RationalPlan Project Viewer

Business owners, managers, and planners at all levels will find something to like about this free project management app. Launch sales and marketing campaigns or revive a flagging product line.

RationalPlan Project Viewer launches a plain, but functionally designed, interface with a task category list in its first vertical pane and contextually dynamic items--lists, events, timelines, Gantt charts, and so forth--in the remaining pane. The icons in the menu bar are simple and easy to comprehend, and navigating the app's many tools is a snap. This tool performed very satisfactorily in our tests, responding quickly to our input. We liked the ease of entering items and planning a schedule, and particularly appreciated the pane for assigning resources to each item in a given project by time and effort. Staffs who manage multiple projects simultaneously will like the Portfolio feature for reviewing all projects. Sharing information with senior managers or investors is easily accomplished by exporting to files or printing PDFs, or even e-mailing assignments from within the app.

Novices and experienced users alike will find features to exploit happily. Novices, in particular, will appreciate the online tutorial--very detailed instructions for getting up and running quickly.