project management software

April 15th, 2006

One of the most important part of doing professional web development work is client communications. No matter how efficient web designers you have , or how attractive pricing you have for your web designing packages, or how large a portfolio you have previously , if you dont have a efficient way of managing the total project , your business is bound to falter.

I dont want to sound bitter, but it is certainly important that your designers be as meticulous in general, file storage and archival as they are in their coding or design . It may not matter how good a client is with payment, but they are sure change their requirements and desires on more than one occassions. Getting more work on a day to day basis is good , but what is more needed is a proper process of managing all the factors in between . Right from the initial interaction with the client , to submitting him with a quote , to getting a writen confirmation on the terms / contract , to design approval and its excecution, storing all the files taken from the client, keeping tabs on the day to day interaction, keeping a lookout on the actual work , employees .

For all these reasons, i have been looking for a proper web based project management or task management , document storing with maybe even invoicing tool. It would probably be a good idea to develop one in-house , but i want to try out some existing applications and see that first . Till now, i have found some scripts in Hotscripts and a shareware download site . While some of them are pretty costly like Kiwi Manager , Relata ( since i only want to have a look at it ). while surfing thru sitepoint , i found some other names like remeberthemilk and dotProject but while some of them were Online Single user based task managers , some were too cumbersome and complicated install etc .

So i am still searching for a proper light wieght app , which will do the work with not much frills and fancy .

Entry Filed under: web design