Project Management Websites

BrandonSeifert

Coordinating Witch Doctor is always an... evolving process, and about two months ago Lukas suggested we start using Basecamp, a project management service he'd had good experiences with in his freelance illustration work.

Basecamp is awesome.  The problem is, at its cheapest ($25/month), it's still $300/year.

So now I'm looking for a cheaper alternative.  The things I found I used it for the most were:

• Email reminders of deadlines in the calendar and time-sensitive to-dos
• A calendar view that told me exactly how many days out each deadline/milestone was
• To-Dos that can be linked with calendar events
• A To-Do system that's easy to navigate and not cluttered
• A calendar that I can subscribe to in iCal, which will sync without me telling it to
• Ideally, an iPhone app

Other stuff is optional; I barely used the messages function, and never used the files or the whiteboard.  Other features I'd *like* that Basecamp doesn't have:

• Control over when nagging emails are sent out for particular Milestones
• Control over specific times Milestones occur, rather than them being all-day things

Anybody got any suggestions?

There's articles here and here detailing Basecamp alternatives; I'm going to look into a couple.  If I find a good one I'll share it!

SteveWallace

I looked at some open source projects that were alternatives to Basecamp last year... I'll see if I can find the links. 

DinoCaruso

I've used socialtext.net for a couple of projects. I think I like basecamp better, but it's definitely workable.

BrandonSeifert

Oh. Turns out Basecamp has a free option, it just only allows you to host one single project.

Still, that was enough to get me to sign up again!

SteveWallace

I think Tom's was one that I had found workable. https://www.tomsplanner.com/?template=example < that's the demo url.

anthonyperuzzo

@derekmcculloch set up a private forum for our mysterious 'project R' book. I thought that worked great (as long as people used it- not everyone did).

ScottHeinowski

Im trying cohuman for some stuff, its nice and has google calendar integration. 

CaseWagner

I tried a couple of install-your-own systems to see how they fared. They wouldn't meet the initial requirements like an app for them, but figured I'd mention them for anyone poking around this thread:

PHProjekt wouldn't run due to a configuration error, and when I looked into why it's because they're using features in PHP that are no longer supported. So I wouldn't go that route.

DotProject spat out a couple of errors but appeared to work okay. It may be needlessly complicated for what you have in mind though. It's got LOTS of options, but if you're just organizing two or three people you're not going to need a lot of them. It looks like it would be great for managing a small studio though.

BrandonSeifert

@ScottHeinowski, I checked out Cohuman today, and it's got a lot of potential.  I especially like that it's a Google plugin.

CaseWagner

It ties into Google Docs very nicely. I found that it was easiest to work with tasks if I prefixed them according to the project name. When you set up blocking tasks (to create a task order) tasks from other projects will come up in the search. So you might have three Pencils tasks to choose from and no indicator which one is from the current project.
As a result I named tasks 'SE Beat Sheet', 'SE First Draft', etc.

SteveWallace

This came up in one of my feeds today. Some interesting choices.
http://www.pm4girls.elizabeth-harrin.com/2011/05/5-project-management-apps-you’ve-never-heard-of/

DanHill

The following comment may get me flamed for all eternity, but I always thought that Google Buzz had the potential to be used as a project manager/idea-space for a number of collaborators if used in the right way. 

SteveWallace

Buzz? I haven't ever thought of using it that way, Wave definitely. I would consider hosting my own instance of Wave for something like that actually. 

DanHill

Sorry, brain fart on my part. I meant Wave. Doh.