My team is now flat out with projects and we really need a better way of managing everything. Nothing complex or PRINCE2. Just something that enables us to say “Okay, this project is going to take 15 man days > must be piloted by Jan 12th > go live Feb 2nd > how are we going to fit this into our schedule/timeline/milestones?”

Could be local app (because I can manage/oversee centrally) or hosted. Please don’t mention the likes of BaseCamp (urrgh, hate it).

Any ideas?

TVM

MS Project?

Never liked MSP when I trialled it a while back. Is it visually more user-friendly and quick/easy these days?

Have a look at a product called FogBugz if this is software development.

Excell ! At least everyone can view/Edit it.. I’ve tried many other ways and always fall back to Excel due to training on MS Project etc.
Use colours per project/task- ded simple to glance at a BIG A1 print and look for the white gaps ! K.I.S.S.

Here, Days across top, projects on left, use groups to roll up tasks etc.

Try Open Project which has most of the functionality of MS Project but is free link

…and you can import MS project files

have a look at a website called Basecamp (http://basecamphq.com/) too.

Okay – now I’ve read properly your OP!!!

Rachel

Planner? http://live.gnome.org/Planner/Downloads

FogBugz – hmm, seems more customer service oriented

Excel – agreed, this is often a good way of visually capturing everything, but haven’t yet found a way to make it properly manageable, i.e. a new project has to be squeezed in and suddenly you have a load of cells/rows/columns to move/edit etc. I don’t suppose you have a spare template per chance (don’t ask, don’t get an’ all that 🙂 )?

Will have a look at Open Project, and that Gnome thingy looks interesting.

Thanks so far

Excel – and then proper management technique. Concentrate on the things (documents / code etc…) you will deliver and plan on that basis.

IK Brunel I’m sure never needed MSP or PRINCE2

don’t suppose you have a spare template per chance (don’t ask, don’t get an’ all that )?

yeh sure, its not much blank though, just columns with days.. the grouping indenting etc on the project tab has to be done by yourself..

It works better for me, to have a resource in same colour no matter which project, then you get a quick visual view of that resources commitment. Helps here that we have an A0 printer.

will email it to you.

re: Fogbugz – it’s got a pretty good scheduling tool built into it – everything is driven from ‘tickets’ though.

I’m using OpenProject, it seems a reasonable free MS Project substitute.

Can you use Excel to work out dates – ie for X resources, Y days work, delivery date will be… ?

(Genuine question – I hate project management software, it always works fine at the start, but as soon as things get complicated, overlapping tasks, reopening supposedly closed tasks etc…)

I find excel to be as good as anything and really I like to do the high level stuff in powerpoint becuase it is so easy to shift stuff around and give a simple overview.

I think there can be a lot of time wasted on project plans which nobody ever looks at in detail anyway.

We tend to use either MS Project or Excel – it’s easier to do the initial set-up in Project IMO but easier to work with in Excel (unless you do significant updates with lots of dependencies etc.)