Our Favorite Project Tools

If you work in web development, or anywhere near it, you’ve probably heard of Basecamp, maybe even used it for a project or two. Created by the infamous 37signals, Basecamp is a “Project Management Software as a Service” (SaaS). Type that phrase into Google and you’ll get at least 80 million results. When Basecamp first launched, there was barely any competition, with the bulk of it coming from Microsoft Project, which is Software as a… Complex Pain in the Ass (SaaCPitA, pronounced “sak-peeta” if you’re curious).

Since then, web-based project management services and software have exploded and there are hundreds of thousands of options available. The “right” PM software for your business is no longer an easy or obvious choice. In fact, I would make the argument that there no longer is a “right” choice.

Here at SiteGoals we’ve tried many different options as a group, and each of us independently has tried at least a handful of other options. That’s why I can tell you from a place of authority that there really is no single, perfect solution for everyone. What works for you may not work for another person and what works for your entire agency definitely won’t work for every other agency. I think part of the problem is that project management is simply too broad of a subject.

Project management involves keeping track of due dates, milestones, tasks, employees, clients, communication, etc. The list goes on. Instead of trying to recommend a single solution, let me break down the list of tools we use at SiteGoals to solve each aspect of project management.

Scheduling (Milestones, Dates, Deadlines)

We used to use Google docs for this, we’ve tried Basecamp, but we are currently using Paymo. I’ve talked about the greatness of Paymo in the past, so I’ll be brief here. Paymo is primarily a time tracking tool, but in order to track your time you have to have projects and tasks. Paymo has all that, but it also lets you add clients, milestones, due dates, and much, much more.

We’re transitioning to agile for some of our projects, so for that we’ve been using Pivotal Tracker. I wrote a short comparison between it and Paymo, Basecamp, and Paymo which sums up my thoughts and how we’re using it to develop Evenflow.

Tasks

We use Paymo for all of our projects, but I’ve also used LazyMeter for my personal tasks. It is such an awesome tool I’ve started using it for work items as well. Basically I give myself a larger, overarching task in Paymo to attach time to, then I use LazyMeter to break it into smaller tasks that I can check off throughout the day.

Client Review

We have our own software for interacting with clients that we’ve used for years. We use it to post wireframes and comps for the clients to comment and approve. We’re currently working on integrating it with Paymo to reduce our time spent entering the data.

Bug Tracking

For more development intense projects, we’ve used Fogbugz, Mantis, and sadly even Google docs in the past. Paymo doesn’t have a system for client users and our manager above doesn’t have a bug tracking system. So we’re still trying to find the perfect solution here. Leave a comment if you have any suggestions!

URLs, Logins, and Passwords

If you manage more than one client, you know how difficult it can be to keep track of all the different login credentials you’ll need. For just one website there can be a unique URL, username, and password for: the host control panel (cPanel), FTP, the CMS admin, just to start with. Throw in a couple years and another 30 clients and your list of passwords can be hard to manage.

That’s where Passpack comes in. We use it at SiteGoals to securely store our passwords and share them between developers. I wrote a lengthy review on my personal blog.

Our Web of Software

It has become a bit of a tangled, overlapping web of software that helps run our business. But it works, partly because it’s just what we’ve decided to stick with and partly because there’s quality software involved. But ultimately we’re working on a more custom solution that will be targeted towards web design and development agencies that function just like ours.

The software is called Evenflow and our first release is the Proposal Generator. We are currently using it to build our own proposals and it has helped save time and make our estimates more accurate. We’re planning to release it in 2012.