The company I work for is growing by leaps and bounds, and we need a solid project management solution. We’re looking for someone who can do the following:
Help us manage our development projects from start to finish
Help us speed up our development process
Track tasks for other departments such as marketing
Be (at least somewhat) simple to integrate
Preferably web based
We’re using basecamp as a big to-do list right now, and that works minimally for tracking tasks, but we’re not getting as much done as we could be. Does anyone have any system recommendations that could help us out?
There are so many programs out there, you’d also have to consider if meeting an ISO or other certification requirement is in the future. I’ve used SAP, Microsoft Office Project, Sharepoint, and Intelex to name a few. Keep in mind if you’re using web based, who is hosting your information. Big corporations and governments are starting to use policies to see where information is going. Many don’t like hosting outside of the country of origin.
Thanks for the reply, James. I’m pretty sure there won’t be any sort of certification requirement needed in the future, but I’m not part of the development team, so I’m not sure what might be involved further down the road.
We’re really looking for something that our entire team ( people in the main office and remote) will be able to log in, update information, manage projects, and basically stay in the look with. Since we develop a lot of websites, something that helps us manage our projects is very important, but we also need the marketing side of it as well.
Our company consists of a network of websites that offer our variety of products. We’re building new websites on a regular basis, and we’re creating marketing plans for them. We need a solution that will let us track and manage the development side of things, as well as track and manage the marketing side of things.
I think what we really need with be pretty feature rich, and that’s fine. We’re pretty open, so even if it’s not web based but it still allows us to do everything we need to - while it’s not perfect, it could work for us. I would love to learn more about what others are using to do something similar.
Thanks Alex, I appreciate it! We’re taking a look at things like the 5pm project management application. It seems more in-depth than our basecamp account and will work for my needs, but i’m more concerned about the development side of things.
What do developers need to track code and changes, and updates? Maybe a repository system is totally different from project management. I’m a marketing guy, so bear with me here.
You’re talking completely different animals. The code changes are tracked via source control and at that point, the better options depend on the environment being developed in - the MS tools integrate better with the Studio tools, while something like ClearCase works best with the IBM based tools. Or there are open source options (Subversion, Codendi, OpenCVS) which work well too, but the integration isn’t as tight with the development tools.
So a lot depends on environment, budget, location of developers, etc…if you’re talking source control, get with your developers to ensure whatever it is meets their needs and is relatively painless. If it’s difficult or gets in their way, the chances of them using it goes down, even if it saves them work in the long run…
Thanks Dave, that actually clears up quite a bit for me. Our business is growing quickly and we don’t have much structure in place to help us keep track of everything we’re doing. It sounds like I really need to look for two different solutions - one for marketing/management, and then something (or a number of things) for development.
Yep, version control is totally different, project management is about assigning tasks, and managing your staff to deadlines, repository systems are all about the projects files itself and how to manage multiple authors pulling together stuff at the same time (sort of a collaboration tool).
Thanks so much for the suggestions - I’m looking into those, and I’ve been working with our development team to figure out what they need, and we’re getting closer. We’re looking at a few different options now, such as projecturf, functionpoint, workgroups 2010, and workamajig. We’re in the testing phases right now, but these plus the suggestions I’ve gotten in this thread are pointing us in the right direction. Thanks everyone!
Thanks Paul - I’ll check it out. We were able to get a workamajig demo and that one is in the lead at the moment, but we’re still exploring our options.
