Free Project management software

Question

The company I work for has some project management issues. It's not that it doesn't work but that I get the impression it could work much better.

I'm looking for a good, web-based, project management tool.

I've been playing with dotproject which I believe is excellent but I'd like to hear some other approaches (if any). I'm specially interested in opinions of people who can tell me why their choice is better than dotproject as that's the project I'm familiar with.

I'm well aware of this other question in stackoverflow) but, any recommendations for free pm software?

Edit: I'm interested in real life experience. I've had a look over all the free pms on Wikipedia and I really like dotproject but I'm about to show it to my boss so I don't want it to blow up in my face later on.

Edit: Sorry about spelling, I'm not a native English speaker and I don't see anything wrong with the text so if there's something wrong you can point it out or edit if you have edit permissions.

Edit: Ok, here's the thing, this is like a personal project of mine. I'm trying to improve project management in my company so I decided to look up different project management tools, input all the data for the project and then show it to my boss. That's why I need it to be free, because if I tell him "it's great but it's gonna cost you XXX$ he will just ignore it (every company is like Dilber's ...) so I need to tell him "You're gonna get it for free"

Edit: Sorry, I'm editing a lot but, we're more or less 150 people working on developing the project (there're more people from marketing, comercial, etc)

Answer 1

Wikipedia's list of project management software -- includes open-source and proprietary systems along with some of the features each package includes.

Answer 2

I'm trying to get the company where I'm working to start using Redmine, which looks very good.

I'm not that familiar with dotproject, but I think Redmine's a bit more targeted towards software developers.

Answer 3

We are pretty happy with trac at our company.

Answer 4

While it's not exactly bug tracking software, JIRA is what I use. It allows for pretty extensive workflows, is open source software, and there are a lot of good plugins.

Answer 5

This is one of those things where I think it's worth spending some money.

While I think some free solutions like Trac or DotProject are great, I've had better experiences with Basecamp and FogBugz

Answer 6

I've heard good things about Trac, and Bugzilla has also been recommended to me often. I haven't personally had a large enough project (or a solid enough group of developers all working on the same project) to warrant a full project management tool, but I've done a minor amount of playing on my own.

Answer 7

Well.....

People tend to think they can solve issues inside their company by installing a piece of software on their PC computer.

Does this sound rational ? :-p

Maybe you need some new project managers that also have proper education.

Answer 8

We use Trac for a 5 person team. I'd say it's about 95% of what you really need for a small group like ours, especially if you're not looking to satisfy any bureaucratic demands. It's pleasantly minimalist and easy to tweak. On the other hand, that missing 5% is sufficiently annoying that I'd probably go with something else if I were making the decision over again, because it's stuff like "user account management" (there is none, though there might be a plugin to handle web-based configuration) and "modeling any kind of relationship between issues". Also, it's more work to set up than it really ought to be.

JIRA is ridiculously over-featured, has a basically miserable interface, and is emphatically not open source, although Atlassian offers free licenses for open projects and non-profits. Decent of them as far as it goes, but I'd still avoid it like the plague.

Answer 9

I'm using Redmine and think it is a great software, easy to use and nice features. What I am missing in Redmine is a real integration into Eclipse with Mylyn. There is only a very basic support for this. In trac I am missing an easy multi project support.

Answer 10

Assembla?

Has SVN/Trac, wiki, file hosting, etc. All free. Very handy.

Oh, and it also has great support for multiple people to work on the project. Hundreds, even.

EDIT: Oh, I should mention, all of this is entirely web based. I'm not sure if theres any client-side management software from them.

Answer 11

Redmine now supports Mylyn (searching Mylyn at redmine.org brings up several how to's). At least using Mylyn 3.0.

The Bitnami stack for Redmine is pretty easy to get running for no cost. We are just starting to use it at our office, so far it has everything we need.

We are also looking at the Redmine plugin that will allow us to ingrate javadocs into the redmine system too, along with several other useful looking plugins.

Our old issue tracking software integrates with Sourcesafe, but all the new Java goodness is in Subversion, which redmine can work with.

Answer 12

I would definitely give redmine a try...

Answer 13

Recently come across www.clockingit.com, well worth a look and its free.

Answer 14

Definitely take a look at OpenAtrium, which is built upon Drupal and is completely open source and free. If you are looking for a freemium model with a web-based project management app, take a look at Intervals.