efy      dvd

march 2018 | ElEctronics For You Plus

www.EFYmag.com

iV

ProjectLibre:

 An Excellent Tool  

For 

Project ManageMent 

Users accustomed to Spreadsheet 
will find ProjectLibre’s user interface 
familiar but much handier

P

roject management is a chal-
lenging task with accountabil-
ity for steps taken. Planning, 

execution and problem-solving are 
part of the role. This requires de-
tailed documentation of all individual 
actions taken with extraction of as 
much information as possible. All the 
while, managers used to rely only on 
spreadsheets for all such activities. 
Now, there are tools that make pro-
ject management remarkably easy, 
granular and accurate compared to 
spreadsheets. One such popular soft-
ware is ProjectLibre.

ProjectLibre is a free and open 

source software for effective pro-
ject management. Intended to be a 
standalone replacement of Microsoft 
Project, it comprises a gamut of use-
ful features. Developed in Java, it 
is compatible with Linux, Windows 
and Mac OS platforms. Developed 
by the founders of OpenProj project, 
ProjectLibre is available under the 
Common Public Attribution License 
(CPAL). It has become immensely 
popular and is adopted by users of 
all scales—home businesses, small 
offices as well as multinational com-
panies. 

Features

Users accustomed to Spreadsheet 
will find ProjectLibre’s user interface 
familiar but much handier. Its main 
screen consists of multiple views: 
The first quadrant looks more like 
spreadsheets. It details the tasks 
allotted, including name of the task, 
tentative duration, start date, ex-
pected end date of the task, resource 

names and so on. Users can enter 
new tasks here.

A project is usually indicated in 

the form of a parent task and some 
child tasks that will comprise the 
main task. Users can insert their own 
columns as well. Data can be edited 
by double-clicking values in cells. A 
pop-up opens for editing purpose, 
which contains more tabs apart from 
the basic information about the men-
tioned task. These tabs are Successor, 
Predecessor, Resources, Advanced 
and Notes. All these tabs can be 
used to view and modify preceding 
and succeeding tasks and related 
resources.

Beside the entry screen is a Gantt 

Chart visualisation of the assigned 
tasks. Using horizontal bars, it gives 
a visual representation of the amount 
of work done against the amount of 
work assigned in a given period of 
time. ProjectLibre allows you to link 
one task to another based on their 
dependency. It is a simple drag-and-
drop action, and creates a preceding-
succeeding task relation. Depend-
ent tasks are marked in red, while 
independent tasks are marked in 
blue—making visual differentiation 
of the tasks very simple.

Below these screens, users can 

create different graphical views of 

Fig. 1: ProjectLibre UI 

Fig. 2: Creating a dependent task (Source: project-management.com)