Best Free Project Manager

Project Management software can be a minefield; every user has a different view of what makes a program “project management” material rather than a good organizing tool or time manager. While Microsoft lead the way in desktop project management tools with MS Project, not everyone wanted the complexity that came with all of its capabilities. For our review, we have concentrated on those programs which offer standard project management features such as task and resource scheduling and tracking, charting, project and task breakdown into sub-projects and sub-tasks and dependencies.

Topping our list here is the Open Source project management tool Open Workbench. Open Workbench is a free tool so feature-rich and powerful that it should at least be considered before any decision is made to purchase a commercial project management package. Like the commercial products of the same ilk, it takes time to get your head around and if you have been using Microsoft Project or another task-based manager you'll have to re-orient your thinking because Open Workbench is resource-driven not task-driven.

According to the developers “an Open Workbench plan is built up from estimates for the tasks of work. Estimates are tied to the resource assigned to the tasks. Duration is then driven by the number of hours each resource will work per week to cover the total number of hours required for the tasks. Open Workbench is best suited to groups that estimate total work effort based on the estimates for all the tasks associated with a project and then create a staffing plan and schedule for those estimates.”

The extensive list of features offered by the developers is:

• Define projects and create associated work breakdown structures with activities, phases, tasks and milestones
• Create dependencies as finish-start, start-start, finish- finish or start-finish
• Create subprojects and link them to master projects
• Create and manage inter-project dependencies
• Manage advanced task properties such as fixed duration, dependency lag, imposed start/end dates and charge codes
• Schedule tasks manually or automatically using Auto Schedule
• Automatically schedule tasks forwards or backwards
• Schedule across linked master and subprojects
• Schedule to general or individualized calendars
• Define resources as people, equipment, materials or expense
• Assign resources to tasks
• Configure resources on tasks with uniform, fixed, contour, front or back loading
• Track status, percent complete and estimates to complete
• View Gantt charts (both detail and roll-up), PERT charts and the critical path
• Conduct earned value analysis
• Define, compare and reset project baseline setting
• Can read Microsoft Project files

It is possibly that final feature which makes Open Workbench the most appealing. Many products – even the commercial offerings – are great project management tools but sooner or later someone is going to want to view or edit your plan with the ubiquitous MS Project and without compatibility, the best you are going to be able to offer is an exported spreadsheet or graphical equivalent.

Open Workbench is the real thing, not some amateurish, half baked effort. Like Microsoft Project, it is best suited to large scale projects that can justify the considerable time it takes to learn the product.

Users with smaller projects or more simple needs might want to consider some of the less feature-rich project managers, such as GanttPV or ToDoList.

GanttPV lacks the looks and some of the functionality of Open Workbench but does come with the additional benefit of being available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

While not a traditional Project Management tool in that it does not come with the mandatory Gantt charting, ToDoList is a sound choice for those wanting to get started straight away in managing a simple project.

There is also a growing list of web-based project management tools for disparate teams that are worthy of consideration (and a separate review).

This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Vikas Sawarkar 

project manager, gantt chart, work bench, to do list, free software, freeware