Week 5 - Project Management Tools

When it comes to project management, there are heaps of tools that you can use - many of them free.

Microsoft Project is the first commercial one that comes to mind, but it is not part of the standard Microsoft Office suite.

Free/Cheap Project Management tools

Online Solutions

The main advantage of looking at an online solution is that it is available anywhere you have internet and usually have collaboration tools built in.

Here is a list of some of the free online project management tools (in no particular order):

• Teamwork
• Wrike
• Freedcamp
• Zoho Projects
• Ace Project
• Gantter
• Trello
• Podio
• Asana
• Producteev
• Meister Task
• BamBam
• Bitrix24

Download and Install - Open Source solutions

• ProjectLibre
• Open Project
• LibrePlan (web based)
• Task Juggler
• Gantt Project 
• OrangeScrum
• ]ProjectOpen[
• Redmine 
• 2-plan

Class Activity 1

Research your allocated Tool(s). Report back on features and any costs/plans associated with the tool. Do you think that the tool would be worth taking for a test drive?

Creating a Gantt Chart

For this exercise, although we have PS Project in the classroom, I will download and install ProjectLibre

http://www.projectlibre.org/product/projectlibre-open-source

Enter the Tasks from last week's class exercise. I will upload image to Moodle if required.

Once the software has been installed, you can create your first project.

Type in your project details and start date.

• Indent/Outdent activities if required
• Set the duration for each activity - day is the default time measurement
• Predecessors are activities that need to occur before the current activity. Most are on a FS basis - the predecessor must finish before the current activity can be started.

Clicking in the information column will bring up the properties box for the highlighted activity.

Continue adding activities until the Gantt Chart is complete.

What are our closedown dates. How long from start to finish will the move take?