Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

Free and Open Source Project Management Software

Posted: 14 Apr 2010 02:49 AM PDT

Free and Open Source Project Management Software: A project management software is a program that can help apply knowledge, techniques, skills, and tools for planning and controlling resources, costs and schedules to meet the requirements of a particular project. It includes integrated functions such as calendars, charts, budget management, scheduling, and quality management and documentation.

Project management software can be implemented as either a desktop or as a web-based application. The advantage of using a desktop-based project management software is that it gives the most responsive and graphically-intense style of interface. Meanwhile, web-based project management software has the advantage of being accessible from just about anywhere with internet connection and without the need to install software on user's computer.

For those of you who are interested, I have here a list of some of the best Free and Open source (desktop and web-based) project management software (in no particular order):

TaskJuggler
TaskJuggler, as described from its official website, is a modern and powerful, Open Source project management tool. It is intended for serious project managers since it has already been successfully used in many projects and scales easily to projects with hundreds of resources and thousands of tasks. TaskJuggler covers the complete spectrum of project management tasks from the first idea to the completion of the project. It assists you during project scoping, resource assignment, cost and revenue planning, risk and communication management. Its latest approach to project planning and tracking is more flexible and superior to the commonly used Gantt chart editing tools.

Some of TaskJuggler's main features:

* Automatic resource levelling, tasks conflict resolutions, and task filtering
* Built-in templates to get you started (you can also save your own schedules as templates for future use)
* Unlimited number of scenarios (baselines) of the same project for what-if analysis
* CSV data export for exchange with Office Suites
* Risk analysis
* Multiple time zone support
* Tasks may have initial costs, finishing costs
* HTML and XML report generation
* Powerful project description syntax with macro support
* Support for central resource allocation database
* Generation of iCal files for data exchange with standard productivity tools

Endeavour Software Project Management
Endeavour Software Project Management is an Open Source web-based, cross-browser solution to manage the creation of large-scale enterprise systems in an iterative and incremental development process. It has been developed using the Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and can be deployed in any Java EE compliant application server and any relational database running under a variety of different operating systems. Endeavour Software Project Management features support for Use Case management, Iterations, Project Plan, Change Requests, Defect Tracking, Test Cases, Test Plans, Tasks, Document management, Reports and many other process artifacts. It has been designed with the priority in mind to be easy to use, intuitive and above all realistic by avoiding unnecessary features that might increase complexity.

OpenProj
OpenProj is considered as the number one open source project management application in the world with more than one million users. It is intended as a complete desktop replacement for Microsoft Project, being able to do everything that Project does and even open existing native Project files. Compared to MS Project, OpenProj has a similar user interface, and a similar approach to construction of a project plan: create an indented task list or work breakdown structure (WBS), set durations, create links, and assign resources.

Some of OpenProj Features:

* Earned Value costing
* Gantt chart
* PERT graph
* Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS) chart
* Task usage reports
* Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) chart

KPlato (K PLAnning TOol)
KPlato is a project management application that can create Gantt-style charts and is part of the office suite KOffice. It is aimed for managing moderately large projects with multiple resources. To enable you to model your project adequately, KPlato offers different types of task dependencies and timing constraints. The usual use case is to define your tasks, estimate the effort needed to perform each task, allocate resources and then let KPlato schedule the tasks according to network and resource availability.

Redmine
Redmine is web-based project management and bug-tracking tool that is written using Ruby on Rails framework. It includes calendar and gantt charts to aid visual representation of projects and their deadlines. Redmine supports multiple projects and provides integrated project management features, issue tracking, and support for multiple version control options.

Some of Redmine's Features:

* Flexible role-based access control
* Gantt chart and calendar
* News, documents & files management
* Feeds & e-mail notifications.
* Per project wiki
* Per project forums
* Simple time tracking functionality
* Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users
* SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)
* Multiple LDAP authentication support
* User self-registration support
* Multilanguage support
* Multiple databases support

Trac
Trac is a web-based project management and bug-tracking tool that is inspired by CVSTrac, and was originally named svntrac due to its ability to interface with Subversion. It is written in the Python programming language and uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Trac allows hyperlinking information between a computer bug database, revision control and wiki content. It also serves as a web interface to the revision control systems Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, Perforce and Darcs.

Some of Trac's main features:
* Project management (Roadmap, Milestones, etc.)
* Ticket system (bug tracking, tasks, etc.)
* Timeline of all recent activity
* Wiki (syntax similar to MoinMoin)
* Customized reporting
* VCS web interface
* RSS Feeds
* Multiple project support
* Environment extensibility (via Python plugins)
* iCalendar export

dotProject
dotProject is a web-based, multi-user, multi-language Project Management application was originally developed by dotMarketing Inc. to be an open source replacement for Microsoft Project, having a very similar user interface, but extending to include project management functionality.

dotProject Features:

* Projects and Tasks
* Companies, Departments and Contacts
* ToDo lists
* Resources (rooms, equipment et al.)
* Forums
* Gantt charts
* Access control via ACL
* Reporting
* History of all activities
* Calendar

Collabtive
Collabtive is a web-based project management software that is intended for small to medium-sized businesses and freelancers. It strives to provide an Open Source alternative to proprietary tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab. Collabtive is written in PHP5 and uses an ajax-based user interface. It is multilanguage capable, supporting more than 20 languages. Collabtive integrates with other web services via an XML API. It also provides importing functionality for data from other applications. It allows to work with To-do lists, Milestones, Files, and to track the time worked on specific tasks.

If you know of other excellent Free and Open source project management software, you can share them with us via comment.