Project Management

What software do you suggest for managing your projects?

Keeping your projects in order can become hard. The more you add to it the more you seem to loose track of media and direction.

Depends on managing what.
I've my projects on www.origo.ethz.ch which already removes quite some of the stuff you normally would need ...

Notepad

EDIT: Ok, I have had only one project for three years now, so I guess my opinion doesn't count. For managing that, I've just used Openoffice. But Notepad would suffice for me too.

Excel, notepad.exe and a real notepad. Plus a kind of file structure to store everything in that is nice and logical + shortcut keys to important folders. When the game is tested, Big Fish Games use JIRA, an online bug tracking too, seems neat.

I actually want a proper project management tool too...

i just had

/gamefolder/
/gamefolder/gfx/
/gamefolder/sfx/
/gamefolder/lvl/

so if i was reusing media id have a few copies but the folder could be zipped up no hastle and everything would be there upon unzipping

but i never got as far as 3 WiP before moving and having a bad work/life ballance (like finishing work with enough time to cycle home change and cycle to night class)

What kind of management do you mean exactly? At work (I'm a software developer in the finance sector) we have software version management, document version management and some tools for project managing. Mainly the thing that makes a project, is the document version management. We use Documentum, but it is for bigger enterprises. I can't suggest anything for people here, except to create a personal work flow. Get organised. Don't expect some tool to do it for you.

There's no need for an easily understandable tool to manage projects. Especially if you don't need anyone to be able to do/share your work.

I'm pretty well organised having done this lots before but there are some features that I'd like (to do with sorting and prioritising) that I can't get exactly how I want in Excel, so something else may be able to provide these...(rather than me writing an app myself).

Ginger Tea: I have standard folders for graphics/sound/data etc for the current version of my game (which I backup after every version release), but elsewhere I have a game folder with all the original graphics and sounds that I get send (I don't use them all or they get tweaked etc), + emails, design docs, spreadsheets, logs, contracts, marketing etc.

Trac. Although I hear Jazz is starting to look good.

We use http://www.basecamphq.com/ there is a free version

Project Studio Pro
Notepad++
Subversion
Pen
Lots of paper

dotproject
http://www.dotproject.net/

It is simple enough for us to use, and you can use it over the web for many remote users.

usually had used just:
- normal notepad.exe
- real pen and paper


now i'm using:
- excel to log time spent on tasks
- ToDoList (by abstractSpoon) to manage my lengthy programming and other 'need to get done' tasks.
- notepad.exe for less specific memo's and note-to-self's.
- real pen+paper for quick brainstorming

ToDoList has been great so far as it allows the creation of multiple lists in a single view (for organization such as Programming, PR, Web, etc), prioritization of each task item (also allows sub-tasks), time estimates for tasks, etc etc.

http://www.abstractspoon.com/tdl_resources.html