My current employer has gone process mad - there is a process for almost every activity, with detailed project plans and Gantt charts most definitely the flavour of the month.  It seemed logical, therefore, that I should look around for anything that would permit  me to view the multitude of MS Project plans on my PDA so l might keep a watch on my own projects. 

Initially I used RepliGo to create a viewable copy of the plans on my PDA - I by far prefer it to Adobe and it is much cheaper.  However this approach required RepliGo to be installed on the same machine as MS Project and proved inconvenient at work due to the limited licenses available for either, plus the result was read only.  In my search for an alternative, I discovered very few alternatives but was most pleasantly surprised to find a full featured, project planning application - Pocket Plan from Twiddlebit.  For the purpose of this review  I shall presume that the reader has a basic understanding of the fundamental use and terminology of project planning software - it would take too long to include that here.

Pocket Plan is a project planning and estimating tool, equivalent to and compatible with MS Project, for the Pocket PC.  It is capable of planning and scheduling tasks, resources and dependencies in much the same way as Project does, including schedule recalculation, cost estimating and much more.

Features
When Plan is first opened and a New plan selected, the user is presented with an empty Gantt chart showing the current week.  As with most complex applications, I think the best place to visit to visit first is the Options screen to setup the various defaults - in this case for the Gantt view.  The screen allows shading, dependency lines and base line bars to be enabled, the text which appears next to various types of task to be specified, colours of various items to be set and the date format and font size to use.

Once the basic settings have been set, probably the first thing to do is to enter the available people/resources which will be used on the project.  For a small one person project this step can probably be skipped but for most multi-person projects it is probably well worth while as it will permit better tracking and estimating, it also saves double entry later.  Adding a new person/resource brings up a three tab screen, the first tab (Edit Resource) permits the person's name, initials, e-mail, code, group and charge rates.  Tab two (Work Hours) is initially configured to set the times of the day and days of the week that the person/resource is available;  tab three (Notes) is a simple text notes page.  A default resource called Standard is predefined and is used for a number of functions in the system (so don't delete it!).

Next it's time to setup the actual tasks which make up the project.  The Tasks screen is a five tab screen - Details, Resources, Dependencies, Tracking & Costs/Notes.  The Details (first) tab is used to enter the main information about the task: name; input method - work & dates, work & rates or rates & dates; constraints - start as soon/late as possible, fixed start/end/both, start/end before/after; the amount of work in days, hours & minutes.  Once the name has been entered, selecting the Input and Constraint methods enables or disables the various date and work fields permitting the appropriate dates and/or values to be entered.  Based on the input method and the type of constraint chosen, once the resources have been defined Pocket Plan will automatically calculate the work or dates required to fulfill the plan according to the set constraints.

Tab two is used to define the Resources that will be used to complete this task - any of the previously defined people/resources may be added to the task along with the percentage availability and/or the amount of work that will be performed (in days, hours & minutes), depending on the previously selected Input method.  Using this information Plan is able to calculate how much time or effort is required to complete this task.

The third tab is the Dependencies tab which is used to define the relationships between the various tasks in a project.  The tab permits  one or more other tasks to be specified as finishing before the current task may start, including defining any lag (in days, hours & minutes) that may be required.  Once the tasks have been linked, any change in the dates of any of the linked tasks on which this task is dependant will be reflected in this task.

Tracking is the fourth tab of a task,  this screen enables the amount of work carried out on a task to be recorded.  Time may be entered either as a percentage, as days, hours & minutes or using a slider in 5% increments;  the screen also calculates and displays the expected amount of work which should have been completed.  As the work is completed and entered against the task, Plan again recalculates the task  duration and updates any dependant tasks which are affected.  The final Costs/Notes tab enables the user specify fixed user costs, a user code and any appropriate textual notes.

Once all the tasks of a project have been entered it is possible to group some or all of them together under a summary task in the Task List view.  By entering an additional task above the tasks to be grouped, the tasks below it can be indented to be added to the summary task - the summary task can have dependencies defined but not resources or tracking;  summary tasks can also be added into other summary tasks to represent hierarchical projects.  As changes are made to and work recorded in tasks lower in the hierarchy, the summary task alters to reflect the changes in information. 

The Task List view is a grid layout showing almost twenty columns of data showing key task details;  summary tasks are shown in bold and can be expanded and collapsed as desired.  Fixed dates are shown with a small pin image in the date fields,  tasks with notes have a small yellow stamp-like image next to the task name;  ticks in the ID column are used to indicate tasks which are 100% complete, summary tasks show column totals as appropriate.

Switching to the Gantt view, the project(s) can be viewed in the classic hierarchical manner.  Summary tasks are displayed above the contained tasks and show the full extent of the subordinate tasks;  dependant tasks are displayed with their relationships shown as arrows linking the various tasks.  Tasks with no duration are treated as milestones and are shown as small circles, progress is shown as a colour change within the task indicating how far the task has progressed.  If switched on and configured, baselines are displayed below each task and can be used to indicate how far from the original planned dates a task has varied.  Tasks which are expanded or collapsed in the task list are likewise displayed in the Gantt chart.  The Gantt view can be zoomed in and out by way of two toolbar buttons which changes the time (horizontal) scale from one year down to half a day.

The Resources view displays a bar graph indicating the resource usage on a scale of 0 to 100% (or higher) against a date range, while the Resource List displays a grid of the available resources and many of their properties.  The Holiday view displays a calender per resource which enables days to be marked as work days or holidays.

The Filter Tasks screen is accessed from the View menu and allows the user to filter based on the resource, whether the tasks are completed / underway / incomplete or are on the critical path - the filtering applies to the Tasks list and the Gantt chart.

From the Tools menu are a number  of rather useful options over and above the typical ones, some of which might be more at home in a File menu.  The key options are, in my opinion, as follows:

• Baseline - this permits a baseline to be defined for all, or a subset, of the tasks in the plan.  This can be displayed on the Gantt chart and shows how the tasks have varied from the base line dates.
• Calculation/Storage - determines how the plan should be recalculated, average hours per week and if resources are shared between plans.
• Export Task List - enables all or selected tasks to be exported as Pocket Outlook Tasks.  Tasks can be prefixed with a summary task name, are given a specified category, can replace existing tasks of the same category and can have reminder alarms set.

Using It
So that is Pocket Plan, but what is it like to use?  Very good is the simple answer.  Pocket Plan has all the primary features necessary to track multiple complex projects, complete with resourcing, and despite the limits imposed on it by the device the program remains very usable.

The files Pocket Plan creates can be opened using MS Project and vice versa, though I did have a few issues regarding resource names not coming back from Project properly.  Probably one of the most useful features, in my opinion, is the Export Tasks to Outlook.  This delightful function enables some or all of the tasks to be exported to Pocket Outlook as dated tasks, permitting Outlook to act as a project guide rather than opening Plan all the time;  if the Today screen is configured to display tasks, the planned tasks are immediately visible.

There are a few features which need to be improved but those are minor issues in the scheme of things.  The first is that none of the input fields trigger the input method, so it is rather annoying having to display it for each screen.  The task screen could do with a better method of reordering than cut and paste, it is awkward and breaks the dependencies of the moved task, it would be far better replaced wth a couple of up/down buttons.  A number of functions operate on the Completed state of tasks for filtering - unfortunately milestones (zero duration tasks) cannot be marked as complete and excluded this way.  The holidays screen is also a little cumbersome and doesn't appear to provide any way of setting holidays over multiple days/resources.  Finally, it would be nice if the export options were remembered within a plan.  As l said, these are all just small issues and certainly not show stoppers.

Pocket Plan is, as I have said, a fully featured project planning tool and I consider it easily capable of being  used instead of MS Project for small or medium sized projects all by itself.  Naturally it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of MS Project but then Project wouldn't fit on my Xda II!  It can open and modify Project files and provides all the basic Task and Resource planning functions necessary to manage multiple complex projects... but from the convenience of your pocket.

I consider Pocket Plan a thoroughly excellent piece of software - very stable and surprisingly well adapted to working on the Pocket PC - Twiddlebit Software have made a superb product.  Even with the few minor niggles I have identified above, I cannot honestly fail to recommend this product to any PPC owner who has the desire or need to manage projects but has neither the desire nor budget for MS Project.

Pocket Plan gets a very well planned 9.8/10.