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.

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Jeff Peters has a nice article in ColdFusion Developer’s Journal giving an overview on some of the basics that can be accomplished when using an organized project management process for development using project management software available from www.GrokFusebox.com.

There are an additional set of project management software tools that can surround the software development process as a whole, providing a framework in which the development work takes place. Functionality in this framework includes tracking tasks, priorities, resource allocation across projects or a department and budgetary tracking and reporting.

These features create a more positive environment for software development or for a software development project.

Essentially, with minimal data input from a developer, management can get all the data they need to monitor the project or portfolio of projects (which they’re going to do anyway), without having to interrupt the developers or waste people’s time in meetings.

Vertabase Pro is a ColdFusion based project management software tool that does just this. You can get a look at it by checking out a screenshot tour or requesting a test drive.

Nothing is going to be easier than just being left alone to do your work. But these kind of project management tools can make a big impact on the overall long-term success of a software development project or IT department within a company or in a client/developer relationship.

Mark Phillips

I am the product manager and lead spokesperson for Vertabase. Its my job to make sure the Vertabase approach to project management gets out there and that feedback from our customer’s and the market make it back to the engineers who build the great products we sell. I spend a lot of time traveling, talking to customers, users groups and conferences in the US and Canada primarily about project management, time management and getting more done.

I write about those same topics on this blog and in other places including a regular column for Fusion Authority. My work has been published in publications like C|Net, ComputerWorld Magazine and the Financial Times. News about Vertabase (which my team generates) has been in almost every major project management magazine, vertical industry magazine (e.g. the insurance industry, banking industry, education, municipal government, oil and gas, etc.) and local newspaper around the United States.

Besides project management I am an active member of Adobe Technology related communities. This includes ColdFusion, AIR and the Creative Suite group of products like Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.

Before getting into project management and software I worked on Wall Street as an economic and financial analyst. Those topics are still very dear to me. Sometimes, on this blog, you’ll find that I can’t help but comment on economic and financial events going on in the world. But I do stay away from politics (on the blog).

Philosophically, the Vertabase approach to project management comes from over 15 years of real world experience helping thousands of people at hundreds of companies get more done -everyday. It has been used to produce projects for companies like MTV, Young and Rubicam, Sesame Street and the State of California. It is based on having to produce high quality work with limited resources. It is built on making it easy to get project related information, track information and use that information for intelligent reporting and decision making.

I hold a Masters degree in Applied Economics from the University of Michigan and a Bachelors of Science [Econ] in Philosophy and Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. I live in Michigan with my wife and kids, our dog and a fish.