Looking for Development Resource Planning tool suggestions...

Question

I'm looking for a tool to help better plan developer resources.

We have a large team of developers, and many streams of work. I'm looking to be able to plan and allocate resource easier.

Currently, we have a spreadsheet with week blocks against engineers, and we fill in what we need them to work on and when. But it's very limited as a result.

it's easy to see what Mr Foo or Mr Bar is working on, and to get a view as to which lead engineers are available. But it's hard to get a clear view on who is allocated to project fiz. Or when we have a period coming up with a certain resource profile available.

This is not about the micro level of management, tracking bugs, small work packets and so forth. For this we're using an ITIL aligned change management process and system backed with PRINCE2 project management using Microsoft Project.

What we need is something at the macro level. Within Project X we're all covered, we can see progress on work packets, milestones etc. But with a team of ~100 we can't see that 4 people are allocated for Project x for 6 months, following that they are available, but we need 7 people and no-one else comes free at that time etc.

Answer 1

I like the VersionOne tools:

http://www.versionone.com/

Answer 2

Axosoft OnTime seems to do a pretty good job at it. Though I am sure there is something better out there.

Answer 3

Rally also has some good stuff:

http://www.rallydev.com/

Answer 4

The standard tool is Microsoft Project, but it isn't free and requires Windows. It takes some getting used to.

There's a free alternative called Open Workbench. I haven't been able to try it because their sign-up process won't send me the email to confirm sign-up however.

The Mac solution is OmniPlan. There are a couple of other alternatives here as well, because the market isn't stifled by MS Project.

Answer 5

I don't know what your development environment is like (Languages and Such), but Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System sounds like it would fit your needs.

We use it to track all of our client and server application development as well as our 2 web services.

DOWN SIDE: Implementation is NOT cheap

Answer 6

Three free ones for you that run on Windows, Mac and Linux:

http://www.openworkbench.org

http://openproj.org/openproj

http://ganttproject.biz/

All offer similar functionality to Microsoft Project and I think all of them can open MS project files

Answer 7

Why don't you look at SAVIOM Resource Planner, which is to manage large pool of resources at macro level. Look at this link

http://www.saviom.com/resource_planner.aspx