the search for a proper web based pm tool
disclaimer: this blog post is probably not very understandable. but i need to get it off my chest.
in the age of very short attention spans, the power of simplicity is extremely important. i don’t want to learn new tools, i want a tool that does exactly what i need and not less, and not too much more.
i’ve been looking around for a while now, and i haven’t quite found something that ticks all my boxes yet.
if i was alice in wonderland and could wish for everything, this is what i want in a web based project management tool:
- collaborative working environment. every project team member should have a full view on the project plan at any time
- different permission levels to edit stuff
- tasks with estimated time, actual time spent, priority and importance
- timetracking & timesheets: at the end of the day, i want the project members to be able to book time spent against job + task.
- document sharing (pretty standard) with versioning
- a dashboard that shows project members today’s tasks, a quick calendar overview, latest updates on the project and a timesheet “widget” that allows them to put in their timesheets in a matter of a few clicks.
- overall resource pool. all available people should be in a centralized pool that can show me their availability and what project they’re currently working on. the tool should also show me what day rate the resource is on. when i add people out of the resource pool to my project(s), i want the traffic/studio/resource manager to be informed and in case of conflicts sort that out.
- budget tracking & reporting. as a project manager, keeping a close eye to the budget is of key importance. i want to be able to run a report at any given time that shows me the accurate burn rate (= money spent) of the project, % complete of projects, tasks, overruns, underruns, et al.
- forecasting. i want to forecast a project by putting in the tasks, assign the resource, time, and save it as some sort of template. once the project kicks off or becomes reality, i want the forecast to “transform” into an actual project.
- i want a project setup wizard that substitutes a “project checklist” by forcing me to fill in necessary details and setup the project properly within the tool.
- project change management. i want to be able to specially track changes in a project, new requirements that cause extra budget burn. i am not entirely sure how to implement that, but it would be a great nice to have.
- project finance again. i want to be able to create an invoice out of the system that shows me who spent how much time on what piece of work, and use this to bill the client. i want to be able to compare forecast vs. actual spend, invoice either the forecasted figures or the actual figures.
- investments. i want to be able to mark overruns as investments in case the client doesn’T pay for it, and exactly track these investments in a seperate report.
- multi-channel notifications. i want to receive notifications if something overruns, underruns, if someone didn’t put in the timesheet, etc..
- i want to be able to e-mail documents to the system where it automatically stores them. i want the system to maintain a mailbox for each project member and store e-mails sent to this address as well as forwarding it to the actual user mailbox to save project communication within the proper context. to keep storage low, project members should be trained to use the shared folders for documents and the system should remove attachments to the e-mail.
that’s quite a list, i know. but i think it would be awesome to have something like this or close to this.
does anyone know of any tool that might be able to do that? i know basecamp, mingle and most of the others already. but something even closer to that, please?
thanks.