Project Management Tools
April 26, 2010Project Management Tools
Project management programs are tools in which project managers can organize their staff, finances and project work. With these programs they can efficiently sort through the tasks for the day and provide a guideline for the future of their company. Without one of these programs project managers would be left to using either several different programs combined to get the same effect, or even reduced to doing thing such as gantt charts by hand.
I have decided to compare to pieces of software that are just that; project management tools. However I’m choosing two which are pretty different: Microsoft Project 2007, and Project Open (it’s actually ]Project Open[ , however the brackets get annoying fast). My initial finding were that the Microsoft product was highly inferior to that of Project Open - ]PO[ for short - and my later research further proved those claims.
Let’s compare the basics of the two side by side first:
| ]Project Open[ | Microsoft Project 2007 |
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So right from the start Project Open has the upper hand, after all it’s free. As far as the comparison between web based and client based goes, it all depends on what you prefer. Truthfully Project Open is not fully Web Based, as it does require you install some software for it upfront, however you do use your internet browser to access it.
Now we take a look at features, for this we will do another side by side comparison (after all we’re only comparing two products so it certainly is effective).
| Features | ]Project Open[ | Microsoft Project 2007 |
| Employee Management | Yes | No |
| Customer Relationship Management | Yes | No |
| Reports | Yes | Yes |
| Financing | Yes | No |
| Gantt Charts | Yes | Yes |
| Risk Management | Yes | Yes |
| Resource Management | Yes | Yes |
At this point you may be thinking I’m just biased to Project Open, after all its free and if Microsoft Project has a few more features, well the program being free outweighs them right? Nope, I could not find a single thing Microsoft Project 2007 did that Project Open didn’t do.
Features are one thing; however the program could have the most features on the planet and still be useless if the interface is bad. So maybe this is where Microsoft Project will shine right? Well no, although its interface certainly is not horrible it lacks depth which Project Open has.
Microsoft Project starts you off facing a gantt chart, and that chart represents your project, from there you can add things to the project itself however it all seems to rotate around the chart (figure.1).
Project Open works differently, because of its many more features it starts you off with a start page complete with news about the product itself, your current projects, the current statistics of your company (eg average number of sick days your employees take), and some help information about the product. From there you get a side menu which allows you to navigate through project management, human resources, customer relations, finances and other features (figure 2).
In the end Open Project beats Microsoft Project 2007 in every way imaginable, which just goes to show you how much more powerful open source products can become in comparison to company created ones.
Sources:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/default.aspx
http://www.project-open.com/en/modules/index.php
