May 09, 2005
Gantt Project
Gantt charts. Pretty good progress tools, vilified by overly complex project management software (and I'm not just talking about MS Project).
Myself, I find I only need the basics when setting up a project: resources, tasks, dependencies, and a nice little chart. That's all really. The prospect of having to work with one of the PM behemoths to set up my little web projects seems silly, so I went on a search for something else. I landed on Basecamp (a great hosted tool by 37Signals) but it didn't meet all of my requirements (charting, dependencies). So it was on to my next stop, SourceForge, and wouldn't you know it, I found a little program that could.
Simpler the better
Gantt Project is a Java based open source application from a couple of French university students that has morphed into a solid PM tool. I've used this tool for almost a year now and have zero qualms. Its interface is geared around setting up tasks and resources around a project and that's it.
The interface also makes very good use of Windows right-click, making it even easier to work with the tasks once set-up. Once you've added a couple of tasks, you can easily embed deeper subtasks, or update the properties and dependencies for each.
Features
Even with its focus on simplicity, it still has a few features, namely the ability to load and work through FTP with a project from a webserver, so teams can share. It also exports to PDF, CSV, and many other formats so sharing your chart doesn't require anything special. The website indicates that compatibility with MS Project and better print options are up next.
Conclusion
No frills, no whistles, just the tool. Its a little clunky around setting up resources, and modifying the task properties but you can't ask for much better from an open-source program. A very nice program that can bring more complex project management tools to the masses.
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