

Ask HN: Freelancers...what PM tool do you use? - mythriel

What project management tools and are you freelancers on HN use? Also how do you manage your client conversations because I have 1 client that sends me around 4-5 emails every day and my inbox gets cluttered.
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adrianmsmith
I run a small bespoke software development company with 2-3 employees and 3-4
clients. It sounds incredibly small, but nevertheless I was getting
overwhelmed.

I evaluated various options and settled on liquidplanner, I don't regret it.

\- I can enter that some employees only work a certain number of hrs e.g.
Mon/Tue/Wed 3 hrs, Thurs/Fri 8 hrs. If I say a task takes "20 hrs" then it
takens the availability into account in the planning.

\- Range estimates for tasks, i.e. "this task will take between 4 hrs and 2
days".

\- I prefer the ability to update a task with "I did X hrs already, I now
prodict Y-Z hrs to go", as opposed to saying "50% through the task, which was
originally predicted to be X hrs.". As you go through a task, your
understanding of it changes. I think updating the past/future hrs more closely
fits how you work.

\- With many tools you can drag task bars to the left/right in the Gannt to
make them earlier/later. I don't know why you'd want to do this? With LP you
just specify how long it'll take and who's doing it, and its priority relative
to other tasks, and LP tells you when you'll be doing it.

\- I often have the problem that employees claim they're "finished" and having
nothing to do. I send emails around with bullet points but they still seem to
get confused. With LP there is a section they can log into at any time called
"my work" which shows them an up-to-date view of all their tasks, extracted
from the Gantt, in order of priority.

\- My clients sometimes feel they don't know what's going on (if we're
programming some back-end stuff, for instance). They get a better feeling when
they see their Gantt. They can log in and do that. But I don't want my
customers seeing each other, so they only see their Gantt. Nevertheless, the
reality is that resources (e.g. me) are shared, so they're not actually
independent projects/sheets. LP knows that I do task X before task Y, and task
X might appear on one customer's portal and task Y on another's.

\- What tasks and employees should I be concerned about, in terms of them
delaying the project? I can select any task and selects its critical path.
Because resources are shared between projects and clients, it can accurately
tell me that in order to get customer Y project done on time, I have to finish
tasks for customer X (or re-arrange them.)

------
jasallen
This may be a _very_ unpopular opinion, but: I feel like modern technology has
made the 'cluttered' inbox and 'managing emails' more of an imagined problem
than real one. I use gmail, and I have a few rules for tags, and use tags for
things that need a further follow-up, but I rely _very_ heavily on its
fabulous search and threading abilities.

I think there is a mindset that a neat inbox is a neat life or something like
that, but I've usually treated organizing only as a way to make my tasks and
tools easier/faster/more accessible. Mail is a problem that, regardless of
volume, isn't overly concerning to me.

With gmail in particular there is also the archive vs inbox, but it's largely
the same thing.

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delkant
I will recommend you <http://www.redmine.org/>. we are using this amazing tool
for our projects (3 of them) our clients, PM, and developers can take
advantage of it. It is a powerful communication tool.

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orangethirty
Trello

~~~
mythriel
That is just a planning board...how do you deal with everything else like time
tracking and client management...or you just use other apps for each specific
role

~~~
darkjedicoder
Harvest has a time tracking extension/plugin for Trello. I believe there are
others

------
reinhardt
Podio

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orokusaki
Your problem's cause is rooted in a a basic economic principle, supply and
demand. When you quickly reply to each email, you become a cheap resource for
help, undermining the usefulness of the client thinking through problems
themselves, or perhaps thinking through their problems a bit longer before
sending another email.

The solution? Delay your responses by 1-2 hours. Decreasing the supply on your
side will serve to increase the "cost" of each interaction, since they have to
wait for reply. You'll find the emails stop sounding as frantic and
disorganized/incomplete, and not as many are sent.

~~~
eunikins
Great point - I didn't even think of this. To add, I would reply to them once
or twice a day, in one condensed email that addresses all of their emails.
Also - I use Gmail for my business account so I can easily click on the 'Move
To.." -> "Label" button, effectively archiving and organizing it at the same
time.

