The project advisory role should be in line with 15% of the total project cost when a “buy” option is selected. I would consider project advisory services in a “buy” option to include definition of the requirements, evaluation of options, identification of any customization required and recommendation of a vendor.

The total cost of the project could either be the total hardware, software and customization required to implement a software package, or, the total cost of ownership for a hosted solution over a 2 – 3 year life cycle. I would select 2 – 3 years because it would likely be important to evaluate other alternatives at that time, to ensure you have the most recent features and functionality. 

For custom development projects, or “build” options, the percentage of budget for project advisory services can climb as high as 35% of the total project costs, as the project manager may increasingly have to act as a conduit between the programmers and the users. Hybrid options, such as a project to customize a software package, would likely fall somewhere between these estimated percentages.

As a jumping off point for most product evaluations, I like to start with toptenreviews.com. They have both a 2009 Online Project Management Tool Review, as well as a 2009 Project Management Software Review. Their list of criteria includes the following:

• Collaboration
• Resource management
• Project management
• Remote Capability
• Help/Support

For my business, the most important features were in collaboration and project management. Their top 2 on-line tools were @task and Daptiv. @task, though more expensive than other on-line tools, is a comparatively cost effective option when viewed against Microsoft Project or other enterprise software solutions. As a growing vendor, they also offer the potential to influence the development direction of the tool. Daptiv is a more mature provider, which has excellent document management functionality and a very flexible user dashboard.

My challenge with both of these products were that their “full-sized” options provided many more features than I needed, and I was concerned about the learning curve for my clients.

I then moved on to the “mid-sized” range of tools, which may have less features than @task and Daptiv, however, also offered free or lower cost plans. After reviewing other blogs and sites, I chose to evaluate Central Desktop, Wrike and Liquid Planner.

Central Desktop has an extensive list of collaboration features and supports workspaces for project management, user forums, wikis and databases. A major sticking point for me was that there were no Gantt charts. I also had concerns about the learning curve and felt I didn’t require as many of the collaboration features as they supplied.

Wrike has dynamic Gantt charts and a long list of features that I am looking for, including: integration with blackberry, Gmail and Outlook; Excel import and export; multiple project environments; file sharing and integrated time-sheets. They also have a unique feature whereby you can add tasks to your projects by adding wrike@wrike.com to your cc list.

Liquid Planner ended up my favourite of the three. This is based on personal preference for the style of the dashboard, functionality in their timesheets and for the ease of use to create and manage the project portal for clients. I also liked their printable Genius guide as I prefer to use a guide, instead of training demo’s, while learning new software.

Another favourite for me was Viewpath, which has dynamic Gantt charts and a dynamic drag and drop task management feature. They also offer a gadget to layer on Google spreadsheets to generate Gantt charts.

Other task management programs I evaluated included Basecamp and Many Moon. Both are relatively simple to use, and I appreciated the integration of Many Moon with Google Docs, I just couldn’t get past the lack of dependancies and Gantt Charts.

There are many more options for online project management. Finding the right one for your company or project means identifying critical issues such as functionality, price tolerance, ease of use, collaboration needs and the depth of formal project management required.