Small Team Project Management Software....that you actually use?

[El Presidente]

By use.....I mean use more than "Outlook".  

We were sitting around discussing this last week with a group of mates who own their businesses. The sheer waste of $'s on  small team project management software over the years....and the seemingly almost gravitational pull back to "Outook"  + pen and paper. 

Who here has bucked the trend.....and what is your secret 

[CgarDan]

There a few of these online that are free to use or have some nominal fees. But it all depends on the location and size of the group.  If everyone is in the same office or close by these programs are probably a waste of time. A simple call or text can is probably more productive than going through the process of having everyone get on board of using the program and checking the progress reports. 

I did work for Accenture where we helped companies with 10s of thousands of employees spread across the world working in a multitude of time zones. On this case a more sophisticated management program really does add a multitude of benefits if used correctly

[Thirds]

Dropbox has been useful for our team.   My company operates out of 5 office locations and we have some roaming project managers that travel all over the US.  The shared folder ability for people in varying locations has proven useful and it’s relatively inexpensive.  

I have moved most of my own folders on to Dropbox and in terms of looking at blue prints and referencing prior bids/estimates from the field or project site has proven invaluable. 

[El Presidente]

  On 9/30/2019 at 8:43 PM, CgarDan said:

There a few of these online that are free to use or have some nominal fees. But it all depends on the location and size of the group.  If everyone is in the same office or close by these programs are probably a waste of time. A simple call or text can is probably more productive than going through the process of having everyone get on board of using the program and checking the progress reports. 

I did work for Accenture where we helped companies with 10s of thousands of employees spread across the world working in a multitude of time zones. On this case a more sophisticated management program really does add a multitude of benefits if used correctly

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Don't get me wrong, I can see the benefits!

The conversation was around what was the "stickability" of the program in the group environment. 

In our group, no single program lasted more than 2 years before being abandoned 

[Guest Nekhyludov]

For small teams, I use Trello and find that it works well. It really breaks down though if you get more than 5 - 6 people contributing.

https://trello.com/

 

[BlueRidgeFly]

I've been using Teamwork for a software dev project with a client for a few years now. I think it's pretty good and we've all bought into using it (which is key). Have tried Basecamp and several others in the past. Teamwork kind of took Basecamp's approach and made it more full-featured, which may or may not suit you.

https://www.teamwork.com/

Having a website to track items to work on and fix, store documents, etc. is better than firing off emails and then trying to sift through them later. And when someone new comes on, all the docs, decisions, artifacts are right there for them.

Trello (mentioned above) I also like.

Having said all that, on most projects I've worked on people eventually or quickly just fall back to emailing crap.

[BeerPimp]

  On 9/30/2019 at 8:50 PM, El Presidente said:

Don't get me wrong, I can see the benefits!

The conversation was around what was the "stickability" of the program in the group environment. 

In our group, no single program lasted more than 2 years before being abandoned 

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Two things I have seen similar trends as whole for most programs not just group environment programs.  Second my high school computer language teacher was so wrong in his prediction that in the future everyone would be very proficient in computers.   I think you should never discount human nature.   People only learn as much as they need for whatever class, task or job.

[jay8354]

Mate, you could have just given me a call. 

There are a bunch of software (free and can upgrade) that you can use but if they don't suit your purpose then it is useless. 

I recommend the following for small team project management: 

• Trello - Basically a Kanban board (using Agile methodology) to track task assignments and deliverable dates
• Slack - for team communications / chats
• Excel / Spreadsheets - cause everyone uses it and has it, if you don't use anything else for tracking the schedule / milestone dates
• Outlook / Email software - day to day communications 
• Cloud storage - for documentations that needs to be accessed by the team

Alternatively, if you really want to pay nothing, you could just use Google application tools to do Project management. Not going to be the best but it is possible. See here

 

There is no magic pill to solve the problem of getting the software mix right. All the companies I have worked for have use even more complex softwares (Skype of Business, MS Projects, Sharepoint, Jira, etc). Ultimately, it is what the team is comfortable using and can achieve results with. 

[MD Puffer]

I use an electronic health records for my patient charts but it also has practice management software integrated in it for IOMs, scheduling calendars, to-do list, etc.  MS One Drive allows me to start working on various Office files in one location and finish them at another.  The evolution went from carrying a laptop everywhere, to carrying a flash drive everywhere, to not having to carry anything around.  And I'm an Office guy and have been for 25 years.  I like Excel and Word, am familiar with them, and there just no other "next-level" product out there because it's kind of difficult to improve on it.  There may be other word processing or spreadsheets out there that does this or that or has some novel function but nothing else that's a game-changer.  So, of the general non-proprietary software/apps, MS One Drive, Word, and Excel.  What else do you really need?

[BoliDan]

Were about to integrate chat bots. It'll will be a Virtual Intelligence (people define them as AI, but if they dont learn or manipulate their own code, they are VI, IMO) that asks questions, provides support, and can make an actual update to the database with verified request of transactions. Scary...

[IanMcLean68]

Working in software development for more than 30 years, have seen a string of management software packages used. LIke El Pres says, they usually never last more than a few years before they go out of fashion.

However there does seem to be one now that has stood the test of time, largely due to aggressive marketing campaigns. The "rage" now, with the big buzz words being Agile and Scrum amongst management, is JIRA, by Atlassian.

I must point out that a large number of developers, me  included, HATE this software, and many other pieces of software like it that have come before.

Management love it because they think they can quantify software development, especially time estimates, like other office jobs. Something they have been desperately trying to do for years, to reign in software development costs.

The problem is not the concept. The problem is the software. Every one I have seen, and esp. JIRA, is bloated and ugly, difficult to navigate, and a true time waster for already overly burdened developers trying to navigate and fill out all the tracking details. Unfortunately I have seen management take advantage of this to make THEIR jobs easier at the cost of developers, basically giving them all the pretty numbers, estimates and graphs automagically, by expecting devs to navigate this horrible software and put it all together for them, on top of actually doing the development. I have seen resentment in younger developers towards management for this before.

I say keep it simple, and keep your devs sane. Being a natural list keeper, I like Excel for bug tracking, to-do lists, and estimates. Good old Outlook for communications, especially with chat added, and Github (preferred) or SVN for code repository.

 

[BrightonCorgi]

There is Microsoft Project.  More details on the actual use case would help.  As others mentioned; Slack and Dropbox are both good for collaboration and storage. 

Jira and Confluence may be too expensive and overkill for the OP's use cases. 

[bmf30180]

I've used Jira in my last 2 jobs.  Trello (Jira lite) before that.  And, Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS).  Like mentioned above.  Jira seems to stand the test of time.

[Puros Y Vino]

Way back in the early 2000's our Consulting firm ran Project Invision. It still seems to be around.  Early versions were pretty good for multiple users but it was a bit kludgy as you had to have an open session session logged into on the Server's desktop and had to have a copy of MS Project running as it did a lot of the conversions for web users uploading their .mpp files.   I'm sure they've cleaned up that mess by now.  Office 365 has some excellent collaboration tools.  

[Ethernut]

Stickability is NIL if the staff lacks the discipline to use the platform. True dat -

[Philc2001]

  On 9/30/2019 at 8:37 PM, El Presidente said:

By use.....I mean use more than "Outlook".  

We were sitting around discussing this last week with a group of mates who own their businesses. The sheer waste of $'s on  small team project management software over the years....and the seemingly almost gravitational pull back to "Outook"  + pen and paper. 

Who here has bucked the trend.....and what is your secret 

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Just wondering what sort of features or capabilities you are looking for Prez. Your description is a bit vague, so it's hard to make a suggestion without knowing what is missing, or limiting you, and what you think you need to succeed. I've used so many different solutions over the years, so I can talk to you about a lot of different options. I've used JIRA, Trello, Asana, Microsoft TFS, Project, Sharepoint, Confluence Wikis, Evernote, OneNote and just about a dozen other variations.

Trello was mentioned above by others, and I am a big fan of Trello. Asana is also a very good tool, with a lot of similar strengths to Trello.

If you're looking for an easy to use platform for organizing projects and/or groups, communicating, collaborating, tracking activities, memorializing decisions that are made, notifying people to get their attention or input on something, etc. then Trello or Asana are very good tools for that. Both are cloud based, you access through a browser from anywhere, so it's very easy to get started, you don't need to buy any hardware other than your phone or PC and an internet connection. You can get the free version and use it as long as you want, but both of the free versions have some feature limitations. I suggest you start with the free version, play with it and give it a test run before you spend any money. Then register and pay if you find you need the extra features. Both are really cost effective and affordable, but even the free versions are pretty powerful. 

I actually use the free Trello version for my own project tracking just to keep track of my meeting notes, conversations, tasks, assignments, to-do's, etc. But I have also used it with teams up to 25 people and it is very effective. 

Let us know what you think of Trello and/or Asana, these are probably the easiest of the bunch to start with, and the lowest friction in terms of cost, learning curve, and getting productive quickly. 

[nKostyan]

In the field of sales it is possible to apply a standard program. If the processes are unique, you must first sit down with a pencil and paper, describe all the processes that need to be automated. Next, the programmer will make soft specifically for your processes. Then testing and fine-tuning. The main problems of small teams:
- the chief doesn't want to delegate decision-making, he got used that costs in the center of structure and through it other members interact;
- team members sabotage the implementation of the program, but a fine in a small friendly team is considered inappropriate.

[Freddo]

Microsoft team + one drive have my vote. They come free with office 365 subscription.

[mgcrunch]

Airtable. If you can master it, it's amazing. 

[Fuzz]

  On 10/1/2019 at 1:37 PM, BrightonCorgi said:

There is Microsoft Project.  More details on the actual use case would help.  As others mentioned; Slack and Dropbox are both good for collaboration and storage. 

Jira and Confluence may be too expensive and overkill for the OP's use cases. 

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Was wondering when somebody would mention the grande old dame, MS Project.

[GrouchoMarx]

I use MS project - but I'm dealing with very large teams....

Try open source for something that may suit your needs?

[dageshi]

I have used Teamwork with a small team and can say it worked pretty well. But we're a distributed team so everything is done online. If you actually stick to centralising on a platform then I think it can work.

[data]

+1 microsoft Teams. 

[Ritch]

Get something custom written. Vendors will always try and push you to this or that. And then sell you support packages. Custom written wins as its custom to your needs.

I'm trying to convince our lot to have a custom written hire platform. Will cost approx 50k but savings on support will be at least 5k per year.

[GavLew79]

Something I'm going to try to implement is linking Project with Outlook. I have a small team of 6 Engineers. It seems perfect but I am an IT luddite. Tasks that you make in Project can become people's Outlook tasks; they can fill in their progress etc. and it automatically fills in the progress in the project schedule in Project. Genius.

However, I think it needs SharePoint to run.... I need to get IT on the case.