Help! In desperate need of a great PM tool

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emmaqueue
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Joined: Fri 02 Oct 2015 12:55 am

Hi all,

New to the forum and *brand* new to PM-ing. I recently took on a new role through an acquisition that has me project managing a few huge initiatives (such as the integration of the two companies, an office space overhaul, and a technical integration) and I've never PM'd before! Yes, I'm experienced in managing my own projects, and running headlong at a problem until I've solved it, but nothing like this.

I'm am in desperate need of a tool to help me track all the moving pieces.

I tried mocking up a few gantt charts in excel, and that's just too much work for too little reward. I've tried looking for software online, but all I find are people selling themselves. I need some advice from real PMs with real experiences, joys, and frustrations. What tools work for you?

What I would love is a tool I could track milestones, deadlines, set myself reminders and to-do's, all for multiple large multi-part projects. Preferably it can do excel pulls for metric reporting. Bonus points for a UX that's simple and easy to use and nice to show off.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!

Emma

PS: have any book recommendations for newbs?
TechKnowBooster2015
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Joined: Sun 04 Oct 2015 2:37 pm

Hi emmaqueue,

You can try with some free tools Asana, Trello, Microsoft Onenote, Evernote ana Azendoo if you not tried yet with these.

If you wish to refresh Project Management Methodologies such as PRINCE2, this will be a good learning curve for you:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014X5 ... entries*=0

Cheers.
TechKnowBooster Team
melissa
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Hi!

Wandering through the internet I've found your topic. I personally think that a successful PM doesn't actually depend on a tool used. It's not the key factor. It's mostly you and your personal skills and ability to keep several workflows under control. So, my advice is to pick tool coming out of your personal preferences and your needs.

When I searched for a good online tool for PM and collaboration in my team, I wanted something that supports Kanban method, because that's what I really like. So I picked from the Internet and checked Kanban Tool, Kanbanize, Kanbanchi and Trello. The latter is too over-flooded with different features to my opinion, so I haven't chosen it. It was not actually simple to choose between the first three, but finally I've chosen Kanbanchi. The reason was its integration with Google Drive, because I already used it to make docs in drive and share them with the team.

Hope my answer was of any use to you.

P.S. May I ask you to let me know what you've finally picked?
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dhaughey
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Location: London

I cannot agree with Melissa, Trello is a very straightforward tool with many uses. I use it for my personal task list, managing change requests, managing project priorities and managing bug lists. The beauty is its speed, simplicity and flexibility.

One other tool I'd call out is Evernote. Excellent tool for managing all your tasks lists, notes and meeting minutes across multiple devices. There is a paid business version that has useful features for project coordination.

Duncan
John
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Joined: Thu 05 Nov 2015 7:04 am

You can use ZilicusPM - project management software. It is complete project management software. It gives a holistic picture of a project to its team members, project manager, portfolio manager as well as customers
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