Tom's Planner - Dead Simple Project Management
A general contractor friend of mine used to extol the virtues of Gantt Charts. On projects we worked on together he was forever creating and tweaking these charts through Excel. Sometimes I wondered if he was spending more time on the charts than the actual work. His ability to manage the project was stellar (as was the finished work). Frequently he credited the Gantt Chart as a key part of his success.On our last project together I took the opportunity to learn how to use a Gantt chart.
Recently I have become involved in a project that needs this kind of management. My coworkers on this project are nontechnical at best and probably slightly technophobic at worst so I was looking for a solution that was very simple. Enter Tom's Planner, a web based Gantt chart maker that allows you to create and share charts online with drag and drop simplicity.
One of the things that I like best about Tom's Planner is how intuitive it is. Part of the reason for this is that many of the commands are the same as desktop applications such as right clicking and the ability to drag and drop items. You know that the whole thing is simple as they tout the fact that there is no manual. There are a whole bunch of features you would expect from a cloud application such as the ability to save locally and the ability to export to other programs such as MS Project.
Tom's Planner is free for the moment but there are hints at the site that they may become a paid model in the future. They promise that anyone who signs up during the beta will remain free for at least a year.
Posted
by Billy Maupin
