Project Management Maven

September 12, 2007 11:56 AM

Project Managers! What software / systems do you use to manage your projects. It seems to me that Microsoft Project or Basecamp is not always the right tool for the job. I am interested in creating work breakdown structures and sequencing activities in a visual manner. I want to track and manage requirements, changes, risks, issues, etc. I want to baseline my requirements, my schedule, and my budget. I want to capture work activity and generate reports. What software should I be using to be a superstar project manager? What is your system for capturing and disseminating information?
posted by kaizen to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

We do a multi-pronged approach, using Project for resources and scheduling, DOORS for requirements management/baselining/verification, and Basecamp to manage documentation transfer and versioning back and forth with our remote customer. (We also used Basecamp for a wiki solution for a while, but it kind of sucks. We use WikiTikiTavi now instead, but I really prefer MrWiki).

I like Project. I think Basecamp is the spawn of Satan. DOORS was a pain to learn (I recommend buying the training, rather than trying to learn it yourself), but it's largely useful. Wikis make the world go round -- I use them to make meeting minutes and design matrixes available to the rest of the project team so they can fix any inaccuracies they see.

I'd be very interested in hearing if anyone has a comprehensive solution they like.
posted by olinerd at 12:39 PM on September 12, 2007

OmniPlan has the features that you listed.
posted by leptin at 1:23 PM on September 12, 2007

Well, i'm not a project manager; more of a project managee, but in the past i've setup dotproject for our project management needs. The killer for our useages in the past has been the document management/revisioning, but it also has the fun gantt charts ala MS project and the like for those needing a graphical view. It's open source and all written in PHP and you can change all sorts of aspects of the app from the web interface, failing that you can always dive into the code. They have a live demo onsite but if you're on windows and just want to setup a proof of concept also check out Uniform Server It's everything you need to run dotproject and many other things that utilize a WAMP style server. I've looked at basecamp and the activecollab knockoff but they just didn't seem to have the flexibility that dotproject has. Best of luck on your search.
posted by skatz at 7:41 PM on September 12, 2007

Seconding dotproject. They have a fully-functional online demo.
posted by tra at 7:59 PM on September 12, 2007