10 Project Management Software Reviewed – Part 1

10 Project Management Software Reviewed – Part 1

As a Project Manager, you surely want do an effective management plan for your projects. To come to your aid, we made a presentation of the Top 10 most useful software you can use to schedule, assign tasks, keep track (and more) of your project’s work-flow.

Tenrox Project Management Software

This application has a complete set of features unlike any other. You can go digging through its various interfaces and dashboards  without getting a headache, all thanks to its well-structured creation.

Standout features:

  • easy-to-use project planning tool
  • the project plans are interchangeable with Microsoft Project files
  • excellent time tracking, cost accounting and billing features.

Resources management

Create a perfect team using the resource search function. Find the most appropriate, qualified and available individuals to complete different tasks. As soon as the project manager publishes the project plan, every member of your team can see their assigned tasks. In return, they can report an estimated time to complete their assigned tasks. This information will be used along with the plan to report on the cost and schedule variances. Tag your time entries as capitalized, charge-back, billable, R&D and other similar attributes. Also you can report n capitalized project time and billable versus non billable time and access profitability and productivity with various project cost/revenue analysis reports.

Project management

A great advantage is that you can manage your projects offline, so you can share your plan with your team once it’s finished. Publish, check-in and check-out are some excellent features that help team members to collaborate on the plan.

Ease of use

You can’t go wrong with this software! Although it has a very complex structure, anyone can handle it, even someone that doesn’t know what project management is.

Overall

From all the software management applications, this one is probably one of the best. It’s easy to use, brings a lot of features and it’s at a reasonable price.

Project Management Pie Chart

Microsoft Project

This application is the flagship for any other similar software, because most of the project management software can integrate files with it, either by importing or exporting them into your preferred application. This feature lessens the learning of different software, since there are many professionals who are already familiar with Microsoft Project.

Standout features

  • Import/export Feature
  • Effective management of project schedules
  • Enables you to quickly become productive
  • Able to build professional charts and diagrams

Resources Management

Microsoft Project enables an easy management of both adding and managing your resources, essential for any effective project management. Easily create slots and assign them tasks as you would fill some data in a spreadsheet. Optimize efficiency by assigning tasks to the right resource: Microsoft Project allows you to keep info about your employees (such as skill sets and resumes).

Project Management

Microsoft Project doesn’t provide many features, but it holds the necessary tools to effectively manage any project. A practical tool is the expand-and-contract feature, that allows you to easily browse through your project and get a better overall view without scrolling through hundreds of tasks and milestones.

The scheduling feature includes calendars for a day-by-day breakdown of tasks, timelines for an overall view of the project, and events for specific milestones within the calendar.

But the interactive Gantt chart makes it easy to comprehend. You can update your project and easily adjust it right on the graph!

Up-to-date reports are available in Microsoft Project, so you can keep track of statistics, financial status and employees work loads.

Ease of use

Microsoft Project focuses on four points in project management: Task, resource, Track and Report. You can easily navigate through them and you can find any info you need with just a click.

The spreadsheet-like interface allows you to input data using your keyboard. Add  tasks, milestones, dates and resource assignments quickly without having to click into every field.

The interactive Gantt chart is really handy to easily update the progress of your tasks, changing their dates or their completing order.

Overall

Microsoft Project provides the necessary tools needed to assign tasks, manage resources and complete the project on schedule within the budget limits. Also you can integrate your work into mostly any project management  software.

Project Management tables

Project KickStart

Project KickStart is a project management software that can easily integrate with other software like Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, MS Word, Microsoft Prokect, WBS Cart and MindManager. It is very useful for basic project planning, but does not provide many features like resources management.

Standout Features

  • Six-step plan creation wizard
  • QA process
  • Free sample projects

Resources Management

KickStart has a user-friendly interface with tabs for every aspect of a project,  except the resources tab. A “People” tab is included, but it’s not even close to an effective management tool.

Project Management

KickStart offers a very simple UI, organized in tabs. The wizard just walks you through the project plan: picking goals, assign tasks and dates and show obstacles that could prevent the project’s smooth flow.

After running through all the tabs, you can keep track and edit your project in the resulting Gantt chart.

Ease of use

Very easy to install, easy to navigate and visually pleasing, KickStart is a very good tool. It simply runs your through the entire management plan and it provides an excellent comprehension and overall view.

Overall

Project KickStart is a great tool for smaller projects that probably have a single project manager, and does not require much collaboration with other managers or with a CEO.

Project Management Gnatt chart

MindView 3 Business

MindView has a spreadsheet-like layout, so you can easily add, edit or delete tasks without clicking each cell. A very useful feature that sets it apart from other software is the MindMap option: you can see your project in brainstorming bubbles and see how tasks are related to milestones.

Standout Features

  • Brainstorming
  • Multimedia
  • Calculation

Resources Management

It’s easy to add or remove human resources with just a click. Easily import resources directly from Microsoft Outlook or add them from your tasks list. Just be careful when you add resources, MindView does not allow you to make groups or sort them by skills or departments.

Project Management

MindView includes the standard project management elements: Tasks, Calendars and Budgeting, but it lacks recurring tasks and auto notifications to check the project progress.

The strength of this application lies in its different views of the project: tasks list, Gantt chart, mind map, timeline and outline. This allows a better overall view and the interactive map allows manual data input without opening the task list.

Ease of use

MindView has a very low learning curve. It simply leads you directly to a new project or existing ones. The spreadsheet-like task list and interactive Gantt charts allow you to easily update your project info.

Overall

Easy to learn, MindView offers a view through its different visual options that allows any user to comprehend rapidly his project’s work-flow. Although it does not provide many features, you can easily and effectively complete any management plan.

Project Management Mindview

Genius project for Domino

Genius project is a high-functioning project management software that can be use by both experienced computer users and beginners alike.

Standout features

  • User-friendly user interface
  • Complex charts
  • Budget planning dashboard
  • Auto E-mail notification

Resources Management

The complex and detailed dashboards, charts and sets of views allow you to have a good idea of resource assignments. Easily make adjustments or substitutions as you see fit. Properly assign staff for your tasks using the matrix planning. Assigning tasks to the right person is no longer a laborious issue with the resource search function. With this tool, you can perform a quick search for potential members and you can diminish their number by sets of skills or availability. You can gather up the perfect team in a very short amount of time!

Project Management

This application provides extensive offerings in dashboards and reporting, risk and change management, document management, demand management, invoicing, cost and budget managing, project tracking, time and expense tracking, planning and project portfolio management.

Ease of use

Although it has a lot of functions explained in hundreds of pages, it’s easy to comprehend. There are no confusing or disorienting features at all.

Overall

Genius project offers a complete set of features needed for a thorough, in-depth management planning.

Project Management Genius planner

About

I write articles, Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials and draw pretty stuff for Designious, Pixel77 and Vectorious. I also drink and spill industrial amounts of coffee.

29 Comments on “10 Project Management Software Reviewed – Part 1

  1. You might also like to check out Tom’s Planner. It allows you to create and share project plans online with “drag and drop” simplicity.

    Techcrunch review said:’The beauty of the application is that it’s simple to use, even for those users who aren’t particularly tech-savvy’

  2. Check out DeskAway (www.deskaway.com) – a web-based project collaboration app that is simple yet powerful.

  3. This is the first review, for a long time now, for “offline” project management software.

    I assume Omniplan will be in the next part of this small series.

    PS: Web enabled PM Software has some advantages over offline PM Software, they’re listed here.

  4. Great article! Can’t wait to see what you write about @task in Part II. ;o) Feel free to let me know if you need any additional information regarding our products for your demo.

  5. Hi,

    I’d like to add our product to the mix, it is a project management add-in for Microsoft Outlook. You can find more information on our web-site.

    Kevin

  6. It seems Nice post regarding project management software and its features, ease of use was really good. Right now, I am using ProofHub(http://www.proofhub.com/. In this you will find each and everthing related to project management software.

  7. I usually work with web-based applications like http://www.showdocument.com
    I use it for sharing my designs and documents with partners and clients,
    but i guess it can used for other purposes too. If you’re looking for a free solution you should check it out.
    – Laura W.

  8. Hallo,
    Thanks for the gr8 post, so detailed information on various project managing softwares. Apart from Microsoft Project EPM solution..had no idea about rest of the softwares. Thanks again.

  9. Hi there,

    My name is Tony Mobily. We recently released Apollo — http://www.apollohq.com . When you wrote your article, we hand’t released it yet…

    I think Apollo is different to the ones you reviewed in this series as it’s fully online, and yet it looks like a native application.

    Let us know what you think about Apollo!

    Thanks,

    Merc.

  10. I recommend proofhub to add because of its centralized work and features. It keeps us update with latest technologies and help to work without messy things.

  11. Apart from the Microsoft product I hadn’t heard of these project managers before and I always like to learn of new ones. Our company coincidentally to JoJo uses Dooster and we are ejoying it greatly because of the improvement to our working day. The team atmosphere has been really good since we got it because crossed wires and missed messages appear to be a thing of the past now. We didn’t use project management software before and I don’t recall how we decided on Dooster. I do remember that Basecamp and 5pm were amongst the others we tried. We are quite a small organisation, hopefully going on to greater things now. Anyway, we’re very pleased with Dooster. Thanks for the article.

  12. If you like, take a look at TrackerSuite.Net ( http://www.TrackerSuite.Net ). It’s a Web based system that integrates with email systems, including Microsoft Outlook and IBM Notes. Users can surface it in their email, and Outlook users can drag-and-drop emails to a TrackerSuite.Net folder, to create project documents, tasks and support tickets from them. A free online demo is available.

  13. Quickbooks tool hub is the best accounting software for all business owners as well as individuals to manage their business accounts, invoices. know more at qbtoolhub, download QuickBooks software today!

  14. What’s Taking place i’m new to this, I stumbled upon this I’ve discovered It absolutely useful and it has
    helped me out loads. I hope to contribute & assist other
    users like its aided me. Good job.

  15. Good post. I learn something totally new and
    challenging on blogs I stumbleupon every day. It’s always exciting to
    read through articles from other authors and practice something from their websites.

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