5pm: Project Management Made Simple
If there was one word to describe the project manager application 5pm, it would be simplicity, and that’s a good thing. Projects have a way of running over budget or out of time, becoming disorganized, or just plain getting out of control, so when a clever bit of web 2.0 can bring simplicity to the process, we feel we should talk about it a bit.
A project management tool with a user-friendly interface, 5pm is a tool to help you with organization, project tracking, information flow, and project management. To see how 5pm does its business, let’s start from our 14 day free trial. After signing in and filling in some basic profile information, 5pm will launch its tabbed interface. Right away you can see the pieces fall into place, with Project tab giving a quick overview to your projects, tasks, and deadlines. Some project management applications will spread this information out, requiring you to go to a dashboard (a single page aggregating the deadlines and such from other pages) to see it. 5pm puts it all up front, and makes this your entree to managing. Put your projects in, assign tasks, set deadlines. Add files, comments, and send notifications as you do.
The effect of putting it all up front should not be underestimated - this is why 5pm’s simplicity is so appealing. Most of the information we will refer to is on the project page, with additional tabs for Timelines, Reports, and Profiles (contact information). With a majority of the controls you would use on a daily basis in front, managing is made, you guessed it, simple. Let’s browse through and take a closer look at 5pm.
We begin with project creation from one of 5pm’s button pull down menus. 5pm uses these pull down menus from buttons to keep their interface uncluttered, and we see that both project and task creation are easily accessed through the Add button. You’ll see that there is another add button on the panel to the right, where we can create notes, progress reports, and import files. As we create tasks, notes and messages we see the project come to life, and other features will make themselves known.
Most observable of the features are the easy to identify icons that distinguish projects from tasks and tasks from notes. When anything new is added, whether it be a project or message, an additional “New!” icon appears next to it, so that project members can quickly see what has been changed since their last visit. It may sound small, but small visual cues to move your focus where it needs to be is the mark of an effective interface. You get the idea. The next feature you notice is that when adding a task or project that there are ready controls to set deadlines, assign personnel, and add notes, all from the dialog box. As you add deadlines your Projects page will update, showing the number of days before the deadline. When you add a task, a progress bar aside the entry will appear and will update as progress is reported. Since access is everything in project management, and getting everyone one the same sheet of paper (virtually or otherwise) is crucial, 5pm has given options for notifications with every assignment, task, or note. Email, send direct links (unique url’s), or set up a RSS feed so that task team members (or clients) know whatever is happening, as it happens.
Below the Projects tab is the Timelines tab, which lets us see at glance how projects are doing on the calendar. Several views allow us to view it by time (week, month, etc.) and group so we can plan short term or long term. Each view shows a bar with the name of the project that when unfolded shows the tasks as well as completion rates. For calendar planning they also offer downloadable .ics files that can be imported into iCal and Outlook.
Below the Timeline are the Reports and Profiles screens, where there are simple time management tools and contact information for team members, clients, and contacts. On the Reports page tallying hours logged against tasks is a simple matter of selecting the project and user, and the report can be exported to a .csv file. The Profiles page allows us to import users from webmail and set up new contacts. Radio buttons from the user dialog box also assign values to the profile, letting us set the roles for profiles as administrators, users, external users, and clients.
Such simplicity is not without its drawbacks and 5pm’s may steer away the heavy enterprise user. With a limit of 80 projects and a 1gb upload limit, 5pm lacks the capacity that some users would ask for. Those same users may also find the lack of customization a detraction as well. Low end users may be discouraged by the limited free trial (14 days).
As strong as the interface is there is also some disappointment - we expected that we would be able to drag and drop tasks or projects on the timeline, and we found that if there was no known deadline for a task or project, they extended endlessly on the timeline. Also, the only way to order tasks, irrespective of their priority, is to change the start date.
In the final view, however, 5pm is a management tool that puts simplicity back into the job. By combining the complicated calendars, to do lists, and progress reports into a user friendly interface, 5pm is an effective project management application, even when there is a long list of projects. 5pm’s dropdown menus have quick navigation to project groups and individual projects, and they’ve thrown in a keyword search so nothing gets lost. To begin managing your projects with 5pm, or to find project management tools, the Listio search manage+projects will get you where you want to go.
Previously in this series: Basecamp: Project Management In The Suite
Next in this series: Central Desktop: Powerful, Centralized Project Management
Application: 5pmListio Profile: http://www.listio.com/web20/app/5pm/
Website: http://www.5pmweb.com
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Tags: email, manage, organize, projects, rss
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