RationalPlan description
An alternative to Microsoft Project

RationalPlan is a strong project management software application developed to assist project managers in creating plans, tracking progress, allocating resources, managing budgets and analysing workload. Whether your application is in the area of construction, engineering, services&consulting, software development or a simple student project, RationalPlan can help you to complete your project on time and within budget.

RationalPlan is designed as an affordable alternative to Microsoft Project and it is covering project management area from WBS construction, project planning and scheduling to critical path management, overallocated resources detection, progress tracking, cost estimation, etc. Gantt chart support as well as various time line reports are also provided.

Key reasons for using RationalPlan:

· provides a clean way to break down your project, build schedules, allocate resources, and manage budgets
· a step by step project guide walks you through the project management process so you can lay down a project plan immediately
· get resources and finances under control (realistic cost estimates mechanisms, screening cash-flow time distribution for tasks and resources)
· "what if" scenarious capability via multiple undo/redo levels allow to make changes and safely get back
· track project evolution in terms of completion, time and costs
· brings project's critical issues to your attention (overallocated resources, critical paths with configurable slack from which activities become critical)


Here are some key features of "RationalPlan":

Project Planning
· Define project and associate general information (name, notes, links, assumptions, constraints, risks)
· Create, edit and delete calendars
· Build work breakdown structure
· Create dependencies between tasks, set lead/lag time
· Manage task properties such as constraints, fixed cost

Resource Management
· Define human/equipment and material resources (equipment can be assimilated with human)
· Define specific working time for each resource
· Assign resources to tasks
· View timephased information about resources work and cost
· View overallocated resources and resources that work overtime

Project Tracking
· View project critical tasks depending on a customizable slack
· Mark the task progress by changing the task completion percent
· View timephased information about tasks cost

Miscellaneous
· Easy to use Gantt Graph
· Project Guide assists you step-by-step
· Icon Bar with specific commands for every view
· Export to Microsoft Project
· Printable reports
· No annoying dialog windows unless strictly necessary
· Cross-platform (work on all major operating systems starting with Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux and all other Java enabled platforms)


Requirements:

· Java Runtime Environment 1.5.0 or higher