PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

[Sean Gill]

Hi Folks,

Hope this is the right section as I'm a newbie!!

I'm a Design manager in a small engineering company. Just me and two engineers.

Typically would have 14 projects running at the same time.

Things are fast paced and priorities shift about constantly.

I'm looking for a piece of software to manage these projects and time lines.

Need to do the following

Assign project to engineer with deadline etc.
Have an overall Ganttt chart of where things are and when the next available "Design Slot" is.
Pull projects about and see what effect that has on other projects.
Break do projects into sub tasks and possibly assign to different people.

At the minute Im trying to do it through Sharepoint but it just isn't giving me what I need.

Don't need an MRP system. Just a piece of software purely for Design Projects.

A shared program would be ideal so the boss can log on and see exactly what were doing!

Cheers in advance

Sean

 

[IRstuff]

Seems like MS Project or some similar freeware/shareware would do that, although, I think that pulling projects in/out would be difficult from a tedium perspective, since that usually means making/breaking linked tasks.

Not a particular fan of MS Project, but every company I've worked for used it; it's got quirks and idiosyncrasies in the "when" of tasks when links are made or broken

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[MortenA]

Maybe something like a Kanban tool e.g. Trello (its a web tool). I have only used it for smalle non-professional things but its great for breaking a project down in to bit and keeping tracks of tasks, status etc. I dont know if this tool or similar tools will make charts etc.

--- Best regards, Morten Andersen

 

[Sparweb]

Umm, this may sound a bit contrarian, but you just said this:

I'm a Design manager in a small engineering company. Just me and two engineers.

So the answer is: Excel. You don't have time or extra staff to babysit a new piece of software.

Now getting prickly: if you and 2 other guys can't coordinate your activities without tracking software then there are other issues that PM software can't help you with. Get them to report their hours on each active project on a regular basis, dump it into a table and watch they don't splurge. When switching priority tasks, write a new list in order for all to see. Don't lock the spreadsheet on your computer; let them see it and edit it. Set some ground rules on how it's used among the 3 of you. Keep historical backups. Each person should be able to figure out what their next 3 tasks should be in less than 5 minutes, and then go do them.

I don't claim that my PM skills are top-notch, and I make PM blunders like everyone else. Each time the problem is not attributable to "tracking software". It is usually more my inability to herd more than 3 cats at a time.