Project Management with ProjectBubble
Project management is one of those things that you’ve either got a first-class Oxbridge degree in or you’ve got less clue about than a monkey’s backside. Needless to say, it’s pretty important, and especially for a freelancer. I always find that the management makes or breaks a project.
So what should you do when you’re a freelancer with little experience in project management? Well, you’ll probably procrastinate for a bit before concluding that you really need to get some sort of system in place, at which point you’ll Google the term “project management software”, or tweet out a question asking what different softwares (is that the plural?) people are using. You’ll then find the project management greats such as Basecamp and Microsoft Project.
I went through the same process, but happened to spot a thread on the CodeIgniter Forums advertising a “Simple Project Management App”. Intrigued, I opened it up and was lucky enough to discover ProjectBubble. Thus commences my little review.
The Interface
ProjectBubble’s design and user experience has obviously had a lot of thought into it, and I’ll say this again: it’s gorgeous. The overall look is lovely, and it’s clean and easy to navigate. There are subtle visual aids to the functionality - small touches like the “traffic light” icon next to a task signalling its status. Small arrows sitting adjacent to a task allow the user to increase or decrease the number of days/hours spent on a project. The information is displayed in a clean, understandable and comprehensible fashion.
Small touches of AJAX littered across the site make the experience that little bit nicer - but degrade gracefully when JavaScript is disabled. Sliding panels are revealed when additional data needs to be entered, which keeps the interface clean, but very useful if it needs to be.
Project Management
ProjectBubble makes project management bearable. Projects are split up into tasks, and tasks can be carried out by anybody. There is basic collaboration support and it suffices for most needs. Tasks can have To-dos to break tasks up further still. Projects and tasks can be costed based on an hourly/daily rate or at a fixed rate - and can be set as on-going or to a specific date.
Companies and contacts work just like they should - companies contain a number of contacts, which can then be responsible for tasks and projects, or can be sent invoices using the neat invoicing feature. They’re both easy to add - no messy forms, tax numbers or overcomplicated address fields. You can keep companies in your network, under contract or as potential clients - if you pick up someone’s business card or finish working with them their information is stored in case you ever work with them again. It all works super smooth.
And better still…?
To top it all off, ProjectBubble is free. Zilch. Nada. For now, anyway. It’s a new project - it’s a tiny teeny bit buggy and new features are continuously being added. If there’s not a feature you need, request it, and if it’s useful it will most likely be added. That’s the beauty of new software - it’s constantly in a state of flux.
As I’m sure you can tell, I’m very impressed with ProjectBubble. Go get an account at http://projectbubble.com and have a play around - I’ve started using it for client work now and it’s working really well! I highly recommend it.