Organizing your projects is essential to success. For years, Project Managers have used tools like Microsoft Project and OmniPlan to manage and organize projects for corporations. While these are the tools they use traditionally, there are a lot of limitations to these products, including the fact that contain clunky and unattractive interfaces. If you already understand how to use them, either because you’ve been forced to use them, or because you’ve actually been a project manager, then it may make sense to continue to use them. However, if you’re new to managing projects, or you don’t have time to really learn how to make these tools work for your projects, then alternatives exist that may just prove to drive the success of anything you’re trying to accomplish.

What constitutes as a project?

First, you want to understand what a project even is. In my opinion, anything that requires several tasks to occur is a project. For example, re-organizing your home or creating a spending budget are small projects. Building a website, or even starting a business revolving around building a website is certainly a medium-to-large sized project. Making a phone call to apply for a credit card is not a project. It’s a task. Keep in mind that any major activity requiring successive or related tasks is most certainly a project, and could benefit from some kind of project management.

What is project management?

In simple terms, project management is the act of organizing and managing a project from research (identifying requirements, researching on the web, identifying solutions), planning, to implementation. With projects requiring several people to be involved, this requires managing allocation of these tasks to various people, and following up to ensure the work has been completed. Time management is key, as inter-dependent tasks will be affected by slip-ups. A good project manager can take these sorts of things into account when the research and planning stages begin, to provide time buffers for standard problems.

The reality is, if you’re an entrepreneur, or you’re just trying to solve some problems around your home or workplace, and you’re actual occupation is not project management, then managing your project can be tedious. It can be even more difficult if you’re responsible for many projects that are all important for the success outcome. You’re not a project manager, and you have better things to do with your time than learn difficult management tools, or create one in Excel.

What tools can help with project management?

Thankfully, you’re in luck, because there are a lot of simplified tools that are available today on the web that can help. Most of these services offer a free trial or a completely free account that have limitations on the number of projects or people that can participate. It gives you a good opportunity to get a feel for the services, and actually use them to get something done.

Best Project Planning Services:

• Basecamp by 37Signals
• goplan by Webreakstuff
• unfuddle by Subventurate, LLC

Basecamp

goplan

unfuddle

Conclusion

All in all, if you pick any of these three services, you’re doing yourself a huge favor. You will have a greater chance of project success, and can keep historical evidence of your progress. None of the free accounts on these services are fully functional, but they provide a good opportunity to get a sense of the capabilities and general feel. Now that I’ve found (and used) all of them, I couldn’t imagine running even the smallest of projects without some kind of management tool.

Tags: projectmanagement, projects, tools, web 2.0, success, business, source code