Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources to accomplish a successful project. It is a temporary effort that has a fixed beginning and end and is mostly time-constrained. It simply means that you have to accomplish some tasks on time through proper planning and management. Projects need a great deal of planning and dedication to be successful, so having an efficient project management tools are really inportant.

An ‘efficient‘ project management tool should not only be fast but should also boast all of the following features:

• Scheduling
• Cost Control
• Budget Management
• Resource Allocation
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Documentation

So today we have a list of 10 Awesome FREE Tools For Effective Project Management. Check them out!

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OpenProj

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It is an open source tool and it can be used as the desktop substitute of Microsoft Project. It is a great tool for desktop project management and it available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. It even launches the existing native Project files. It shares the most advanced and efficient scheduling engine with Projects On Demand. This awesome tool boasts Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts and earned Value costing etc.

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dotProject

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This one is a web-based Project Management tool. It is an open-source multi-user and multi-language tool which is free for any uses and is maintained by an open community of volunteer programmers. Its main features are:

1. Projects and Tasks
2. Companies, Departments and Contacts
3. ToDo lists
4. Resource Allocation
5. Forums
6. Gantt Charts
7. Reporting
8. Calendar

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GanttProject

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As the name suggests, this one is a handy chart based project scheduling and management tool. It has many amazing features like Task hierarchy and dependencies, Gantt chart, Resource load chart, Generation of PERT chart, PDF and HTML reports, MS Project import/export and WebDAV based groupwork management etc.

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ConsultComm

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ConsultComm is a tiny Java program that lets you keep tabs on how long you have worked on each project.

Its main features are:

1. Integrated into your current time management or billing system; JDBC is supported so you have the ability of instantly uploading all your times and projects into most JDBC and ODBC compliant databases,
2. This tool is platform-independent, and this fact lets you unify all your OS X, Windows, Linux and Solaris workstations with one app
3. Launched as an open source tool, so no fretting over vendor lock-in or customization problems.
4. It is easily extensible by using plugins developed on the standard JavaBeans framework. Users and developers also have the ability of easily creating their own plugins to add custom functionality to ConsultComm
5. It is customizeable to fit your style preferences

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TaskJuggler

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It is an advanced open source project management tool. It is a lot more flexible and better than the commonly used Gantt chart editing tools. This tool is for the serious project managers as it covers the complete spectrum of project management tasks from the first idea to the culmination of the project. It proves to be really helpful during project scoping, resource assignment, cost and revenue planing, risk and communication management.

This awesome tool has an optimizing scheduler that works out your project time lines and resource assignments based on the project outline and the constraints that you have given. It has an inbuilt resource balancer and consistency checker. This tool is perfect for the latest management strategies like the Extreme Programming and Agile Project Management.

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Collabtive

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As the name hints, this tool lets teams collaborate on projects, manage tasks, milestones, and files, and send instant messages to each other. It is a multilanguage tool that supports 20+ languages. It integrates with other web services through an XML API. You also have the ability of importing data from other apps.

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OpenGoo

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OpenGoo is a perfect online solution focused on ameliorating productivity, collaboration, communication and management of your teams.

Some of its main features are:

• Tasks, documents, contacts, e-mail, calendar
• Managing project progress, track time, and bill your customers.
• Find all information in a single and elegant dashboard.
• Communicate with co-workers, clients and vendors.

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ProjectPier

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This one is yet another good Open-Source, self-hosted PHP tool that lets you manage tasks, projects and teams. It boasts an intuitive web interface. You can use this tool for organization communication, collaboration and completing the work. It is quite like the commercial groupware/project management products, but it provides the freedom and scalability of self-hosting.

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Redmine

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It is an open source project management web tool that was developed using Ruby on Rails framework. It is a cross-platform and cross-database tool.

Its main features are the following:

1. Multiple projects support
2. Handy role based access control
3. Handy issue tracking system
4. Gantt chart and calendar
5. News, documents and files management
6. Feeds and email notifications
7. Per project wiki
8. Per project forums
9. Time tracking
10. Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users
11. SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)
12. Issue creation through email
13. Multiple LDAP authentication support
14. User self-registration support
15. Multilanguage support
16. Multiple databases support

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Conclusion

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Project Management is very important for accomplishing a successful project. Many project management tools are available out there, so finding the good ones that suit your needs can sometimes be tough. So please try to choose a tool that fits your needs, be it a web-based solution or a desktop one.