Alternatives to Microsoft Project

Question

I'm looking for quick and simple alternatives to Microsoft Project.

I need to articulate what a small team of developers and testers are doing over the coming months, describe the order that they're doing those things, and work out whether the amount of stuff we need to do is likely to fit in to the timescales we've been given.

I know MS Project can do all these things, but it always feels WAY too heavy-weight for what I want.

Should I just get on with taming MS Project, or are there decent alternatives that I could be using?

Answer 1

You can try TaskJuggler, although I've never used it myself.

Answer 2

I am using basecamp to manage a web based project that I am working on for class. I am using the free version of the software which is somewhat limited, but it does allow for the creation of milestones and to do lists (associated with the milestones). You can assign tasks to members of your team and you can see when they mark it as complete.

It doesn't have all of the bells and whistles as Microsoft Project, which is exactly what you're looking for. The pay version has more features available to it, but the free one might be what you're looking for.

Answer 3

Joels own Fogbugz is excellent software for managing projects etc. fogbugz link

As for the checking time issue Fogbugz 6 has Evidence Based Scheduling which has proved useful on our projects.

Answer 4

If your team is under 5 people you can evaluate Mingle for a year. It's not exactly "quick", but it does provide good insight into your development cycle, as long as you take some time to set it up properly. They have some templates on the site that set up your team with a certain focus in mind (XP, Scrub, Hybrid of the two). I think it's a lot lighter than MS Project, though.

Answer 5

You can try opensource,free alternative openproj - http://www.projity.com/, Its lightwieght(aroud 7MB) and almost everything that MS Project is offering. Also it has optiont to import MS project files. I am using it for quite long time.

Answer 6

I'm still liking Smartsheet - http://www.smartsheet.com

Answer 7

KDE has kplato, though it seems like it's still much under development.