SOCIAL: PM software (free) recomms?

[Kunal Ghevaria]

Mike/Ellisa,
I've tried several of these apps/websites, and have found that none of the free services quite cut it.
There's always something missing - integration with email or calendar, file upload space, or just a decent user interface.
I'd recommend going with a paid service - for the price of a dinner a month, you'll save yourself so much headache/hassle.

Here are my top 3 choices, paid and free:

Basecamp: The most well-known project management web service just rolled out a major update, and is still the best around. It's general enough to be used for any kind of project, and flexible enough to cater to your preferred workflow. Looks sharp and works flawlessly. Great integration with calendaring and email. $20 a month, with a 45-day free trial. 

Asana: They've been getting a good bit of buzz, and have a nice, different approach to the user interface. I'm not sure how well it integrates with other services for calendaring etc, and the colors are a bit drab for me, but you might prefer it. I'm sure they have a free plan, but am not sure about the restrictions.

Trello: Personally, I don't like the 'card' based UI, but it might work well for you. Trello is quite slick, and I liked it when I was playing with it. I just preferred Basecamp by a small margin. They have a free plan, but I'm not sure of the restrictions.

Hope that helps,
Kunal.






On May 21, 2012, at 8:59 PM, Brian Rice wrote:

> <soapbox>
> 
> In my humble opinion, the choice of project-management software is not nearly as important as the project-management methodology. Project-management tools are great for MANAGING projects, but they are terrible for designing and scoping projects.  The best tool for the latter task is… the sticky note. I am serious. Here is my project-management approach:
> 
> 1. Get everybody who will be contributing (work, requirements, or expectations) into a room.
> 2. Give each person a stack of sticky notes.
> 3. Everybody brainstorms all the tasks they can think of and puts them on the whiteboard. One task per sticky.  Should be total chaos.
> 4. Everybody winnows the tasks, consolidating duplicates and roughly organizing them into general phases.
> 5. People with an interest in each phase identify dependencies (especially, finish-to-start dependencies).  These get marked on the whiteboard with an arrow between stickies.
> 6. People who will be doing the work write rough estimates of effort and duration on each sticky.
> 7. A walkthrough review occurs (in which everybody can SEE the long pole).
> 8. People take lots of cellphone camera pictures of the whiteboard.
> 9. Pizza and beer are consumed.
> 
> NOW, at last, one is ready to type stuff into a project-management tool and track the tasks' completion.
> 
> It is commonplace to bash Microsoft Project, but frankly the people I know who most hate it are those who tried to do their project design in it. However, designing a project in any software tool* risks the one worst thing that can happen to any project: lack of buy-in. Getting everybody into a room as I suggest above gets the human beings on board with the project from the get-go.  "Yes, we are gonna finish this by September 8, because I helped write that plan."
> 
> *Any software tool, that is, that's less interactive than sticky notes and a whiteboard.
> 
> </sorry for the rant>
> 
> Brian
> 
> On May 21, 2012, at 2:16 PM, Ellisa Feinstein wrote:
> 
>> Thanks, Mike.  And this is the problem - so many choices! Hard to tell which ones are good. 
>> 
>> 
>> From: Mike Kosim <mike.kosim at mac.com>
>> To: Ellisa Feinstein <ellisafeinstein at yahoo.com> 
>> Cc: Social Social <social at deeptrouble.com> 
>> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 12:58 PM
>> Subject: Re: SOCIAL: PM software (free) recomms?
>> 
>> I just saw this page with a bunch of them -- looks like there's an immense choice of free/ donation based project management software.
>> http://mastersinprojectmanagement.org/top-25-open-source-project-management-apps.html
>> 
>> Let me know what you end up going with.  I'd like to use one myself.
>> mike
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On May 21, 2012, at 12:48 PM, Ellisa Feinstein <ellisafeinstein at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi - Does anyone have recommendations for free project management software or online app?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ellisa
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Social mailing list
>>> Social at lists.deeptrouble.com
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>> 
>> 
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