Article - Project Management Software

On www.criticaltools.com there are a pair of very good tools to create work breakdown structures (WBS) and PERT charts.

Those are:

• WBSChart Pro
• PERTexpert

WBS Chart Pro allows for the creation of tasks and groups them

It is able to show effort, price, and a lot of other features using a very extensive list of optional entries (all entries in MS Project in fact).

The file format can be the native format or a Microsoft project file can be used as the repository.

You will notice two icons to navigate between WBSChart Pro and PERTexpert and MSProject.

A click on the blue one leads to MSproject, but let's first chain the tasks by clicking on the other icon.

Some clicks between the tasks and they are linked. Note that in this view, the high level elements are creating swimlanes automagically, which is great!

Also, the plus and minus on every level can remove some detail. The critical path is shown in red.

Now, let's go to MS project:

Voila! Really easy and there is no need to mess with MS project values (which have a bad tendency: once you set a value -like a date-it sticks there but you cannot say if it is a calculated one or one you typed, leading to all kind of weird problems.)

Of course, much more can be said. I used the toolkit for a 7 calendar months project and it did great. Milestones were introduced and led to a very nice plan.