Professional-PM Project Management - PM Tools

PHPAGA - a cool quotation, project management, time tracking, invoicing tool

root — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:29:14 +0100

PHPAGA is the new kid on the open source project management software block...

Quote:

PHPAGA is a web-based project/task/invoice/quotation tracking solution, providing an efficient, centralized manner to keep on top of your day-to-day jobs and activities. Its features include: printing invoices, quotations and task lists to PDF, productivity statistics per project or per person, and financial overview.

Frankly guys, I got no idea how they got to that shitty name, but still it's built in Italy, so AGA maybe stands for some italian PM related abbrevation...

And most important, this is by far the most flexible and comprehensive timekeeping, project management and invoicing tool I've seen in the last 2 years...

of course there's still no online-charging integration, but you got everything else you need as a PM to keep manhours and materials, albeit I'm not sure the material catalog is good enough...

transforming a quote into a project works like a charm... seems to me like one of THOSE tools that are not just built to build one, but being used by the creators!

What is NOT in that tool is a real request/task tracking where I'm using Mantis at the moment... and every PM dreams of migrating his internal requests into a project manager's plan.

However - if you stick to creating quotes, project time plans (should be sufficient for quite a lot of average sized projects) and let your people type in their time in that tool you are perfect with it...

Frankly, believe this is the first OS pm tool I think is worth digging deeper since it's usertinterface AND datamodel are both so comprehensive... even taxing is already prepared via country specific modules ...

check it out!

TrackStudio - found what I've been looking for?

root — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 09:42:31 +0200

Wow... sounds too good to be true finally.

After searching for a good helpdesk/ticketing/project management solution for distributed project teams for over 1,5 years without really finding what I wanted today I came across TrackStudio and I think with

Hierarchival Task Management and Work Breakdown Structure
Field-Level Visibility per user role
Inheritance of project structure setups (that means setting up

the three major features I was missing in so many "small scale" systems out there seem to be in place.

I haven't tested this solution yet, but with an enterprise license including source-code (java) for around $3k this is one piece of software that every bigger project should be able to afford even for it's own sake... not to mention a bigger project organization.

What impresses me further are a broad range of (soap-based) integration options

into SCM systems CVS and SVN out-of-the-box
into Outlook (out of the box?!)
into the whole MS office app palette (I want to see THAT!)
and so many more...

and finally a hefty user security thing, tons of e-mail subscription and e-mail submission features (even for time-tracking! hi trackertool - I spent 8 days today on task #424 LOL)

The workflow features deserve a separate mention - TrackStudio allows you to specify and enforce your tracking process through states and state transitions... that's per project ... and of course you might have different project types like marketing project, software project, evaluation project, procurement project, employee hiring project etcetc in your organization, don't you?

some goodies:

Web-based workflow editor
Complete workflow customization: states, transitions, etc
Unlimited numbers of workflows, states and transitions
Multiple workflows per project
Multiple task categories per workflow
Dependent task categories
Workflow inheritance WOW.. that's what you want
Per-project workflow customization,
Per-workflow customizable fields /fancy!/
Elapsed time history recorded in the database with comments
Workflow and e-mail notification integration

I must admit after finding my major requirements fulfilled I must take a look at the requirements list I made over 2 years ago for the prospective tracking tool to see if there's anything missing... my gut feeling says that time-tracking, accounting and invoicing might play a minor role, so i'll check out features for that and integration into existing systems out soon.

They offer a hosted solution at $40 / month for the professional edition for 20 users AND there's a 30day trial available - so I have nothing to lose but signup and learn more... :-)

PS: these guys mentioned that if you find a tool that covers their functionality, they will link and advertise it own their own site... cool

Project Management Glossary

root — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 13:24:59 +0200

The Wideman Comparative Glossary of Project Management Terms is a very comprehensive resource of over 6000 entries, representing some 5000 discrete terms, from over 130 sources. Wideman is very PMI/PMBOOK near, so if you are going with PMI you are well done there.

So whenever you have the need to accurately describe or define the terms used in your company or project - take a look there first.

of can you define all these with a breeze?

Actual Cost; Bill of Materials; Budget; Change Control System; Common Cause; Contract Statement of Work; Documented Procedure; Enterprise Environmental Factors; Human Resource Planning; Influence Diagram; Initiator; Invitation for Bid; Network Open End; Organization; Organizational Process Assets; Performance Measurement Baseline; Planning Package; Practice; Preventive Action; Product Scope; Product Scope Description; Project Charter; Project Scope; Project Scope Statement; Project Summary Work Breakdown Structure; Quality; Resource Breakdown Structure; Risk Breakdown Structure; Rolling Wave Planning; Scope Creep; Template; and Work Authorization System.

Max Wideman's Project management site is a rich resource for your PM needs, I recommend browsing and learning there a bit longer.

Open Source project management tools

root — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 03:01:29 +0100

Open Source project management tools is a comprehensive list of PM tools available on the market... actually the longest list I have have found so far...

some notable tools on there to check out:

MySQL Eventum the mySQLab Issue / Bug Tracking System with project management features based on MySQL

Trac is a python based tool, also integrating into the software confguration management subversion and allows WIKI syntax throughout the whole management process...

PHProjekt - this PHP based suite even features an outlook sync feature in beta!

Those tools look very close to bug tracking tools and I am keen to find out what their real "project management" capabilities really are...

Also dont forget to checkout OpenPSA the OS professional services automation suite including a lot more business related functions.

OpenPSA - an Open Source Professional Services Automation suite

root — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 15:03:12 +0100

OpenPSA is a nifty little application with integrating several thing you could need in a service organization or micro-corporation using the MidGard CMS framework (that's how i actually found it...)

It's not a full fledged pm solution, but could come in very handy if you are satisfied with these features that even include time reporting and some small CRM options:

PROJECTS

Project organization into project and task hierarchies
Hours are reported to tasks, projects collect reports from their tasks
Weekly time sheet view of projects and tasks assigned to the user
Flexibility - report hours with required accuracy: hours, decimals or hours and minutes
Descriptive reporting - assign each hour report to a work type and optionally add a description
Configurable gantt chart view of all or user's projects
Summary view of all projects showing prices, costs and status of each project and task
Configurable report generator using Midgard Style templates with full PHP support
Approval and locking of reported hours, mileage and expenses

Sales

Contact information for companies and employees
Flexible search tool for companies, persons and campaigns
CSV data import (companies, persons and sales projects) capabilities
Campaign creation based on search criteria including business area, location and sales project status
Direct email to campaigns
CSV export of campaign contacts
Tracking of sales projects
Summary view of open TODO items in sales projects
Sales funnel report
Sales report based on month, country and sales representative

Support-Ticketing tool

Configurable classifications for all tickets
Configurable ticket list: which classifications to display, which classifications to filter by
Text search from the ticket database
SLA handling: notifications when agreed service levels are getting exceeded
Email integration: import incoming tickets from an IMAP mailbox. Supports connecting email conversations into ticket notes
Reports display response times, and spread of ticket types and other classifications

Calendar

Daily, weekly and resource views of the calendar
Filtering of shown events based on organization or resource hierarchy or user's custom-selected filters
Easy selection of event start and end times from calendar
Support for multi-day events
Support for repeating events: daily, weekly or monthly with selected interval and end date
Reservations for rooms, cars and other resources
Resource notes for sending catering or lecture room setup requests
Support for private and public events
Email reminders of events
iCalendar output of user's events
Easily printable Weekly Planner view

all these are web-based user interface modules, no need for software installations local - but you need to be online...
Access levels based on organizational hierarchy and user-based settings
Internationalization - support for multiple languages and currencies
available in English, Finnish and Italian translations
Multi-company hosting support with Sitegroup virtual databases
PAM support for different authentication sources like LDAP or Active Directory
NTLM single sign-on with Windows networks
Branding support - logos and colors of the application can be changed
Easy integration with Midgard Content Management System

find more at the OpenPSA site... definately worth a look!

Free EPM Tour

root — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:19:38 +0100

After many years of just maintaining the "drawing tool" MS Project, it seems as if there's more to come from Microsoft... <a title="Microsoft Office

MS Project 2000 Tutorial

root — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 21:52:56 +0100

vsbabu thinks about creating and MSP 2000 tutorial... mhhh... I guess I might enjoy a pragmatic one with do's and don'ts and templates and import/export tips/tricks and real-life samples...