ProjectCafe plans work that has an order to it. Write down the jobs, say which ones wait for which, and it works out every date for you - then keeps them right every time something changes.
It is a planner, not a to-do list. Each job has a length, the people doing it, and the things that have to finish first. Move one and everything waiting on it moves with it, straight away, however big the plan is. All of it stays on your own computer.
Highlights
- Move one thing, and the rest follows - every job knows what has to happen before it can start. Push one out by a week and everything waiting on it moves too, in the time it takes to let go of the mouse. Nothing to recalculate by hand.
- It tells you what cannot slip - the jobs where a day lost is a day lost off the finish are marked, and so are the ones with room to spare. That is the difference between a plan and a list of dates.
- A weekend is not two days of work - durations are counted in working time. Five days across a weekend finishes on the Friday after, holidays come out, and a half-day Friday counts as half a day.
- Change the plan by dragging it - move a bar, pull its edge to make it longer, drag from one bar to the next to say this waits for that, drag through the middle to show how far along it is. Undo takes any of it back.
- Nobody booked twice by accident - put people on the work and the app shows the days somebody is committed past what they can do. Ask it to even things out and it pushes work later until the week is workable, and puts it back if you change your mind.
- What it costs, as you go - hours against each person's rate, rolled up the plan. Keep a copy of the plan you agreed to, then read whether you are ahead or behind, over or under, and where it is going to land.
- Seven ways to look at the same plan - a work breakdown with bars, a card board, a network of what leads to what, a mind map, a month calendar, a roadmap and a set of reports. Change something in one and every other one already agrees.
- Problems live on the plan, not in a separate file - notes, checklists, files, issues and risks attach to the job they belong to. Risks get a likelihood and an impact, and the report puts the worst ones first.
- Opens and saves what other planners use - bring in a plan from the tool the last person used, and send one back the same way, without the dates shifting on the way through. Spreadsheets, outlines and calendar files too.
- Prints something people can actually read - a wide plan spreads across real pages with the job names repeated on every sheet, so page three still makes sense on its own.
- English, Tieng Viet and Deutsch - the whole app, with dates and figures written the way the reader expects them.
How it works
Open it and start typing jobs. Tab tucks one under another, and the one above becomes a stage that adds up its children's dates, work and cost. Pick two and link them, or drag from one bar to the next, and everything reshuffles as soon as you let go.
There is no Open and no Save. Every plan lives in one place, saves as you type, and is backed up each time you open the app. To send a plan to somebody, export it as a single file - a complete copy that opens on the other side with nothing missing.
Perfect for
- Anyone moving off a planner that will not run here - the plans come across, and go back, without being retyped.
- Construction, events and engineering - work with a real sequence, real calendars and whatever gets hired in for it.
- Anything you are running yourself - a renovation, a move, a thesis, a launch. Where "what is holding up the finish" is the question that matters.
- Consultants and agencies - keep the plan you quoted, work against it, and print something a client can read.
- Anyone who wants their plan to stay theirs - no account to open a file, no server, nobody charging by the seat.
