Its a small world, Alexander!

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
May 14, 2009 at 02:40 PM

Hi Ken,

I don’t know if the world is small but it does run in circles; I first got in touch with David Tebbutt after registering for Brainstorm, a program I learnt about in this here forum (or rather its predecessor). I’ve been an avid reader of his and asked for his advice when looking for an online project management tool.

There’s a multitude of offerings of course many of them very similar to each other; ultimately it may be a bet, as you can’t be sure which will be around next year. That’s one reason that I didn’t want to go for a free option. In the past I had used the free Mayetic Village which is now no longer offered, even though it was backed by a fairly big player.

One thing you need to get clear right from the start (there’s obviously more but this was critical for me) is the social networking aspect; tools like huddle.net—an excellent offering by the way- require each user to register for a separate account; they then provide each a workspace which they can share in groups. ‘Classic’ project-oriented tools like Teamwork PM allow one to have one account and directly build a list of users without their own involvement (this is what we wanted). With the above in mind, available tools are immediately split into two major groups.

There’s more of course; do you want something to install in your own server or a hosted solution? (The answer is not necessarily straightforward). Without wanting to add too much to your list, here’s a couple of rather different offerings:

http://www.activecollab.com/
http://www.wrike.com/
http://www.projectcompanion.com/index_enu.asp (there is also a software application)

and a few short reviews:
http://www.appvita.com/2009/04/10/deskaway-put-your-projects-on-cruise-control/
http://www.appvita.com/2009/04/17/whodoes-teamwork-made-easy-and-attractive/
http://www.appvita.com/2009/04/03/producteev-work-collaboratively-online/
http://www.appvita.com/2009/04/17/liquid-planner-flexible-project-planning/