Recently someone asked me about an Open Source or Free alternative to Microsoft Project and why not because Microsoft Project Standard 2007 comes for nearly Euro 600. And it is not cost-effective for a Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) to spend so much money on one license of the software. So, we did a bit of research and came across this tool which is a perfect alternative to Microsoft Project and comes for free, yes free as in free beer.
OpenProj (www.openproj.com) is a free, open-source project management solution and an alternative to Microsoft Project. It can open existing Microsoft files and is available for Windows, Linux, Unix or Mac. OpenProj can do Gantt charts and PERT charts.
Some of the features available out of the box from OpenProj are:
- Define Resources with the type Work or Material
- Define Standard and Overtime rates or Cost per use for resources
- Put resources in groups
- See Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
- See Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS)
- Checkout Task Usage and Resource Usage
- Run different reports
- Gantt Charts
It allows you to open files from other applications such as Microsoft Project 2003, Gnome Planner and Microsoft Project XML format.
Now go ahead download and install OpenProj and start managing your projects.
