Do project management apps help productivity?

Wooo, just seen something Susan mentionned which might interrest you : GTDInbox (Thanks Susan !)

Getting Things Done with Gmail

GTDInbox is an addon for Firefox that transforms Gmail into a powerhouse of productivity and manageability. GTDInbox gives you a better inbox

Interresting concept !

Thanks folks, this has turned out be a very helpful discussion. What I have learned is that it is not the process that is flawed, rather it is MY process that needs fine tunning. Nothing like learning from the experts.

BTW - I answered the GTDInbox issue with another interesting extension...

Sottwell, did you see the FF extension for ’Remember the Milk’ it also looks very helpful. http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/gmail/

Quote from: rthrash at Mar 27, 2008, 04:36 PM

I’ve found that juggling projects with multiple folks working on different (or multiple) projects, Basecamp is invaluable.

I second that.

Quote from: rthrash at Mar 27, 2008, 10:25 PM

We bill for project management time, as it’s required for project success and is part of our process in general.

Seconded. We do as well. It’s part of the work we do to ensure success so one has to be paid for it.

@davidm: you are using AC1 and you say you are likeing it very much. I just went through the demo site and although it is much nicer looking and has some nice new features I found it to be much more complicated than the free 0.9.7 version. Also there seem to be some bugs, I got several errors creating new tasks and with the quick add feature the css broke sending the buttons off the screen. I am guessing that the release version is more stable than the limited demo version. I also did not like that the completed tasks disappear, I marked a task as complete but could not retrieve it to activate it again. I think the demo lasts a couple of weeks so I will give it another go and see if I can’t get more out of it.

Humm, there seems to be a steeper learning curve with the new commercial release.

It’s been a while since I browsed the demo, but I can tell you I sure have no bugs when creating new tasks and the quick add feature works just fine on my end. The only thing which broke was some CSS not optimized for Safari but I mainly use FF, didn’t check if the latest (1.0.6) has solved this. I guess either the demo is outdated or you tested with Safari, I can’t think of any other explanation for those two things.

Completed task do not disappear, they’re just listed under the completed task tab... and you can reactivate at any point. Tasks will benefit from a nice upgrade with 1.1.

Check out the forums lots of stuff brought up or suggested by users will make it into 1.1 which will really rock IMHO :

1. Localization
2. Better permissions
3. Automation (for commonly used checklists, milestone sets etc)
4. Better time tracking
5. Printing and exporting data from activeCollab
6. Many more minor tweaks and improvements all over the system
7. Project templates


I’d give you an access and dummy project to toy with, but my licenced ac 1.0 install is hacked to be localized in french (ac 1.0 is not localized yet, I had to hack all the views to have it in french ! 1.1 will be fully localized though...).

Oh and I don’t know if the demo is that of the corporate version (which I chose, since timetracking and tickets were important items I couldn’t miss).

Yeah ac 1.0 is more feature rich than ac 0.7.1 but I don’t find it harder to use, neither do my clients so far I did not even need a manual. Learning curve is not too steep, things are really intuitive. I wonder if the demo has been upgraded since they launched

Edit : I just posted on the ac 1.0 boards about this demo issue :
http://www.activecollab.com/forums/topic/2612/

If not, I’ll PM Ilija about it !

Don’t worry about it. It works well enough for me to see what it is all about
The demo has the tickets and the time logging features do it may be the corp version.

I see what I did, I clicked on the Complete tab thinking that it would show me the complete tasks. Instead it set the project to complete. However I tried the QuickAdd again (I use FF not Safari) and got the same bug sending the menu off the screen (see atached image)...anyway this is a discussion for the AC forum

I am pretty sure I will not go with AC1 since it is over my budget (it is not expensive but I can’t spend that much unless I am 100% I will use it...which I am not). I also still have a bad taste with Ilija regarding the way they went commercial (not that they went commercial but the way they went about it).

I will go over and take a look at what the ProjectPier folks have been able to do with it since they took over the open source version. They have been active but mostly with security and cosmetic fixes, nothing too exiting.

I have also taken another look at BaseCamp after a few months and I really like the way that tool works and it is very user friendly and a little less of a financial commitment at the moment (although it is a monthly expense).

The problem I have with Basecamp and these little Gmail solutions as well as any other app where my data is hosted on somebody else’s server is just that... my data is hosted on somebody else’s server. Call me paranoid, but that just bothers me for a lot of reasons.

Quote from: sottwell at Mar 28, 2008, 05:09 PM

The problem I have with Basecamp and these little Gmail solutions as well as any other app where my data is hosted on somebody else’s server is just that... my data is hosted on somebody else’s server. Call me paranoid, but that just bothers me for a lot of reasons.

I have the same paranoia...You are at the mercy of someone else, like money in Paypal.

Quote from: dev_cw at Mar 28, 2008, 05:28 PM

Quote from: sottwell at Mar 28, 2008, 05:09 PM

The problem I have with Basecamp and these little Gm ail solutions as well as any other app where my data is hosted on somebody else’s server is just that... my data is hosted on somebody else’s server. Call me paranoid, but that just bothers me for a lot of reasons.

I have the same paranoia...You are at the mercy of someone else, like money in Paypal.

Agree. But its more likely your machine crashes, ( and you don’t have a backup ) than you loose all the data in some of those web applications.