PM Software

With the increased importance of project management, the number and variety of project management tools increased. Some of these are proprietary applications, others are open sourced or even web-based with subscription. Project management tools are essential for project managers to plan, monitor, and manage projects, resources, investments, tasks, and more. One of the famous and widely used tools is Microsoft project professional, and I will be comparing this tool with open workbench, which is an open source project management tools.

Open workbench is often defined as the free alternative to Microsoft project tool; still they have some differences and each of them certain features that distinguish it from the other. As well share similar features, some of those features are:

· Ability to identify and track the critical path.

· Ability to track milestones.

· Track resources

· Create WBS

· Create and define dependencies.

Those differences are listed in the table below

Feature	MS Project	Open workbench
Resource scheduling	Schedule is based on time duration	Schedule is based on effort
Schedule	User selected option (manual or automatic), dependency or top down.	Manual. Critical path or top-down driven.
Inter-project dependency	Requires many steps to create.	Easy and streamlined.
Working holiday	Does not allow scheduling tasks during holiday	Allowed
Resource replacement	Requires creation of work estimates, and default scheduling is set and need to be reworked.	Replacing a resource is easier as all schedules, tasks, and work estimates are maintained.
Multiple project accessibility	Individual plans must be opened before accessing the master plan. And resources appear as duplicated because they are defined in each plan seperatly.	Master plan is created and accessing it provides access to other project plans. Resources could be assigned to single project or the master project plan.
Email Integration	Available	Not Available
Cost	Above $800	Free

Cost of acquiring MS project is above $800 for individual, while open workbench is a free tool. However, MS project has an enterprise version, which connects to enterprise project management server and allows controlling portfolio of projects. Both are great desktop based tools, however resource for MS project are more and this makes it easier to learn, many books and training courses are offered to train MS project.

Reference:

Flossnet, (2011), ‘Open Workbench and MS Project Comparison’, [Online]. Available from: http://www.flossnet.org.za/computer-training-courses/29.html

(Accessed 9 June 2012)

Sourceforge, (2012), ‘Open Workbench Description’, [Online]. Available from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openworkbench/ (Accessed 9 June 2012)

Levine, R., (2009), ‘Comparing Microsoft Project and Open Workbench’, [Online]. Available from:

http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/47707.aspx

(Accessed 9 June 2012)