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July 21, 2009

Zcope – Easy Project Collaboration And Communication

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Zcope is intended to make project management easy. It focuses on the central issues of tasks, dates, and budgets. Information exchange is one of the key areas, and there are built-in tools for managing and sharing project documents as well as for communicating with team members. One of the key communication tools is a project blog in which all team members can post.

The project overview section gives figures and charts for an at-a-glance view of project progress, including a list of upcoming tasks and what has already happened. The project manager can also add new team members from this section. When allocating tasks, project managers can also decide how much time should be spent on each task.

One of the best aspects of Zcope is the interlinking of the different sections. For example, blog posts can be linked to task lists and milestones so that everyone involved in a project knows what is being discussed.

Zcope can be useful whether you use one of its functions or all of them. The clear, easy to read interface and RSS feeds for keeping track of information easily are just two of the reasons why it’s worth a try.

Practical Uses:

  • Manage the budget for a major show or event
  • Use Zcope to streamline production of a magazine or other media product
  • Share and update documents easily
  • Create a hub for communication within your company

Insider Tips:

  • Allocate a time to each task to make full use of time tracking tools
  • Use the dates tab to set milestones and link those to individual tasks
  • Export your Zcope calendar data to Outlook, Ical, Google Calendar or other tools so you can access it from anywhere
  • Track employee costs for projects by enabling this in the budgets tab or using the site’s internal time tracking system
  • Mark documents as internal to avoid sharing them with people outside the project

What we liked:

  • The drag and drop interface in the task planning section makes it easy to shift tasks around
  • You can divide tasks into smaller steps
  • The project management dashboard makes it easy to have an overview of progress on projects
  • Time spent on a project can be tracked with integrated tools

What we didn’t like:

  • Zcope seems expensive in comparison to many other project management tools

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: September 2008
  • Privately Held
  • Headquarters: Bergenz, Austria
  • Founded by: Oliver Wolff
  • Web site: http://www.getzcope.com

Costs:

  • Free (one project)
  • Other levels ranging from €19-199 per month

Comments

  1. Based on my experience “Project Tracking and Management Oversight” in an organization that is not mature is more important than Detail Project Management.

    Project Tracking reduces complexity; it focuses on the progress of a project and its cost. I’m looking for a Project Tracking / Time Reporting System (Out of the box) that can:

    1. Be configured to have a clear process that minimizes confusion and follows a clearly defined project flow.
    2. Must be able to established key milestones for all project in the system
    3. Have a central archive with easy access to key project artifacts.
    4. Maintain a list of Staff, applications and work orders.
    5. Allows us to convert work orders to projects

    This application should allow a company to focuses on measuring progress (using milestone tracking), analyzing issues (tracks revisions to milestones) and controlling the cost of the project (Time Tracking for each project milestone).

    Can this application do this

  2. Hi James,

    ZCOPE offers several features for a quick overview of the project progress:

    * Project performance (Burndown chart)
    * Time efforts (target/spent)
    * Costs & Budgets
    * Overdue tasks/milestones

    Here you can find a screenshot what this overview looks like: http://www.getzcope.com/en/tour/keeping-an-overview

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