for the project manager in all of us

For those of us out there that have to manage some type of tasks.  Whether it be as an actual project manager (kind of like what I do, on top of everything else) or if it is just in managing your day, sometimes a task management software can really help.

Well, I think I have found it.  The best, open source (FREE) project management software there is. And being basically a java program, is cross-platform compatible, so it will run on Linxu, MacOS or Windows (which is what I concider to be the coolest thing after oreos and milk!)

The software I am speaking about is called GanttProject (http://ganttproject.biz).  It is what I would call a laiman's Microsoft Project, but without the rediculously high price!  And as I have alread said, you can have it installed on numerous operating systems, and with a simple save or export, can move your project and task listing from one system to another.

The program is really rather easy to figure out, which is also a very big plus in my book. I don't have time to sit around and read a user manual just to be able to track a few tasks for an upcoming project. I needed something that I could sit down at, and in about 30 minutes to an hour, have my 20+ concurrent projects organized in a logical order with start and end dates.  And it did just that.

It does provide some nice additional features.  As the name implies, it does provide you a GANTT chart which gives you a nice view of your deadlines and how they stack up. It also provides a few nice export options for PDF, HTML or XML.  So you can get the data you need to do what you need with it.

It also gives you a simple way to manage your resources (employees) and gives you information such as how over or under assigned they are.  Which in my case, that is always over.. haha...

Anyway, enough of that, but if you ever get to looking for a task management software, I would strongly suggest giving this one a try!

Here is a little shot of a temp deal I fixed up.  As you can see, you can rollup several tasks under one, creating a "rollup" for that project.  Then you can "rollup" multiple projects even, under one.  So on mine, I have a rollup for in production, upcoming, waiting, and completed. And then under each rollup, I have a rollup task for each project, that has the actual tasks in it.  It all makes more sense when you can get on it and play.

[caption id="attachment_748" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="App screenshot"][/caption]