Over the past year we have endeavoured to discover and consolidate the tools that we use to manage project planning, tracking and reporting.
We have a variety of contractual relationships with clients. This adds complexity to consolidating tools across the company especially since each of these relationships has its own project planning, tracking and reporting requirements…

PM tools currently implemented:

• Project Management
• Harvest
• Microsoft Project
• Excel

• Time Tracking
• SlimTimer
• ASAP (in house time logging application)

Final decisions and motivations – “in the end there can be only one!” ~ The highlander

Project Management Tools
Microsoft Project (the winner…)
Each of the tools listed above has its pro’s and con’s.

• Harvest
• Harvest is a fantastic tool for project management and is currently running one of our major project teams very effectively. The built in time logger (similar in functionality to SlimTimer) has got the thumbs up from our development team. Harvest allows you to manage multiple projects, track time on tasks and report.Unfortunately Harvest does not quite have the flexibility that we were looking for in terms of project structure. We need another level of detail for project structure below task –> sub task. This would have enabled us to plan, track and report more effectively. It is a pity that this tool is not open source as I am sure we would have gone the route of customizing this product and implemented company wide.

• Excel
• Excel is a fantastic flexible tool but is definitely not designed to manage multiple project scenarios. Single projects can be managed effectively but this approach definitely does not scale. Another major con is that Excel is extremely time intensive!

• Microsoft Project
• Microsoft Project is tried and tested industry standard tool for project management. This tool provides a heap load of functionality with a steep learning curb. This has been the main resistance from our current project management team and is definitely a con.MP has extremely powerful reporting capabilities. The reporting and tracking of project estimates (baselines) vs. actual (cost and time) is fantastic and exactly what we looking for.We have only decided to implement MP once we have had the appropriate training.

• Interesting links discovered in the PM Tool research process…
  1. Limitations of Project Management Software

Time Tracking Tools
Option X - Custom Development (the winner…)

• SlimTimer
• Has received the thumbs up from our development team as one of the most effective time tracking tools on the market. Ease of use and time efficiency are the two major pro’s of this tool. With SlimTimer you are able to create projects with tasks and group your tasks using tags. SlimTimer also provides great simplistic reporting which is exportable to excel.Unfortunately SlimTimer does not cater for complex project structures and once again we need a further level below task in the project structure -> sub task.

• ASAP
• ASAP was the result of an in-house development project. It is a plug-in that we built on top of the SugarCRM infrastructure. It was ahead of its time two years ago but now has been out paced by the new time logging technologies on the market.

• Option X (custom development)
• After much debate we have decided to go the route of custom developing a time tracking tool to suite our companies needs. We are looking forward to a tool that provides us with SlimTimer like ease of use and efficiency and tailor made reporting to suite our generic project structure.Watch this space, Option X details to follow…who knows this tool could have the potential to become the next great collaborative open source tool?

It would be great to get your feedback on the tools we have implemented, let us know what you think?