Any Simple Tools for Tracking/Managing Multiple Projects?
I am not a project manager, and the projects I am dealing with are not technical (no softwares, construction, etc.)
But I need to make sure that 30 different projects are completed successfully by the end of the year by different (but overlapping) team. And I would like suggestion on how to simplify that.
I am one of the two directors in a department of about 20+ people. For this first time this year, we put all our annual goals and wishlist into a project form and assigned owners and teams based on individual strengths and interests. We also roughly scope the deliverables and timeframe to be further refined by the team.
I own a handful of projects, sponsor a whole lot more. And need to come up with an efficient process.
Most of the people in my department are competent and motivated. Some very strong personalities. But they have varying degrees of project management skills. Plus they have their day-to-day jobs to take care of.
Most of the projects are marketing or process-related, and I find that Microsoft Project is overly complicated for our needs.
Any advice?
Project communication solution
To solve the communications need of projects I have used RT ( http://www.bestpractical.com/ ). This is a (free) ticket tracking package that allows you to appoint a responsible person for each project, and to keep track of who else needs to be kept informed inside and outside the organization. The package also allows you to keep track of relationships between projects (e.g. dependencies).
Excel
Lots of managers successfully track tasks and milestones in Excel. They tend to be Excel experts. Might work for you...
John Hack
Beyond Excel is MS Project.
Plenty of Project Managers use it for little more than an overblown task list with dependencies, assigned people, and dates of tasks. You don't have to use most of what comes with it, and in my experience, even most PMP types don't know what to do with a lot of the functions in it. Just the what, who, and when seems to work OK for most.
One day, MS will finally put sub-tasks into MS Outlook, and when they do, most lightweight need for MS Project will evaporate and a GTD use of Outlook Tasks will finally emerge. That they have left this out of Office 2007 is frankly astounding.
-Rob Redmond
http://www.strugglingmanager.com
Excel, outlook, and others
Excel, outlook, and others are not made for Project Management. IMO, Excel should only be used to track a 2 day project max! Then again, it's the least efficient. You need to have one centralized place where you can easily access your project information, and you need the tool to make your life easier on the long run (such as sending notifications on your behalf).
Pay a few bucks a month for a decent online tool, let them handle the infrastructure, and have your data accessible from everywhere and to anyone (you wish to give access to).
Check this article on the ideal online project management tool before making your decision.
Full disclosure?
pmhut,
Your site is partly funded by ads from companies that sell project management software. We welcome your thoughts and ideas, and appreciate that you're engaged in the conversation, and not spamming us. Your pecuniary interest in this discussion, however, should be disclosed.
John
Web Tool
You may try http://www.gtdagenda.com
If you say the teams are overlapping, you can use the Team Names as Contexts.
So a task can be assigned to both a Project and a Context (Team).
One tool to rule them all?
From your description, it sounds like you want a tool to help you keep track of important high-level information about the projects (Who: project lead/sponsor/owner, What: high-level deliverables/objectives/milestones, When: Key delivery dates). A spreadsheet works just fine for this. Don't mix tracking a "portfolio" of projects with the details of each project.
If you want more detail at the "portfolio" level, you can require specific dashboards that contain more detailed, but still high-level information on each project. This should be a 1-page report (Word or Excel) on the status with the same information fields for each project (including additional details like recent accomplishments & upcoming goals). This is a bit more challenging and requires discipline and direction for management.
I work in a project organization for a very large company. We manage about 50 active projects at a time for our division and use something very much like the process above to provide visibility to management on the status of our projects. Project manager and external project leaders are responsible for both executing project details and updating their project summary information. It works.
-CC
Simple Project Management Tool Suggestion
I hear you about needing a simple tool to get the job done. Our tool, SantexQ is designed to be easy to use and not overly complicated. Its main focus is managing multiple tasks and projects. You can also generate reports for the hours you log to track progress or just see an overview of the work being done. We actually use it in-house to manage our own projects. If this is similar to what you're looking for you can check it out at www.santexq.com. Good luck with your search!
MS Project: As Simple As You Make It
Few people here mentioned MS Project or its free Linux counterpart, OpenProj.
I've managed six complex project concurrently with no problem using MS Project. Each project had its own file, and they were all linked together to form a Master schedule. If you want to get nominally fancy, you can resource-drive your schedule to see how all those overlapping resources will pan out. Resource-driving will help you see where your resources might be overcommited (more than 100% combined for all projects), and you can then level schedules accordingly.
Eric Uyttewaal, PMP, wrote "Dynamic Scheduling with MS Project 2003," and I found it to be a great resource. I found it to be a REALLY easy read and more like a handy reference guide.
Here's the rub: I've seen too many people make these MPP schedules so complex they end up spending a significant time managing their schedules, rather than using Project as a tool to do their work. You know your business needs better than we; I'd hate to hand you a sledge hammer when you need a rubber mallet.
- BJ
freeware
Ganttproject (available via sourceforge) is a freeware simple gantt tracking app, no bells and whistles. May be useful to you, otherwise if you need more complex, go with OpenProj as suggested above (also free)
Fitch
RationalPlan Multi Project
To manage multiple projects you can try RationalPlan Multi Project. It was especially designed for this kind of needs. RationalPlan suite can also be seen as an affordable alternative to MS Project but a lot more easier to be used. You do not need to know to much about project management. The embeded guide will help you plan and schedule your projects and the free project viewer will let you share your projects at no cost.
EasyProjectPlan (Excel Project Plan)
I use EasyProjectPlan which is an Excel Project Plan that syncs with Outlook and MSProject.
www.easyprojectplan.com
I use the Outlook and Calendar sync features to distribute and collect task information to my team members.
I distribute the EPP Excel file to all team members either by email or I post it in a shared folder.
My team members can edit the EPP excel file and send the changes back to me.
Most of the companies I work for have no PM task management system so EPP allows me to walk onto any project and immediately distribute and collect task information to all team members. Considering that most companies use Excel and Outlook, there is nothing to install on any computer.
In my experience, team members prefer to view task information in Excel and Outlook.
I think you need to reflect
I think you need to reflect of what you need from the tool, here are a few questions:
1. Do you need a tool where those working in the project can update the status of their tasks?
2. Do you need a tool only for your own tracking?
3. Do you use or have interest in using a time/life management technique (GTD, etc) ?
4. What exactly you want to track? Just who is assigned to the task and when it is done?
There are many tools out there online and off-line to help you with this, I use GTD and and I found my ideal tool:
http://www.trgtd.com.au/
Now, you can check this link to see if you find any other tool that you might like better:
http://lifehacker.com/tag/project-management/
Good luck!
Gabriel
Basecamp
If you're looking for something simple, yet effective to manage group projects, I'd suggest looking at Basecamp from 37 Signals.
Here's my Basecamp top-ten list (no, I'm not getting anything from them for saying this):
My team of 8 marketing people within a company of about 45 use it every day. We're even now getting some folks outside the team to start putting things in there as well. Happy to share/discuss more if you'd like.
-Adam Masur
http://amasur.me
PS: This is similar to another thread I recently commented on, so this is a cross-post (sorry). The other thread is http://www.manager-tools.com/forums-4432, and might be worth a skim.
Check out www.move4.net.
Check out www.move4.net. They've got something called the PM portal thats highly customizable and intended to manage multiple projects at a much higher level than MS Project. Its got strong workflow and communication tools built in as well.