Software to track multiple projects

March 7, 2005 2:08 PM

Can anyone recommend a decent piece of software to keep track of multiple concurrent projects?

I'm looking for something that will allow me to enter milestone dates, and keep track of when those milestones are actually hit. It should keep track of dependencies and shift dates accordingly when an earlier milestone is missed. MS Project is close, but that's more tailored to a single project, rather than a "meta-project" level. Or maybe I just don't know how to use it right?

posted by TonyRobots to work & money (6 comments total)

Have you considered Basecamp? I've heard good things. I'm not in the biz, so I don't have first hand experience. It's got per-month pricing based on how many projects you need it for.
posted by ontic at 2:16 PM on March 7, 2005

If you are even slightly familiar with MS Project you can easily manage multiple projects using a master project.

If you have a couple of existing projects, create a new project and choose Insert/Project and then without expanding that project repeat. It is when you expand these that the resources are called on. Since we all have a finite number of resources a recommended approach is to create a project that has no tasks but all of your resources. This allows you to see how resources are allocated across multiple projects. That is if you use the resources at all.

You can link tasks between projects this way and change the relationship between the tasks by double-clicking the dependency line. Beware the task numbers will change but don't be to alarmed.

I recommend trying this with a couple of simple projects to get a feel for it. My email is in my profile if any part of that is too obtuse.
posted by geekyguy at 2:37 PM on March 7, 2005

I would have to give you a giant push towards Basecamp. You can check out what some people think of it and it's just crazy how much they love it. One guy says,

"I want to name my first born Basecamp. If you were to leave Basecamp as it is, with ZERO upgrades, changes or additions, EVER, I would still want to name my first born Basecamp. It's saving my life. For real."

And what's funny is that all the results follow that tone. Jeffrey Zeldman (the web-standards god) said it increased productivity at his company by 419%

It's also super-reasonably priced.
posted by sirsteven at 2:48 PM on March 7, 2005

I can't reccommend basecamp enough. My employer has a paid account - there are currently 11 active projects, each with several milestones and toDos, which are assigned to multiple people.

After using basecamp for work, I signed up for a free, one-project account which I use to keep track of my schoolwork. I'm hooked. It's my homepage on every computer I use.
posted by slhack3r at 2:51 PM on March 7, 2005

Apropos of basecamp- is there a similar tool out there that doesn't have a 10MB document limit (and don't get me started on their "workaround")?
posted by mkultra at 3:41 PM on March 7, 2005

dotproject is open source, free, and non hosted.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 7:21 PM on March 7, 2005