I have been looking for a decent non-technical group project management tool for years but still been unsatisfied. What do you use?<p>I am most interested in how to manage projects like launching a new product, server migration, designing a new marketing strategy, or hiring a design department. There are many great tools like Trac and Redmine for managing programming projects but afaik the same does not exist for non-technical projects.<p>Here is what I am looking for in project management software. Feel free to add your own requirements.<p>1. Tasks to be done, with deadlines<p>2. Important events during the lifetime of the project<p>3. Visualizations like Gantt charts to track the progress of the project, but aren't critical.<p>4. Tracking staff resources assigned to the project<p>5. Managing documents related to the project, like meeting notes, contracts, Service Level Agreements, etc.<p>6. Easy for truly non-technically inclined staff to use<p>At my past organization, a tiny non-profit, we used redmine for managing non-technical projects. It was functional but far from ideal. I now work for a giant multinational and there is still a tremendous need for a good, easy-to-use project management app.
I have almost completely migrated project management tasks to Basecamp, but if Gantt charts were important/needed for me (I used to generate them) I would go back to using <a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniplan/" rel="nofollow">http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omniplan/</a> it is OSX based, but has worked very well for me. There are a couple video tutorials on the site I suggest watching to get a feel for whether or not you'd enjoy using the software.<p>Good luck!
There's the very famous Basecamp (<a href="http://basecamphq.com/" rel="nofollow">http://basecamphq.com/</a>) by 37signals. No gantt charts though. If you buy 37signals' argument that effective project management is about communication and not planning then you won't really need them.