Andrea Baker – Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist » An Alternative for MS Project

An Alternative for MS Project

Earlier today I put out a question twitter, what is a good open source alternative to MS Project? I am asking because I am about to create another WBS for a project and I think its more professional to have a Gantt chart and a clear delination of where milestones are, than if shown in a spreadsheet.

Additionally, I am a supporter and advocate of many open source tools vs. their costly competitors in the Enterprise. I mean there is nothing wrong with the big guys. Some of their products are amazing and there is no replacement. For instance, I usually use Google Docs or Open Office for writing proposals. But when it gets proprietary and complex, nothing can replace MS Word.

So with that, I share with you my preliminary list of responses for my question on an Alternative for MS Project.

I do not endorse any of these products yet, as I will be trying them over the weekend, but I will share my opinions once I have. Additionally, if you have any suggestions that are not on this list please share. And if yours is one of the suggestions on the list, please explain why you suggested the product, since you have more than 140 characters to do so.

MatthewWhatley: @immunity If you have access to a small budget, basecamp is the way to go: http://www.basecamphq.com/
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gstrzok: @immunity OpenProj http://openproj.org/openproj

gstrzok: @immunity ToDoList http://tinyurl.com/26lt7d (expand)

gstrzok: @immunity GanttPV http://tinyurl.com/chxaa9 (expand)

AmandaMorin: @immunity OpenProj is an option. http://openproj.org/openproj
gstrzok: @immunity Open Workbench http://tinyurl.com/dn9u96 (expand)

InsightsGal: @immunity Not sure what you need, but I use http://www.aceproject.com/ as an alternative

miershpedankl: @immunity try these pages for info: http://tinyurl.com/dgzgc (expand) and http://tinyurl.com/c9ubjb (expand) #Project #OpenSource

faheyr: @immunity check out http://tinyurl.com/ccujhx (expand) for alternatives

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Tags: andrea baker, business, office, project, wbs, word

Enterprise 2.0, business, social software, technology, web2.0 | Andrea Baker | March 20, 2009 1:08 pm

6 Comments

By NateLee, March 20, 2009 @ 1:18 pm

Nice knew look for your site Andrea! My recommendations (http://www.osalt.com/project) were based on osalt, who’s opinion I value very much. Cheers!
By Andrea Baker, March 20, 2009 @ 1:21 pm

Thanks Nate, I have a developer working now on a brand specific banner for me. But for now I just needed a cleaner look for the site that displayed the content in a more meaningful way. Expect by the time Blog Potomac rolls around a new banner will be displayed.
By Gary, March 20, 2009 @ 3:28 pm

Hi Andrea,

Dot project is one oss pm tool that I’ve played with recently, it’s a little clunky but my devs liked it because it’s written in PHP – and is therefore easy to integrate with our CRM (SugarCRM) and web app platforms (all in PHP).
By Daria, March 23, 2009 @ 1:14 am

Andrea,
Check out Wrike. It’s integrated with email and had a Gantt chart with drag-and-drop support, to say nothing about ability to create multiple project views. Let us know your opinion.
By Keith Casey, March 25, 2009 @ 6:04 pm

I’m a former core contributor to dotProject and one of the founders to the public fork of web2project – http://web2project.net/ In the 16 months or so since we split, there has been major work on the User Interface, but even more work on the performance and security of the overall system. One of the biggest installations that I consult on has 100+ projects each with 400+ tasks and the reporting requirements are amazing.

If you want simple todo list management, Basecamp is a great option… but if you need to have Gantt charts, track time, and have robust permissions, web2project is the way to go.
By jamil, January 7, 2010 @ 3:29 pm

http://www.pacifictimesheet.com is another option. Easy to use and very neat/clean user interface.