Project management represents a process through which business projects get planned, defined, controlled, monitored and finally delivered in order for the agreed benefits to be realized. All business projects are unique and temporary and are meant to fulfill a certain purpose. They always bring about change, reason for which a qualitative project management is needed in order for that change to turn out to be a positive one for the business. This kind of management usually includes the tools and the techniques meant to describe, to control and to deliver different activities within certain budgets and timeframes.
Nowadays, there are numerous free project management tools that can be used in order to simplify and to improve certain business processes. One of them is OpenProj. This can be the ideal tool for a desktop kind of project management. It can easily replace the Microsoft Project and it is able to open already existing project files. In addition, it can share one of the most advanced scheduling engines that the industry has.
Another tool that can easily be used is the dotProject one. This is a multi-language and multi-user application kept up to date by volunteer programmers. Some of its key features include tasks and projects, to do lists, departments, companies and contacts, forums, resource allocation, Gantt charts, calendars and reporting. Just as useful as this is the GanttProject tool. This is a very easy to use chart that can be helpful when it comes to management scheduling. It includes task dependencies and hierarchies, a resource load chart, HTML and PDF reports, PERT charts, WebDAV group work super vision and an MS Project export/import tool.
The PHProjekt is another open source application that can help when it comes to coordinating group activities and sharing documents and information over the web. Its components include among others a mail client option, a group calendar, a contact manager tool, a time card system and a file management one.
However useful these tools are though, it seems that ConsultComm is one of the best project management tools. This is a platform-independent, small and light weighted program that can allow almost anyone to manage numerous projects at the same time and that also shows exactly how much time someone has worked on a certain project. This can be very easily integrated into the already existing billing and time management system and it can also unify all of the already existing workstations. Due to the fact that it is an open source, it does not create customization or vendor lock-in problems. In addition, it can also be quickly extended through the utilization of plugins. Furthermore, it can easily be customized in order to fit your own style preferences.
All in all, by using tools such as these, the project management process can become more fast and efficient. Among the features that can be improved by the usage of these are documentation, scheduling, communication, cost control, collaboration, budget management and resource allocation.
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