I'm looking to improve my project management system and was wondering what people consider the best PIMs for that. By "best" I mean versatile, comprehensive but also easy (and quick) to use. I have a PC (Win7), and web/cloud and collaboration is not essential, though syncing with iPod/iPad is always a bonus.

Currently I have a very rudimentary system, whereby for my main project I've created Excel sheets with days of the week in columns and weeks in rows (15 weeks/A4 sheet), which I print out and record what I've accomplished by hand at the end of each day. I also use MyLife Organized (MLO) for breaking down tasks and ticking off to-dos.

I'm specifically looking for an overall project management solution, rather than a daily to-do manager or a calendar (although it's not a problem if those are also integrated. I do already use Google Calendar, Informant HD, and Toodledo, but not in relation with my main project).

I have done a search and "project management" is mentioned 151 times on this forum, so I thought I'd rather ask for some current solutions.

I should add that MS Project is an overkill for what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something much lighter and faster to use, with not too much of a learning curve.

Well, I did look through the 151 references in the end. It seems a number of people use UltraRecall for project management, MyInfo was also mentioned. ProjectCards also looks interesting.

Dr Andus wrote:

I'm specifically looking for an overall project management solution, rather than a daily to-do
manager or a calendar (although it's not a problem if those are also integrated. I do
already use Google Calendar, Informant HD, and Toodledo, but not in relation with my
main project).

InfoQube seems ideal for your needs. It does project management (including Gantt charts) and is very flexible. Information in your projects can be shown in Gantts, on a calendar, in a grid. Syncing with Google Calendar is working in our dev. version and will be available soon to all.

Pierre
IQ Designer
http://www.infoqube.biz

The first app that came to mind when I read your question is MyInfo. I think you'll find it easier and more intuitive to use than UltraRecall -- at least that's my experience with the two. The reason it came to mind for me is the ease of creating custom columns, so you can add whatever meta data you need to manage your projects.

Steve Z.

You might want to try Achieve Planner (www.effexis.com). The initial learning curve is a bit steep - it took me about a day to master all features of the program which I needed for my own work - but afterwards I found that it helped me get a handle on my activities better than any other program I have used (and there is hardly a PIM I haven't tried).

At the same time, even if you find something like Achieve Planner the best way to handle project management, it is not necessarily the answer to all of your PIM needs. For example, I continue to use Ultra Recall (very extensively!) for my information management needs, which I find are quite a different ballgame.

Steep learning curve, tried them all, best in class - you have my attention, sir.

Would you mind explaining what specificially Achieve Planner does so well?

SOLD! Achieve Planner is IN! Google Calendar is OUT!

I was already doing calendar planning based on Cal Newport's book. This is the missing software for it.

Thank'ee kindly.

First CT and now AP. What rich software times we live in! Is there nothing left undone?

Dr Andus, I will second LM7's support for Achieve Planner, even though I do not use it myself (the reason being that nowadays I work with teams, so I need collaborative tools; see http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3328

There are plenty of tutorials to get you through the required steps. Roger, the developer, practices what he preaches and offers productivity courses as well http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/get-focused-multimedia-course/ though you won't need these to work with the Planner. If you do like the program, make sure to enter your email at its Bits du Jour page http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/achieve-planner-productivity-suite/ You may be lucky and save a good deal if the discount appears within your trial period.

As a broader reference, I would say that a PPM (Personal Project Management tool) essentially needs to have the following:

- Ability to break down work into structured individual tasks; any outliner can do this
- Ability to set date / time information for each task and show this on a timeline and/or calendar (possibly via syncing with Outlook or Google Calendar)
- Support for follow-up of the individual tasks, i.e. setting completion either as Done/Pending or percentage (I personally have never managed to do the latter)

Achieve Planner does all of the above. InfoQube too (and much more, but the learning curve is significant) as well as other tools mentioned here in the past, like Watership Planner.

I will also second LM7's comment that the project's information management is something different and better suited for PIMs like UltraRecall or MyInfo.

Last but not least, as one acquires more tools, it is good to find ways to simplify the actual workflow; I have found Leo Babauta's books and blog http://zenhabits.net/books/ helpful in that respect.

You could try Mindsystems Amode.

This allows you to create lines in a tree structure with an infinite (I think) number of levels of indent. All items can have notes or charts (flow or mind maps) attached, and can link to any other item within a given project. An infinite (I think) number of projects can be set up within a "solution" file. Any item can be viewed on a calendar or on a Gantt chart, if you put a tick in the relevant box. You can assign resources to any item, and you can apply a whole host of relationships/constraints: finish to start, start to start, finish-to-finish etc.

I have found Amode to be very easy to comprehend and to use. It has a lot of power if you need it, but is an intuitive and easy-to-use outliner if you don't. It does not require the kind of up-front intellectual investment that, say, InfoQube does. Its scheduling capabilities are much slighter than MS Project's, but it is correspondingly easier to use.

Regards

Derek Cater

This software looks pretty good. It has many of the things I have been looking for all in one. Unfortunately, it runs under windows, and not MacOs. Is there anything similar out there for the mac, and/or web based?

Jim

Jim wrote:

This software looks pretty good.

Which program are you referring to specifically?

Jim.

The PM software the Mac users I know sear by is Merlin by the German software developer Project Wizards: www.projectwizards.net
I have no experience with the software but program managers I hold in high regard have.

Franz

Jim wrote:

This software looks pretty good. It has many of the things I have been looking for all in
one. Unfortunately, it runs under windows, and not MacOs. Is there anything similar
out there for the mac, and/or web based?

Jim

I've used Merlin, and it's certainly very good indeed for small to medium-sized projects. The people who developed it are, as far as I know, project management specialists, and started Merlin as a sideline. Their hands-on expertise shows. It has three chief merits in my view: an excellent user-interface that takes into account all kinds of possible project complexities, the ability to handle multiple projects across the same resources, and the facility to use it as a "container" for all the files, notes and digital encumbrances any project accumulates. It also, unlike some project software, doesn't try to be too clever; it leaves plenty of discretion with the user. If I was back managing bigger projects as I once was, I'd seriously look at Merlin (certainly better than MS Project was when I was in that line of work).

But... for personal project management, I think it's too big. (I'm assuming that "project management" means Gannt charts - otherwise on the Mac platform a task manager like Things or Omnifocus would probably be adequate.) The main Mac alternative to Merlin is Omniplan, which is simpler for smaller projects, easier to learn and use than Merlin and has the reputable Omni Group behind it. When Omniplan can sync straightforwardly with Omnifocus it will be the zealous small project/task manager's dream.

Except... Omniplan can't yet handle multiple projects. As a gun-for-hire, what I want a project management application to tell me above anything else is -- if I take on Project A with deadline X whilst also working on Project B with deadline Y, am I going to be overloaded in Z weeks' time? I've looked for this extensively and I've found several half-there alternatives, such as Pagico. But no simple, not-too-expensive project management application for the Mac platform that I know of can really give me the answers I need yet, I'm sorry to say.

Hugh wrote:

I've looked for this
extensively and I've found several half-there alternatives, such as Pagico.

Can you tell me what's missing from Pagico in that regard? I'm quite interested as it is cross-platform.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Dr Andus, I will second LM7's support for Achieve Planner, even though I do not use it
myself (the reason being that nowadays I work with teams, so I need collaborative
tools; see http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3328

There are
plenty of tutorials to get you through the required steps. Roger, the developer,
practices what he preaches and offers productivity courses as well
http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/get-focused-multimedia-course/ though
you won't need these to work with the Planner. If you do like the program, make sure to
enter your email at its Bits du Jour page
http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/achieve-planner-productivity-suite/
You may be lucky and save a good deal if the discount appears within your trial
period.

As a broader reference, I would say that a PPM (Personal Project Management
tool) essentially needs to have the following:

- Ability to break down work into
structured individual tasks; any outliner can do this
- Ability to set date / time
information for each task and show this on a timeline and/or calendar (possibly via
syncing with Outlook or Google Calendar)
- Support for follow-up of the individual
tasks, i.e. setting completion either as Done/Pending or percentage (I personally
have never managed to do the latter)

Achieve Planner does all of the above. InfoQube
too (and much more, but the learning curve is significant) as well as other tools
mentioned here in the past, like Watership Planner.

I will also second LM7's
comment that the project's information management is something different and
better suited for PIMs like UltraRecall or MyInfo.

Last but not least, as one
acquires more tools, it is good to find ways to simplify the actual workflow; I have
found Leo Babauta's books and blog http://zenhabits.net/books/ helpful in that
respect.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

As a broader reference, I would say that a PPM (Personal Project Management
tool) essentially needs to have the following:

- Ability to break down work into
structured individual tasks; any outliner can do this
- Ability to set date / time
information for each task and show this on a timeline and/or calendar (possibly via
syncing with Outlook or Google Calendar)
- Support for follow-up of the individual
tasks, i.e. setting completion either as Done/Pending or percentage (I personally
have never managed to do the latter)

Thanks Alexander, a good list of functions. I thought about it a bit more and came up with the following as my ideal project management setup:

?1. A mind map function for doing a work breakdown structure (WBS) to determine main project tasks (sub-projects) visually;
?2. A hierarchical outliner for creating and organising tasks with unlimited sub-tasks with start/due dates, duration etc. with ability to zoom in (hoist), and calculate project duration;
3. A weekly planner view.
4. Multi-week view (same as above but with lots of additional weeks in rows below, up to 15 or more);
5. Gantt chart for viewing the entire project.

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. I have started downloading them and testing them. I have also looked again at Natara Bonsai and MyLifeOrganized, as they have a lot of PM features that I haven't fully checked out in the past.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Hugh wrote:
>I've looked for this
>extensively and I've found several half-there
alternatives, such as Pagico.

Can you tell me what's missing from Pagico in that
regard? I'm quite interested as it is cross-platform.

To be fair to the software, my experience was mainly with version 4, and I see that it's now up to version 5.3 (and the website has also been upgraded, which was necessary). I liked its timeline presentation, but for some functions the interface was too busy. Some actions were over-complicated or impossible: for example, as far as I can remember, contacts couldn't be directly imported from the Apple Address Book (whereas, for example, in Merlin they can). I seem to remember that setting up a project itself was unduly complicated; I imagine that has been improved. Most fundamentally, the application didn't have quite enough project management features for me; it couldn't tell me, for example, where the slack would be, or, other than by visual inspection, where "violations" might occur.

Process 3, from Jumsoft, is another "half-there" very simple Mac project management application I also looked at. There's clearly a perceived market for such tools, but on the Mac I haven't seen anything as developed as Achieve Planner on the PC (or InfoCube or Watership Planner, neither of which I've used).

Not that this is the answer you were looking for Dr Andus, but here's an unorthodox suggestion for a project manager: Scrivener.

I haven't yet really tried this in practice, I've just considered it in principle. I've put together a little PDF (using Clarify*) that shows how you might go about creating a project management project in Scrivener:

http://db.tt/EnGJQhN4

I think the corkboard, outline views and various ways of including meta-data make Scrivener pretty solid as a project management application. It won't do calculations for you, as in helping you schedule tasks. And the Mac Version would be better than the Windows versions, since you can create a field for due dates in the Mac version, while you have to put due dates in the synopsis in the Windows version.

That all makes Scrivener an acceptable application for managing a project. What would make you WANT to use it this way is if you like to write a lot about your project, and/or your supervisor requires a comprehensive report afterward (which you can create easily using the compile function in Scriv).

Anyway, this is mostly just food for thought, and perhaps grist for discussion.

Steve Z.

*In truth, the main reason I'm presenting this idea is so that I could try out Clarify.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Not that this is the answer you were looking for Dr Andus, but here's an unorthodox
suggestion for a project manager: Scrivener.

I haven't yet really tried this in
practice, I've just considered it in principle. I've put together a little PDF (using
Clarify*) that shows how you might go about creating a project management project in
Scrivener:

Thanks Steve, that is very creative! (What is Clarify, btw?)

Unfortunately my needs are slightly different. It is important for me to add dates, calculate durations, have a weekly view and manage hundreds of tasks, in order to plan and execute a tight 6 month project (the finishing of my PhD).

BTW, re MyInfo, I agree that the custom columns are very nice. However, given that managing long lists and hierarchies of to-dos within various sub-projects fast is important to me, I found the inserting of new tasks and indenting etc. just a bit too fiddly in comparison with MLO, which has become my gold standard in terms of ease of adding and manipulating tasks (and which also has a large selection of columns, though not customisable).

Interestingly MLO can do a lot of what Achieve Planner can do but on a single page, except the weekly planner, which seems to be AP's major strength. I'm still trialling a few other apps.

Dr Andus wrote:

BTW, re MyInfo, I agree that the custom columns are very nice. However,
given that managing long lists and hierarchies of to-dos within various
sub-projects fast is important to me, I found the inserting of new tasks and indenting
etc. just a bit too fiddly in comparison with MLO, which has become my gold standard in
terms of ease of adding and manipulating tasks (and which also has a large selection of
columns, though not customisable).

In MLO to add a new task you hit the Insert key. That's hard to beat in terms of speed and convenience...

Hugh wrote:

Most fundamentally, the application didn't have quite
enough project management features for me; it couldn't tell me, for example, where
the slack would be, or, other than by visual inspection, where "violations" might
occur.

Have you tried Rational Plan? It's a more 'classic' and full-featured application like MS Project, but cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux), and I personally found it more straightforward to use. It has a single- and multi-project version.

Dr Andus wrote:

In MLO to add a new task you
hit the Insert key. That's hard to beat in terms of speed and convenience...

I believe Ins (sub-branch) and Enter (sibling branch) are standard in most mind mapping programs nowadays.

If price isn't an issue, I would suggest MindView. In my opinion it is the most fully featured mind mapping application, with map, outline, timeline and Gantt view. It can handle dates, as well as custom numerical fields, and can import/export from/to a wide range of formats. It is by far the most convenient tool I have found for budgeting projects.

If dates/numbers weren't required, I would definitely suggest TreeSheets. In fact, I can't think of anything more convenient for getting a complex work breakdown structure on a single page.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Hugh wrote:
>Most fundamentally, the application didn't have quite
>enough
project management features for me; it couldn't tell me, for example, where
>the
slack would be, or, other than by visual inspection, where "violations" might

>occur.

Have you tried Rational Plan? It's a more 'classic' and full-featured
application like MS Project, but cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux), and I
personally found it more straightforward to use. It has a single- and multi-project
version.

I'd not seen it before. Many thanks, Alexander!
Hugh

I doubt if it is better than My Life Organized or Achieve Planner, but if you're still looking for another option, check out Task Coach. It is free and multiplatform, including an iOS version:

http://taskcoach.org/features.html

Steve Z.