Project management

A client project is not a task list. It is a commitment made to somebody, with a quote behind it and an invoice ahead of it.

That is why this module does not live beside the rest: the project is attached to the customer in the directory, to the sales documents that opened it, and to the hours booked against it.

The structure

• The project — its customer, its owner, its dates, its state.
• Phases — the breakdown that makes sense to you, not the one a method prescribes.
• Tasks — assigned to a member of the organisation, with a due date.
• Milestones — the dates that matter to the customer, the ones you announce and keep.

What it settles

"Where are we?" is answered without a meeting. Progress reads off the phases, not off the memory of whoever holds the file.

"Did we invoice that?" too. The project cites the order that opened it; what was delivered and what was invoiced come from the sales module, not from a parallel tracker.

"Who does what this week?" — tasks are assigned to real accounts, the same ones that sign into the software.

What this module is not

It is not a portfolio tool, and there is no Gantt chart to drag. A project manager in a small company does not need a resource-constrained plan; they need to know what is late and what has not been invoiced yet.