Quick Review of Copper Project Management Software

The Corporate edition of Copper 2006 (version 3.0) seems to be geared towards improving visibility of to-do lists. It is light on features that can help task management, manage schedules or give deeper visibility of projects.

A good example is the process of adding or editing tasks on a project. This is a fundamental activity not only in task management but also in planning projects, setting up schedules and managing on-going project activity.

Tasks can be added in two ways. One is through a single web page form which means that adding many tasks means going through many individual forms.   The second is via an Adobe Flash based Gantt chart.

Tasks appear in the task list and on the Gantt chart in the order in which they were entered. Tasks may be sorted by the items in the column headings of the task list. But, they cannot be easily resequenced. 

Unlike more feature rich project management software like Vertabase Pro, Copper does not have task numbers nor subtasks. This may seem trivial. However, something as simple as having project numbers and have a hierarchy of tasks and subtask can make a big difference in effective project management and planning projects.

Comparing Project Management Software
In comparison, the benefits of software like Vertabase Pro become apparent when the reality of projects (and managing projects) meets the idealized world of the project plan. Having numbered tasks (a work breakdown structure) means that you can quickly and easily change the sequence of tasks when the reality of the project changes. 

Having sub-tasks means that you can modify or add, on-the-fly, the specific steps it may take to complete the deliverable or meet the desired goal of a single task. Completing a task is often more than doing one single thing. Sub-tasks allows you to map out and track the steps it takes to complete the task. 

Here’s a screen-shot of the edit-schedule screen in Vertabase Pro.

In the Vertabase Pro project management software you can quickly and easily add, modify and edit the order of tasks, sub-tasks and other schedule related tools from a single edit-schedule screen.

          

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Project Management Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.