When I was in my old job, a PMP certified Project Manager told me that with proper planning a project can be executed in one third of the proposed time. That is true but we never did it anyway.

Finding the right tool for the entire team to be onboard was a huge task in itself. Desktop apps like Microsoft Project were cumbersome and needed a steep learning curve. Had we come across a project management app like Teamwork Project Manager, things would have been different.

Overview

Teamwork Project Manager is an easy-to-use online teamwork & project management web application that helps managers, staff and clients work together more productively. With Teamwork Project Manager no matter how big or small a project is, you are always in control. Teamwork Project Manager helps you create task lists, schedule milestones, track time, communicate with the team and other nitty gritty details involved in executing a project.

http://www.teamworkpm.net

Teamwork Project Manager has a multi phased sign up process. In the first phase, we begin by entering the company name and the timezone, which is automatically selected based on your IP address. I love it when services allow me to be extra lazy!

Sign Up Phase 1

The second phase is all about entering the email address, username & password creation mumbo jumbo.

Sign Up Phase 2

In the third phase, we can select the sub domain for accessing the Teamwork Project Manager web app. The company name is prefilled if it is available, but you can name it any way you please. To my surprise and first among a non email providing service I have encountered, you can choose from the list of domains from where your sub domain can be hosted.

Sign Up Phase 3

The fourth phase has just one field for referral code. Annoyed much? Me too. But we are not there yet fellas!

By now I have lost count of what phase of the sign up process we are in, and the present page asks us to agree to Terms & Conditions, so that they can create a free Teamwork Project Manager account. Puh-lease, it’s about time.

Pricing

Like the many tiered sign up process, we have multi tiered subscription plans. Prices appear to be reasonable and there is a plan that will fit everyone’s budget.

Pricing

Teamwork Project Manager offers a free plan that does not support secured login access, custom branding, custom domain etc. for its users. Rest of the core features, including unlimited clients and users, are available in the free plan too. Now that gets the Teamwork Project Manager team a pat in their shoulder.

At the end of my sign up marathon, I was subscribed to the Business 1 plan for 30 day evaluation. You can choose your payment cycle – monthly or annually – while subscribing.

Dashboard

Finally after the completion of the sign up process that rivals that of a day time soap opera, we are taken to a page from where we can invite users to join the team. This step can be skipped as we can invite users from the dashboard later too.

Dashboard

Once we are through with the invitations page, we  get to see the elusive dashboard. Like most other project management web apps, the dashboard is pretty much empty when we begin.

Creating a New Project

Creating a new Project

Create a new project window incorporates the sections for the project name, description, client and features.

Creating a new Client

A new project can either be for a new/existing client or for internal use. A new client can be added from this page and this is one simple yet important feature some project management apps lack.

Controlling Features

Features like notes, milestones, tasks, time measurement etc. can be turned on or off for projects on a case by case basis.

Adding Tasks

Now that a project has been created, let us go ahead and create some tasks to it. A tasklist has to be created to kick start the task creation process. If there is an existing milestone, the new tasklist can be linked to it.

Creating a Tasklist

Newly created task can be assigned to multiple persons with a deadline and they can be notified of the same via email.

Creating a Task

Tasks can be made visible to only those who are working on it from the Privacy section

Creating a Milestone

A new milestone can be created with only one person as incharge and a deadline can be set to it.

Creating a new Milestone

You can add tasks to a milestone or you can just link an existing list of tasks like the ones we have created before.

Tasks linked to Milestone

Features

Being the Project Manager, you can communicate key decisions and pointers to your team communicate with messages. All the messages can be grouped in specific categories for easy access in the future.

Posting a new message

With Teamwork Project Manager you can easily track time spent by your team on both internal ops and billable time on your projects as well.

Tracking Time

Multiple files can be uploaded into various categories to ensure that the team has access to a centralized file repository to get things done.

Uploading Files

The project overview page is simply awesome. With a calender to show the upcoming milestones, tasks and a list of tasks with a bunch of meta data, the project overview page shows a bird’s eye view of the project’s progress.

Project Overview

Final Thoughts

Teamwork Project Manager is a solid and dependable project management app which is extremely simple & very intuitive. I am pretty sure it will be just be minutes before you can start managing the project after signing up. However, sign up is a different story altogether.

While signing up for Teamwork Project Manager, I understood Ice Cube’s plight from the movie “Are we there yet?”. There absolutely isn’t any justification for so many stages as the details you enter in one page does not determine what fields are shown in the next. With a lengthy sign up page, Teamwork Project Manager’s first impression takes a beating and fixing that would make the app a worthy contender in the project management niche.