk about dehumanizing.

    Geez.

    Sorry for the rant, but this bit of corporate speak is just degrading.
    • Resources? Oh, we did away with that term years ago. We just call them FTEs (Full Time Equivalents). An FTE is approximately equal to one butt filling one chair for about 2080 hours a year.

      Feel better? :+)
    • Chill. In Project_Speak people ARE resources (things you need to do the work). Backhoes, cement trucks, pizza ovens, meeting rooms or programmers are all resources. No disrespect is meant to the people.
      • Equating a person with a backhoe, a cement trunk, a pizza oven, or a meeting room is precisely the dehumanizing aspect of the word 'resource' I dislike so much.

        Is it too much to ask to treat people with respect and dignity? Bringing people down to the level of industrial equipment or commercial kitchen appliances is hardly respectful or dignified IMO.
  • It may be quite early, but you already can do basic stuff with it:

    http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_i d= 90742

    http://openacs.org/projects/dotwrk/project_manag em ent/user_interface

  • I too work in organisation which is adopting CMM. We are on level three and count for about 80 people. I have had some training about CMM, and it seems that though there is a strong tendency for every level to manage things more, through procedures, measurement and checks, I do not really notice an increase in the usage of project management tools. That seems to be only necessary for the software project leaders, of which there are three. Teamleaders seem to make do with Excel. Management of problem reports
  • We looked in vain for something Open-Source that was superior to MS Project, particularly when it comes to multiple-project planning. There was nothing.

    On the commercial side, there are a few options, none of them cheap. Take a look at the Rational [rational.com] suite. One nice touch is only having to purchase the modules you need. The way Rational captures multi-project interactions is by becoming part of your development process, from soup to nuts. Yes, it's a commitment, but it's also your business.

  • TWiki [twiki.org] - here's an example, Parrot [vendian.org]. There are plenty of references around explaining the what a wiki is [wiki.org]. It is up to you to use it.
  • You start out asking for MS Project replacements due to scalability issue, but then you state that you are only considering what appear to be Linux-based solutions. Are you in search of an enterprise-class tool, or a Linux tool? As far as I know, there isn't anything that meet both criteria.

    That said, we are a Fortune 100 and we use Niku 6 [niku.com] to track our projects. Niku Workbench [niku.com] (formally known as Project Workbench) is their scheduling tool. It is a little different than MS Project, but the learning curv
    • You start out asking for MS Project replacements due to scalability issue, but then you state that you are only considering what appear to be Linux-based solutions. Are you in search of an enterprise-class tool, or a Linux tool? As far as I know, there isn't anything that meet both criteria.

      Have you looked at PlanWise [planwise.co.nz]?
  • What the temperature? Cubs and Red Sox in the playoffs, and now an Ask Slashdot submitter actually LOOKED for an answer BEFORE Asking Slashdot?

  • It is sickening that the same people jumping on the CMM bandwagon will commit their valuable data into a pit of proprietary software. This is very short-sighted and only creates an exponentially-increasing cost as the vendor goes out of business or starts tightening their grip on your testicles.

    It sounds like you are looking for an easy eye-candy way of managing data. What's wrong with plain-text e-mail archives? What's wrong with an in-house RDBMS with simple web forms to manage your important metrics?

  • Double Choco Latte [sourceforge.net] is part of GNU Enterprise. It has nice screenshots [sourceforge.net].

    Dmoz has a bigger list [dmoz.org] of project management tools.

    I personally have never found one that did what I wanted without making me do too much. That applies to bosses as well.

  • You just keep drawing those fancy charts with all of those weird lines all you want. It'll never catch on.

    Nothing beats a good ol' number 2 and a stack of TPS report. By the way, about those cover sheets....

  • Okay, you said enterprise grade, but you mentioned MrProject. There I can recommend GanntProject at http://ganttproject.sourceforge.net .

    It is brilliant. The most important feature from my perspective is that it supports WebDAV, meaning I can share the projects file very very easily.

    Did I mention it is written in Java, and can be deployed using WebStart? So you have cross platform support.
  • I've used it and basically had a quiet rebellion on my hands in the software development team.
    I strongly recommend that you look at how you are currently using MS Project - I love using it to plan projects, but I hate using it to track projects. If you are tracking the project using Excel (which you appear to be hinting at), you may find that a plan which is detailed enough to get your project off the ground is totally unsuitable for people to submit time-cards against (was I working on the fooble component

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