The choice of a task management system (Project & Task management)

    The post is quite large, and if you want to understand the issue, you may need thoughtful reading.

    Please help me decide on a system that will breathe new life into the relationship between employees and tasks.

    It seems to me that the problem of effective joint task management is very relevant for many small teams.
    After the system is selected, I’m ready to write a report on the “Project Management” blog for those who, just as I feel, it’s time to put things in order in management. If you are interested in such a report - write about it in the comments, please.

    I work for a small architectural company (we are 10 people). We are engaged in the design, and then maintenance of the construction of small objects. In addition to my direct work at the company, I am de facto responsible for organizing operational task management.

    I'll start with the history of management on my team. When we first started and there were only three of us, all tasks fit on one sheet of paper. Later, a simple Excel plate appeared. We held planning meetings once a week, and I wrote down who was responsible for what, deadlines, and then I handed out a task sheet to everyone. Then I started using Mindjet MindManager, the program itself is very good (including there are convenient shortcuts by which I filter tasks according to different criteria). I send the tasks assigned to employees in the form of a hierarchical list according to the internal manager. But this program is not tailored for task management, now its capabilities are obviously not enough - the number of simultaneously working projects regularly exceeds five, and the number of tasks within the project can exceed a hundred. There are so many tasks
    I became interested in ready-made solutions, primarily those that are oriented to the web interface.

    Superficially understanding the possibilities of the proposed systems, I formulated the requirements for myself:
    Low price. The system should be free or inexpensive. We are ready to pay about $ 300-500 a year for a convenient system.
    Ease of deployment and customization. We do not have a programmer who could delve into the intricacies of the system device for months and write complex additions to it.
    ToDo List.It is important that for each employee the system prepares a to-do list — a list of tasks that need to be done today, now, collected from different projects. It is advisable that such a list is well-tuned (for example, sorting by importance, urgency, etc.). After all, this is the section that employees will need to use most often.
    New events. It should be implemented informing the user about new events related to him. for example, someone gave a new comment on a task in which I am marked as a contact. Or someone entrusts me with a new task. It is time to do some kind of deferred task. I would like it to be more than just sending out alerts via e-mail.
    Hierarchical (tree-like) structure of tasks.Since the number of tasks inside our projects is large, we need the ability to build tasks within the project in a hierarchical structure. It is desirable that the degree of nesting of tasks is not limited.
    Comments on tasks. We need the ability for users to comment on a task - to discuss tasks not through an internal messenger, but directly in the system - this is much more effective.
    Internal messages. A good addition, if one user can send another message that is not tied to the task.
    Tags (shortcuts).It would be very convenient if any number of tags could be attached to a task (or maybe to any object), and it would also be possible to manage tags and quickly find all tasks related to a given tag or set of tags .
    Search. A good search should be implemented in the system. There are a lot of tasks, the search will be a frequently used tool, and it must be effective.
    Contacts. Be sure to be able to conduct contacts on tasks. These are office workers (users of the system to whom tasks are assigned), as well as external contacts (contractors, suppliers, customers, etc. related to tasks). It is necessary that several people can be attached to the task - for example, a manager, performer and external contact.
    It is also desirable to quickly find all the active tasks associated with this contact - for example, I call the contractor, press a couple of buttons, I see that everything that we have connected with him, along the way I set the issues for different tasks. Ideally, it is desirable that the system in general was convenient to maintain all external contacts (now we use a simple, written independently in php + mysql, database of contacts with a web interface)
    Gantt chart. It is theoretically desirable that the system has the ability to work with tasks on the Gantt chart, and / or the ability to export to Microsoft Project. (Although, frankly, I don’t use old Gant in everyday work.)
    Access control. Need the opportunity to be able to block for some users the level of access to certain objects of the system.
    File storage. The idea of ​​file storage looks good, i.e. so that you can attach a file (or picture) to the task. It will be convenient in many cases.
    Action history. All user actions are recorded and you can see who made what changes.
    Backup. If we are talking about working on a remote server, it would be desirable to be able to remove a backup copy of all this disgrace, because if there is no access to this server, the work will immediately rise, it is scary to think about the consequences.
    Speed ​​of work. It is necessary that the system works at a good speed (so that you do not have to wait for a reaction for a few seconds)
    Russification is desirable, although not required.

    I tried several systems, including recommend here on the habr.

    The first in the testing were www.comindwork.ru , registered an account there, tried the main features. The system is Russified almost completely.
    The most important thing that I did not find is the hierarchical structure of the tasks. With our number of tasks (I looked at statistics - there are more than 500 of them), it is impossible to work without a structure, especially given that some tasks are inherently sub-tasks for larger issues.
    There is a ToDo List (although the settings are not very rich), at first glance, the system meets the other criteria to a greater or lesser extent.

    projects.zoho.comthe system is very similar to the previous one, it also registered, it is Russified, but awful, immediately switched back to English. The first thing I checked was the task hierarchy. Here the situation is a little better - there is a hierarchy, but it is only two-level, which is not enough for me.

    I did not test WebAsyst since judging by the description of the system, only one contact can be attached to a task, there are no comments on tasks, there are no shortcuts, etc., i.e. it does not meet many criteria.

    www.trackstudio.ru
    Installed locally. I installed it, tested it.
    Everything is fine with the hierarchy, the depth of the hierarchy and the type of child tasks are configurable. There are also wide opportunities for the hierarchy of contacts (for example, one executor can have several managers). Access control is also worked out in great detail. The system is quite complicated to set up, you won’t figure it out in one evening, but apparently, in a week you can build it up for yourself as you need and conveniently, later polish it slowly.
    There are comments on the tasks, thanks to which, including the state of the task also changes (you can also create any state you need)
    The problem here is different - the Todo List is not as such, if the user has dozens of different tasks for different projects, it is not clear how to navigate - what is urgent, what is important, what to do first of all. Notifications of new events are also absent (except for the possibility of sending alerts by e-mail). No shortcuts, etc. functions that have become familiar in our time, social. networks and other web 2.0
    i.e. the system is very thought out in terms of the ability to customize for specific business processes, but in my opinion, it is not very convenient in daily routine use. However, perhaps I didn’t dig deep enough into it? It is unlikely ...
    [UPD] Added: I didn’t dig deep enough, the program developer answered in detail on the points on the official forum of the program.
    [UPD 2] Added: Murz in the comments to the second part makes an important addition from the experience with this system

    Please help me with the direction of further search. Which system can satisfy my (maybe too high) requests? There are a lot of different systems, which ones should you try again?
    I will also be grateful for advice or feedback from someone who uses a similar system in the work of his team - maybe I misplaced priorities and emphasis, and in real use something else comes to the fore?

    [UPD] Continued: Choosing a task management system, part 2.

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