Joce and I found DotProject rather useful for planning our wedding. I believe common sense is required when using tools. It does not make sense for her to report to me for every gown that she has tried. But I was rather surprised that she managed to get the hang of it despite the many clicks required for various operations.
Nowadays, the trend is towards high-usability web applications, I wondered if there were alternative tools. I found Basecamp and went for a test-drive with a free account. It was very friendly and being friendly sells. Many folks complaint about DotProject’s complexity. It seems I am not the only one who likes to compare. Here’s an entry by a core member of Dotproject team.
I agree with the author. This comparison reminds me of someone who once commented that my Samsung i600 smartphone has too many buttons. To him, i600 was not as “sexy” as his Samsung 3.5G phone. Perhaps not everyone has the mental capacity to handle many features that they are not ready or need to use.
It’s usually not about the tool, but the people because they have the power to choose what is best for them. For me, I still prefer to be in control of my own information, I like to have features that I can exploit, as oppose to storing projects details in some hosted simplistic service that charges me for storage.
Most people around you are likely to be very good at telling you what cannot work, only few can think of ways to get things to work. What works for them may or may not work for you. Anyway, to each his own.
Entries (RSS)
October 7th, 2007 at 12:52 am
I think dotproject is really really good, but that’s if the people involved are willing/able to filter out the “complexity”/portions that they don’t need and just see/use the relevant stuff.
Well, tools are meant to be tools after all. Different people would have different criterion of which different tools would fit.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Project management is never a single party issue. Typically there are the developers, management and end-users/stakeholders. Dotproject covers all three. Basecamp is very much simplified and friendly version.
It is safe to speculate that Basecamp may evolve upon request into a full fledge PM tool that a PM will be willing to use.
October 7th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Ah good point, in the work context it’s no longer up to the individual to decide (unless he’s of management position and is intending to force it upon eveeryone, but that’ll be another issue altogether =D ), but the group collectively..
Why would a PM be possibly willing to use Basecamp after it evolves?
October 7th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Depends on the PM. I cant answer cos i am not a PM…
October 8th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
check this webby out..
http://www.8apps.com/
October 8th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Char bor…
This site quite Cool leh
I read the review @ http://www.solutionwatch.com/546/8apps-social-networking-for-productive-people/
Think I will sign up and play tonite.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:07 am
Hahahaha….maybe in the future, maybe in the future
October 9th, 2007 at 1:28 am
I don’t really aspire to be PM. I would like to own the business entity.
October 9th, 2007 at 9:36 am
yupp! but i think signing up for now is via invite only…… :/
that guy behind this software is cool too!
http://www.httpasia.com/ this IT news webby also by the same guy…
October 19th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
(Core dotProject member and author of the comparison post.)
Thanks for the mention. Yes, it’s often a toss up on which tool will suit your needs better…
One on particular project, I’ve been using some of the time tracking aspects of Basecamp and I have to say that they suck. They’re sort of disconnected from everything else and hard to track/report on. If I just want a list, that’s fine… if I want something else, I have yet to see where it’s possible. That said, the Basecamp forums are excellent and the system itself is very responsive.
If you’re poking around, I suggest that you check out the latest dotproject release (2.1.x at the moment) and see how it fits your needs.
October 21st, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Thanks Keith for the recommendation. Am trying to get my office to use DotProject 2.1.X
December 10th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Couldn’t agree more aboutcomparing tools. The most horrible software I’ve ever tied to use was MS Project! It’s good there are more simple and agile alternatives on the Web, you’ve mentioned Basecamp and dotProject. There are hundreds of them, but I chose Wrike http://www.wrike.com/. It lets me track the pregect progress via email and I love it. Basecamp and dotProject don’t have this feature, I’ve checked them.
December 10th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Thanks Coren for sharing! Will take a look
January 13th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Also the same guy behind 8apps and httpasia also produced http://www.sketchplanet.com