Nirmalya’s Blog

A colleague introduced me to GanttProject last week. I been using it a lot since. Its just so simple and easy to use, yet delivering almost all functionality as that of Microsoft Project. Another point thats very appealing about it is that, GanttProject is free! (A license for that evil MS Project costs around S$1000).

Unlike MS Project, where one is very likely to have spent a considerable amount of time getting the software to do what we want, the learning curve for GanttProject is greatly reduced, all thanks to its very well scripted flash demo. [See for yourself].

Only very few, very very minor inconveniences.

1. Undo doesn’t exist. But worry not, solution to that is very simple.
2. Cannot change the working/non-working time. What this means is that Saturdays & Sundays are included in the length of a task, although they are very clearly marked on the display area, so am not quite sure why some of my colleagues aren’t too happy about this minor disadvantage.

The advantages:

1. Can export as PDF, HTML, PNG files.
2. Installation is a breeze. For one click installation lovers, try their windows installer. You can also try it online.
3. Very lightweight.
4. Schedule represented internally by means of a very easy to interpret XML-formatted .ext file. What this means is that you could make some minor corrections to the file (if you felt comfortable working that way — I certainly do) and then restart GanttProject. I found this particularly useful when I wanted to Undo something.

No matter what one says, its still much better off than drawing project schedules using coloured boxes in a spreadsheet software such OpenOffice’s Spreadsheet, MS Excel, etc.

Another very compelling reason for me to speak all good things about it (besides it being open source, better-than-microsoft, etc.) is that this tool too is written in Java

For further reading
- http://homepage.mac.com/hodelas/tar/C483433060/E685153914/
- Kidasa Software (Trial users are limited to 20 file saves)