[Sigia-l] RE: Project Management Software for MacOS X

[Listera]

Will Parker:

> I worked on the "Project Manager" feature in Mac Office 2004.

First, props for giving a bit of 'inside' view of this. (The following
diatribe is not directed at you personally, of course.)

> No GANT, no charting to speak of, no  true project-level scheduling or
> resource management.

Surprisingly, I use Entourage Project and it could be a lot worse. It does
pretty much what it says.
 
> - Given the size of the potential market (which was affected by the
> deep penetration of MS Project for Windows in the overall large-
> project-management market) and the cost of producing a full-blown Mac
> version of MS Project, there was essentially no profit to be made in
> recreating Project.

That's verifiably absurd, to be polite. There are many, many companies with
hundreds, thousands of Macs happily engaged in many types of projects, some
quite large. In fact, many Mac-based organization roll their own project
management apps in FileMaker, Helix, 4D and RealBasic precisely because they
want the real relational power of a DB sitting underneath their Gant charts,
with connectivity to other company resources, etc.
 
> - The current and potential customers for Mac Office are seen (by the
> MacBU) as being mostly in the SOHO market.

This is a tired, oft-repeated piece of normative 'thinking' on the part of
MSFT. I guess the reason why Access, Visio or other platform-strategic
lock-in apps have not been ported to Mac OS X is because nobody ever does
databases or diagrams on that platform! Just how stupid does MSFT think
people are?

> In other words, in their  view at the time, most Mac users don't use their
> Macs to coordinate  big projects.

Whatever.

> Those two decisions led to the light-weight, small-project nature of
> the project management features in Office 2004.

It's a toy. But I find it useful and actually use it.
 
> My take on the state of project management software on the Mac is
> that there ain't none...

These are *some* of the PM apps that run on Mac OS X:

Merlin
http://www.projectwizards.net/en/merlin

xTime Project
http://www.app4mac.com/world/xtime.html

FastTrack
http://tinyurl.com/5rsds

http://www.youmehub.com/

http://www.pureviolet.net/ganttpv/

http://www.jtechsoftworks.com/

http://www.conceptdraw.com/en/products/project/main.php

http://www.leadingproject.com/en/products/project/main.php

http://www.sharedplan.com/product_media.html

Obviously, they have varying degrees of depth/compatibility/resemblance wrt
MS Project. 

> There  are a number of applications that focus on detailed management of
> specific types of projects - mostly in the area of art, multimedia or
> advertising design.

That's just continuing the tired, old MSFT stereotyping of Macs as artistic
toys. This is utter nonsense. Just check out the software above.

> On the other hand, MS Project, like most MS products, is *too*
> general. It's intended to blanket the entire problem space, so IT
> managers can buy (and support) one do-it-all product. Who cares if it
> isn't the best tool for the end-user? IT'S (allegedly) EASY TO SUPPORT.

As you say.
 
> I have to ask: What type of project are you planning to manage?

If I remember correctly the original question was about desktop/personal
use. For that, any number of the above apps will do. I've used FastTrack,
Merlin and xTime Project. In terms of UI, the latter two are more OS
X-compliant.

I can say more on this pet peeve of mine, but today it's supposed to be an
altruistic day for me. :-)

Ziya
Nullius in Verba