Tools to draw and write software project roadmap, eg plans, schedules, tasks for developers?

Question

What are the best tools [commercial and free]

to draw and write software project roadmap,

eg plans, schedules, deadline dates, tasks for developers?

Answer 1

For task management go with fogbugz and rememberthemilk....

Both are web based i dont think they are tools... Hope its worth a try looking at them....

For drawing UI Mockups balsamiq

Answer 2

I seriously think pen and paper still are the best tools. That way the planning doesn't get more complex than the actual work.

Answer 3

For writing documentation, a simple wiki (such as MediaWiki) is a very good tool. It allows shared access to the docs, and history of what changed and when things were written.

Answer 4

The key here is to have something that is clear, easily accessible and updatable and that requires no or little additional knowledge to use. Excel makes a great tool for simply keying in a load of tasks, and it's easy to assign resource, estimates etc, sum and sort. It's also good as you can use things like the WORKDAY function to give you some idea of when tasks will be completed. In addition it's quite simple to keep it on a shared network resource or better still under revision control. In addition, nearly everybody has it or something that can read it, so no special installs required.

A lot will depend on the size of your project, the number of tasks and resources. I'd stick away from the likes of MS Project, as it's a lot of pain for little gain, unless you really have a very complex project with many dependencies. Although a bit clunky, you can always do simple Gantt style roadmaps in Excel too, if you have a handful of milestones.

Answer 5

Redmine is a useful tool that we use which provides issue tracking, wiki, forums, file/document repositories, etc.