The recession is over (almost). No longer will you have to scrap for budget leftovers to fulfill your marketing or development obligations. Consumers will start buying again, filling the corporate coffers, enabling you to roll out new campaigns, applications and the creative that power and promote them as fast as you can dream them up. More ideas means more work though, so if you're as smart as we know you are, start thinking about how you will manage the endless stream of projects and tasks. Web Success Weekly to the rescue! Website Magazine's top open-source, Web-based project management software solutions are only a click away.
Project management software can be used to aid in planning, to foster organization and in short help manage (and ultimately complete) a variety of projects. Web-based PM software is accessed through a WAN/LAN using a Web browser, so if you've got a server and an affinity for open-source, these offerings will fit the bill. Think of them as SaaS with a twist - instead of software as a service (service being the operative word), consider it software as a salvation.
Please note: The Web is in no short supply of project management solutions and those listed below are only a sample. Other equally noteworthy offerings include ProjectHQ, eGroupWare, KForge, and OpenGoo to name a few. Should you opt to get organized and start using a project management solution, we advise you do so thoughtfully by investigating the requirements and capabilities of each before investing your time installing and training users.
Codendi: An open-source collaborative development platform offered by Xerox which is positioned as a solution for software project management. Codendi is extremely useful for large, diverse work groups, providing all the needed tools for software development teams (tracking tools for bugs, test management tools, source control managers, document and deliveries manager, a Web Service API, etc.) There are also collaboration (wiki and a code snippet library) and communication tools (instant messaging, mail list manager, forums, news and RSS feeds) which make Codendi one of the best solutions on the market.
ProjectPier: Another open-source, self-hosted PHP application offered under the GNU Affero (General Public License- AGPL) for online collaboration and task management, ProjectPier features a rich and flexible feature set which fits well with groups large and small. Administrative capabilities are the real gem of this collaboration tool. Multi-client capability, and three-level rights management make ProjectPier a real contender in the market.
Trac: Taking more of a minimalist approach, Trac is an open-source (available under the GNU General Public License) project management and bug-tracking tool written in Python. Trac's most useful feature is that it allows for the linking of information between a database, revision control and wiki content. Other notable features include a timeline of recent activity, RSS feeds, and multiple project support. Not sure about the stability of open-source solution like Trac? Consider this - among the users of Trac is NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which uses the tool to manage various deep space and near space projects.
Collabtive: One of the more popular Web-based soltions (as far as project management goes), Collabtive is open-source, written in PHP5 and uses an ajax-base duser interface. Suppoting more than 20 languages, Collabtive can integrate with other Web services via an XML API. Main feature include to-do lists, messaging, file managment, role based user permissions, timetracking, reporting and exporting and even importing from Basecamp XML.