As far as other tools goes it depends on what you need to be honest. Does it have to be PC and Mac, or just one? Can it be free or do you have a budget? Does it have to be web-based or could it be standalone?

There’s so many to choose from e.g. Merlin or OmniPlan for OSX, web-based solutions like Gantter, Ganttic and Tom’s Planner, or a more flexible comprehensive tool like Liquid Planner.

Or if you need collaboration over schedules, then Basecamp or ActiveCollab are popular choices.

After going through it all, I see that I was both a fire fighter and at times, for larger projects, the forest ranger.

I was wondering if you know more tools for PM for online projects especially. I can’t believe the two samples (Planner and OpenProj) are the only ones. They both look terrible to use.

Thanks for the great articles, it made the reading so much more interesting with a bit of your humour thrown in there! These articles have definitely been of help to me as software project management and just project management i have found to be rather different from each other, paying more sensitivity to the software part of it. :)

I look forward to more artciles!

I just re-read my post there and what I should have said is that I head up a small team ‘of web designers’ in a non web agency. Which is why your blog is relevant to me!!

Yeah running multiple projects is painful at first but you soon adapt to find what works and what doesn’t.

Last I checked I had 8 open web projects (one of which is a huge e-commerce solution).

Keep up the excellent work!! :)

Running multiple projects is something that hurts when you start but over time you learn to deal with, I’m considering an article on the subject.

I appreciate that this is an article from last year but I’ve only just discovered your excellent blog AND have just finished reading this series of articles and wanted to chime in!

When I look back to how I started handling web project years ago and compare this to now the differences are huge and my processes continue to evolve and adapt. I head up a small team in a non-web agency that mostly develops FMCG and financial software.

It’s interesting that Hussain mentions running multiple projects as this is something that I am still trying to ‘master’!

Right now I’m off to read some more current articles.

Keep up the excellent work.

Managing multiple projects… hmmm that would be an interesting topic to write about and not one I’d thought of before – watch this space and thanks for the suggestion!

I have tried using surveys like you mention, but more often than not find all of the answers to be lacking in the kind of depth I would need in order to define the project.

I find only by going through the requirements gathering phase, right up to functional specification and wireframes, actually comprehensively draws out all the required elements of any project.

But saying that, well written surveys do help massively when trying to determine anything from; if the project is worth going for, what the client will be like to work with and the kind of budget and features they want.

Do any of you adopt the Agile methodology in your small businesses?

You may also want to check out OpenProj
(http://openproj.org/openproj) too.

I’m frequently called upon to create the correct brief for clients, and historically have tried to do this on the fly at meetings, using a simple bulleted list in Omni outliner (a great app for creating heirarchical lists!). It became apparent however that it never really adressed the items that the client omitted to mention (or those which they just assumed were included).

Whilst I absolutely subscribe to your methods, in recent months, I’ve found the single biggest aid to successful project planning has been through the use of surveys, PRIOR to project briefing meetings. By creating a series of questions relating to functionality, design, marketing and future scope, I can get a full grasp of a client’s expectations in advance of the critical “how much budget do you have” question, and as a bi-product I’ve found that clients have more appreciation of the work involved to meet their expectations. Also it means I waste less time!

P.S the hardest question seems to be “Name 3 websites you like, and 3 you dislike, and state a brief reason why, for each”. Just goes to show how difficult it can be for clients to be clear…

Keep the articles coming! Thanks