Palm and Treo Hacks

Manage Projects

You can use a Palm device to help you manage complicated projects with resources and dependencies, such as a software development project.

Projects come in different complexities. Before choosing a tool to help manage your project, you need to consider the complexity of the project you want to manage. Different tools are better for different levels of complexity.

Project management software represents the world as tasks, resources, and dependencies between tasks. Although all project management software has a common view of the world, each package differs in how it lets you arrange things. So, when you pick a software package, you need to consider factors such as:

How many tasks need to be managed?

More tasks make a project more complex.

Can the tasks be grouped into higher-level tasks?

Hierarchical tasks make projects more complex.

Are there dependencies to consider?

Complicated dependencies push a project into the complex category.

Is there a strict ordering of tasks, or can the tasks be freely rearranged?

Being able to freely rearrange tasks is a sign of a simple project.

Do you need to track people and assignments as well as tasks?

More items (such as budget, equipment, or other resources) to track make for a more complex project.

How frequently will the tasks or dependencies change?

If there is likely to be a lot of change, then a simpler project is better.

Simple Projects

A simple project has few dependencies and doesn’t require a strict ordering of tasks. A simple project ...