I urgently need a Project Management software with a good and effective accounting feature. Basically I need to:
- define a project in terms of tasks/work-packages (WP)
- provide an estimation for each of these WP
- allow personnel to insert the hours worked on each WP
- a decent (and extensible) reporting module.
I need to track project costs/progresses on a 360° basis, so not all the WP will be directly related to the production of software: e.g. I'd like to keep track also of the hours spent in managing the project, in the contacts with the customer, for installing and configuring the hardware and the software I need to develop on, etc.
It occurs to me that a huge number of companies are using for this job a software built in-house or tailored made (like it was the case with Ksolutions, the company I've been worked with for 15 years). The fine guys of Hyperborea are now, apparently happily, using Teamwork, a project management software that, amongst many others functionalities, seems to have also a decent project accounting feature.
Teamwork seems an OK product, only a bit too "one size fits all" kind of software for project management: in fact it sports a remarkable number of features to cover all main aspects of PM. Its cost is quite reasonable anyway: also the company behind it (Open Lab) is Italian too (it is based in Florence) which undoubtedly helps.
Anyway I'm more than open to suggestions. Please let me know, commenting here or via Twitter (my account is "lucadex") any opinion that you might have on the topic, including software suggestions or experiences with Teamwork.
TIA!
3 comments:
By applying project management software to your company, you will instantly have a pleasurable time in dealing with any project that comes about. It is important that you are kept as organized as possible because of the possibility that you could miss something. That mistake could end up costing you and your project a successful completion.
All companies have their own unique ways of managing projects. No matter whether a company is small or big it is necessary to manage the project in an effective way. There are companies that utilize online project management software because this software helps in keeping up with all the aspects of your project starting from top to bottom.
Thanks for the comments (and sorry for the embarrassing delay of this feedback...).
The focus of my post was not on the importance of project management per se which, being in the industry for almost 20 years now, is something I can definitely appreciate. The problem is that each company, even ISO9001 certified ones, are not sometimes very effective in analysing their processes. That is, the process is often well-defined but there is no analytic evidence of its effectiveness.
What I was looking (and still am looking) for is a fast solution for project time tracking, which is often a feature, not well implemented, included into more complex and rich project management software applications. Finding a stand-alone time tracker application is harder than I thought.
So far I was quite impressed by Harvest, which unfortunately doesn't come exactly cheap (the most expensive option, 90$ per month, includes only 10 users!).
Suggestions in this area are still welcome. Thanks!
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