Today, I have been baking some of my cherry tomatoes to dry in the oven. I will store them in olive oils and keep them for a while longer. I’m sick of fresh tomato salads and there are still plenty to pick, if they turn red. Ansonsten, I will be making my green tomato chutney again.
Although oven drying tomatoes isn’t difficult, it can be very time-consuming (not counting the whole ‘grow tomatoes’ task). It seemed like a good project to use for Projecturf. It didn’t work out from the start.
Projecturf offers a dashboard where you can store your project summary. You can also upload documents but you can just type it in here. Save your changes, close, and you will return to the homepage and not the dashboard. I believe in eliminating clicks. Why should my team and I have to do more work?
However, the homepage looks nice. It is easy to navigate and the logos are clear. You can also get email alerts. Projecturf sent me emails about each task, which was annoying when I was setting it up or editing it. Email alerts are a positive thing.
Projecturf’s team seems to be missing some key points. This software is for project managers in small and medium-sized businesses. Smaller companies have fewer professional project managers than larger businesses. This software could be useful for marketing managers without a background in project management. It is easy to use, intuitive, and looks great. It will frustrate project managers who realize they could do a better work with a different tool. Projecturf is not capable of creating my own Gantt charts. I can, however, do it better than you.
For example, the Gantt chart will only show milestones or tasks associated with milestones. Once I realized this, I had to update all my tasks in order to link them to a milestone. Fine. However, it is impossible to make changes to multiple tasks at the same time. Since milestone dates don’t automatically calculate, associating them with a task doesn’t do anything other than show them on your calendar view. To associate milestones to tasks, you need to first create them. This means that the tool is only useful for projects with fixed dates. Events and milestones are not the same thing. Projecturf insists that you include a start and due date for milestones. It is a bad practice in project management to encourage people to add milestones that span several days.
Gantt chart view is a bit lacking. It doesn’t allow me to see the month-to-view, which is not good for my cooking project. Picking tomatoes and drying them in the oven took just one week. Although you wouldn’t normally use this tool for a short project, I would rather be able to edit the Gantt chart to show me the time periods of my choosing. It doesn’t show the dates, it only shows the week numbers.
Projecturf is a simplified version of Windows SharePoint. It is a good tool for creative teams as it can handle design briefs and development servers. However, it is not a general-purpose project management tool.
Check out all my reviews of project management software here.
Review: Projecturf [2009]
