Project/resource management tools/software

[roj]

Fair few projects on the go. 5000ish staff and the vast majority are social workers/carers.

We've got fuck all money and we're going down and we're paying someone to look into the best way to track our projects and resources. MS project can piss off as far as I'm concerned - managing it becomes a project in itself.

Miss Roj has worked for Deutsche bank, Accenture, RBS, UBS, and now at dirty Goldmans, not that the rest are too clean. They're all on spreadsheets and a bit of Jira. And it's a pain in the arse for them, but they can pay for the admin people.

Any ideas?

We're a children's charity and we're all struggling at the moment. Even big Barnardos are laying off staff.

I know that a good project manager can boss people and get things done so maybe split it and just have a resource management tool?

Anyway, looking for help please..

Excel?!

 

[roj]

P.S. it's not me they're paying to look into it but I have sway. And I want them to be efficient. And help our kids.

 

[dunjamon]

I'm in IT and we're using Trello, basically free kanban software. Used Teamwork Projects before that, subscription based but has additional features eg Gantt charts and the like

 

[1961_vintage]

I use MSP myself but a lot of my "younger" guys swear by Trello. It's good and it's free!

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Depends what you're wanting to do. For basic project management tasks like tracking resources and start-end dates then Excel will do the job. If you're wanting to actually plan projects in detail with Work Breakdown Structures and dependencies then something like OpenProject is free and much better than MSP.

I did a project for a large retail bank a couple of year ago and we had to track over a thousand work packages that had about half a dozen milestones each and Excel was fine. I used pivot tables to monitor and report progress.

 

[Kompany Car]

As @Prestwich_Blue said Excel is more than enough for most tasks and you can download simple Gantt chart templates from the web. Have also used OpenProject before and that is very good and compatible with MS Project.
If it’s just about getting stuff done then you could also use Microsoft Teams which I think is part of Office 365. Tend to use that at work if we are doing multidisciplinary bids as it allows you to add a simple programme, assign tasks/reminders, track documents/correspondence and completion status.