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.
have a look at a website called Basecamp (http://basecamphq.com/) too.
Okay - now I've read properly your OP!!!
Rachel
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 )?
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.)
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