Top 5 Most Popular Project Management Software Programs
Why Delicious?
In the past three months I’ve become a Delicious addict. The site allows me to bookmark the numerous sites I find while scanning the Web for research. After searching several overused sites and resources, I decided to put a twist on this article and utilize the collective intelligence of Delicious users.
For those of you who are not familiar with Delicious, it is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.
The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. The Delicious user-base has grown to more than five million users and 150 million bookmarked URLs. What better site to use?
Number One: Basecamp
The top bookmarked Project Management software program according to Delicious users is Basecamp. Delicious users bookmarked
Basecamp a whopping 10,775 times. Deanna Reynolds wrote a review on Basecamp, here is an excerpt from her article, Basecamp - Review:
“Basecamp is subscription-based online project management software. However, there is no set-up fee and you can upgrade or downgrade at any time. Additionally, you can cancel at any time without a termination fee.
Basecamp software is hosted on reliable web servers and is supported by Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox, and Safari. Basically, if you have a PC or Mac and an Internet connection, you’re good to go. Your Basecamp account is password protected and several of the plans include SSL security.”
Number Two: activeCollab
Filling the number two spot is activeCollab, which is bookmarked 6,849 times on Delicious. This web-based program is:
“a project management and collaboration tool that you can set up on your own website. Have an area where you can collaborate with your team, clients and contractors and keep projects on track while retaining full control over access permissions and your data.”
Recently released activeCollab 1.1 has an interface created for mobile devices, including the iPhone and a Twitter-like notification system. There are two standard packages - a corporate price, $399 and a small business price, $199. There is an additional per-year charge for support and upgrades.
Number Three: The Trac Project
The Trac Project is number three on the list and is a unique, wiki-style, open source project managment program. The Trac Project was
bookmarked by 4,680 Delicious users. Here is a snippet from The Trac Project Website:
“Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team’s established development process and policies.
Trac allows wiki markup in issue descriptions and commit messages, creating links and seamless references between bugs, tasks, changesets, files and wiki pages. A timeline shows all current and past project events in order, making the acquisition of an overview of the project and tracking progress very easy. The roadmap shows the road ahead, listing the upcoming milestones.”
Number Four: Side Job Track
Side Job Track was interestingly bookmarked 3,415 times on Delicious. This project management software program was developed for
part-time, independent contractors. The program is a free. Yes, I said free. Web-based Side Job Track includes invoicing, job-tracking, and reporting functions to assist contracts with managing their jobs and projects. The website states:
“With Side Job Track you can quickly and easily manage your side jobs with simple, straightforward project tools. Side Job Track’s flexible data entry lets you decide how to best fit your specific needs. If you have access to a web server, you can even create completely customized estimate and invoice templates.”
Number Five: dotProject
dotProject, a open-source project management tool is surprisingly not company owned. The web-based tool is a volunteer supported project
management application. Delicious users bookmarked dotProject 3,105 times. Features of dotProject include:
- User Management
- Email Based Trouble Ticket System
- Client/Company Management
- Project Listings
- Hierarchical Task List
- File Repository
- Contact List
- Calendar
- Discussion Forum
- Resource Based Permissions
Here is what one user of dotProject, The Linux Knowledge Base and Tutorial, posted on the dotProject website:
“With all of the features and content we have, running the Linux Tutorial is not an easy task. We are constantly improving and adding to our already extensive offering. When we first started, all of our TODOs were managed with lists in various text files or piles of notes. As the site grew, the number of things we needed to keep track of grew considerably and our so-called management system was obviously not up to the task. After we tried a couple of different project management tools, we finally decided upon dotProject and never looked back.
We have defined projects for the major functional and content areas within the Tutorial. These serve to help organize the tasks and sub-tasks. Since we constantly upgrading and improving these sites, the individual tasks come and go, but these projects never end. Currently we are managing over 50 projects, with 300 tasks. With the limited number of people working on this project, it is still a daunting task. However, without dotProject it would be near impossible.”
Other Project Management Software Programs
There were many other project management software programs bookmarked on delicious. My search for project management resulted in 43,444 bookmarks. Here are a few project management software programs from my Delicious search results that did not make the top five:
