Plans and estimates can be as easy as breathing.
JCVGantt® Pro 3
Add-in for MindManager 7
More plan, less frustration.

If you have attempted to use other project management systems to plan and estimate, but given up in frustration - you're not alone.

Every day people around the world are choosing JCVGantt to plan and estimate.

Companies like NASA, Lockheed, IBM, Sony, Dell, and Canon who could easily afford any other project management system use JCV because it's fast, easy, convenient and is a tool you can rely on everyday.

Guaranteed reduction in planning time.

Most people figure out JCV3 in the first 30 minutes. Download and install it in 5 minutes, then spend 25 minutes training yourself by reading through the first 2 chapters of the user's guide this evening. By morning you should be ready to plan your first real project.

Designed to take full advantage of new features in MindManager 7, information in MindManager is transmitted instantaneously to JCVGantt Pro 3 where Gantt charts are automatically created, as you type!

Would you prefer "drab" or "silky"?

Let's find a few phrases people use to describe project management tools - "Confusing, difficult, unintuitive, drab, boring, slow, bean counter, wishful thinking, dubious value, no account for learning, scary unreadable reports".

Contrast that with phrases people use to describe JCVGantt Pro 3 - "clean, clear, simple, professional, easy, fun, silky-smooth, intuitive, well-designed, a learning-tool and powerful".

The truth about project planning

The dirty little secret nobody wants you to know is... (ssshhh! don't tell anyone!) project planning doesn't have to be difficult, you probably don't need a training course -  in fact...it's a natural skill and you already know how to do it.

If you manage to eat breakfast, get your kids to school and still get to your office by 9am, you probably have the planning skills you need to master JCVGantt this evening and be planning projects in the morning.

PMI certification training courses can lock you in a classroom for weeks and take months to master. 

We're not berating them. You can learn quite a bit at these courses, particularly if you've never managed a project before.

...but, as we said, most people DO figure out JCV in the first 30 minutes. You download and install JCVGantt Pro 3 in the 5 minutes, then spend 25 minutes training yourself by reading through the first 2 chapters of our manual and perhaps watch the video to understand how it links up with MindManager.

If something confuses you, ask us...we provide 1 year of quick-response e-mail tech support to all users as well as people evaluating the software and 1 year free minor version upgrades

You already know how to plan

Do you remember the Emperor's New Clothes - the story where the clothes were supposedly invisible "to everyone who was stupid or not fit for his post."? It took a child to point out the emperor had no clothes and that everyone had been duped.

With all due respect to certified project managers, I'm not sure how many PMI certified project managers would admit it, but if they hadn't spent thousands of dollars in certification training and reading through their thick PMBOK workbooks, that the end result of the training was that they indeed had a new vocabulary, but also a funny feeling that they already knew how to plan before they took the training and all they really needed was to pick an approach to documenting and fine-tuning their plans, followed by practice implementing them

If you have time, read through the rest of this article, and by the time you're through you'll know just the basics you need to become a project planner (and use JCVGantt Pro 3).

All the features of a world-class Project Management Suite + plus some Magic

JCVGantt has the core features of any good project software - automatic calendaring, resource pooling, dependency chaining.

And then there's the "magic" - Intuitive Vista®-style ribbon bar, drag and drop plan parts,  full "digital ink" support, Excel-like spreadsheets where you can play "what if" with live project data, and our legendary real-time synchronization with MindManager....

....but... what you really need to focus on first, is what's most important - the plan.

Back to basics - What is a Plan?

Let's get Zen and simple. People seem to think that planning is complicated.

Planning is not all that complicated...execution...THAT'S complicated.

Planning is natural. Dreaming about the future, and then organizing those dreams in an order that makes them achievable - that is how you plan projects.

Project management software by nature has 4 goals - dreaming , scheduling, accounting and presentation.

You dream ahead, thinking about what needs to be done, and by who. You (and your team) brainstorms, until you get as much detailed information together in one place, as you can.

Some facts you know when you begin are concrete and are unlikely to change, such as "the wood will cost $450", "Joe is $75/hour", and "when is the deadline?".

Some information is flexible such as - "how long do you think this will take to do?", or "what steps do we need to meet this goal?"

In project planning software, like JCV, you type in all your dreams, your facts and your guesses into one document and schedule them, estimate, then fiddle with the numbers until they seem to make sense to you and your peers...finally you view the results and show them on a Gantt chart or in spreadsheets and other reports.

What makes a project successful?

The success of your project is generally dependent on how good you are at forecasting the future, how well you know the subject matter, the experience of the people doing the work, and the quality of the information they supply to you....and a little luck.

If you know nothing about plumbing and estimate you can fix your sink in 1 hour...expect to spend the weekend. If you are a plumber, and you estimate 1 hour - it will likely take an hour.

As a human being the true success of the project is - Did you learn from it? Did your company learn from it? Can you do it better the next time?

Here's three little tips gained from experience in some of the newer methods of project management-

• Break your plan down into 2 week or 4 week "blocks" and never overload a block more than 80%

• Have the people doing the work estimate the work, and re-estimate it periodically while they're actually doing it so you can keep track of schedule changes (and the affect of unaccounted holidays, doctors appointments,  flu viruses, sports accidents, car repairs and "can't miss" PTA meetings have on your project)

• Review the project every time you complete the work in a block and move tasks in one block that can't be completed to the next block.

Why not do all this on paper?

Now, you can plan on a sheet of paper, people have done it for thousands of years, but JCVGantt does a few things you can't do easily on paper. Projects are like SAT math problems where two trains run down a track at different speeds and you have to guess where they meet.

As an example, lets say you call a contractor who tells you that they can build you a deck  in 5 days, starting on Friday.

Then after that, they can stain it on 2 consecutive days. The question is, on what day will it be done? Well, most workers don't work Saturdays and Sundays, so if they start on Friday, that will end on the following Thursday. The staining will also cross a weekend, ending on a Monday. So that 7 day project took 11 "clock" days. ...whew! Complicated!

Now if the stainer charges $15 an hour and the carpenter $30 an hour..and the wood is $700, then how much will it all cost?

Of course in the real-world, the carpenter doesn't show up on Friday because he double-booked himself on another project and you'll have to track the skips in days till it's finally done.

All that complication and calculation - JCVGantt loves it and is happy to do it for you.

JCVGantt software allows you to dream, plan, make mistakes, correct them, track what happens and log everything so that you learn and become a better planner week by week.

Planning estimates need not be a complicated activity.

As we mentioned, you could go spend a few thousand company dollars and become PMI certified, or study online, or go see a project management guru and read a few insomniac books like the 400 page Project Management Body of Knowledge Manual...or ...you could just read this next section.

There are 5 basic steps to planning a project in JCV.. focus-brainstorm-chain-guess-delegate

1. FOCUS - You decide what goal to focus on you're trying to achieve and type it in.

2. BRAINSTORM - You brainstorm the steps (also called "Tasks") you need to do to achieve the goal  and type those in.

3. CHAIN - If any tasks have to be done in a specific order (called a "dependency"), you chain the steps together by clicking a "link" button

4. GUESS - You make an educated guess about the time how long each step should take to complete, and drag a time bar until it's long enough to show the estimated time

5. DELEGATE - You decide who will do those steps and delegate each step to whoever is handling them

When the project begins you spend a minute or two every day tracking the progress of each step by adjusting the actual time taken to do each step, sliding it's start time and end time backwards or forwards.... and sliding a "percent-done" bar to show the completion of each item

You'll probably also find yourself adding tasks you had no idea about when you started planning, an evil scourge of all projects called "Scope Creep".

Manage enough projects and your wisdom will increase.

That - is basic Project Management 101. It's half art, half science. Everybody does it naturally,  whether they're aware of it of not.

How did we do?

If you want to get nit-picky, or have the ominous job of explaining project performance to executives, you might want to compare "budget versus actual", JCV has a built-in Excel-clone spreadsheet you can use to match a baseline "snapshot" against actual results. This has several uses...some practical, some comical.

Practically, we prefer snapshots  to baselines because they show clear histories of when tasks are added to a project or removed..in a separate spreadsheet...which can look like a chicken walked on your Gantt chart if you try to do the same thing in Microsoft Project, which attempts to show all baseline actual/vs/estimates on one grid.

The comical use of the snapshots is that they serve to explain to executives that "projects do not occur in straight lines". Projects zig, they zag, and turn around on their heads. Snapshots can show every detail that changed over time, and either be useful to obfuscate (i.e. render incomprehensible)  the truth if your project was a disaster, or if you're precision-oriented, you can export them over to excel and graph the "change of scope" to learn from your mistakes and identify which areas of your projects were problematic and need to be avoided in the future.

After that, you can tinker all you like- pretty things up, move tasks up and down, stretch things back and forward in time, store all your blueprints and specifications inside each task.

Accelerate Planning by Using MindManager 7 with JCVGantt Pro 3

JCVGantt allows you to brainstorm rapidly in MindManager (the world's top brainstorming product with approx 1 million users) and visualize time as a Gantt chart that is created automatically simultaneously while you brainstorm. You have to experience it to understand the full impact of this

While all the creative people are shooting out ideas and making lists of things they want to get done in MindManager, JCV sits in the background and wonders "Gee, how much is all this going to cost us?"

A little bit of magic called DynaSync™ technology synchronizes both programs in real-time  "like silk",  carrying information typed into one automatically to the other, allowing you the visualize your ideas in MindManager...and track time and cost in JCV.

Assign someone in your project team to a task in one click and it will automatically calculate the cost of any task they work on and show it to you on the Gantt. Stretch the length of time and watch the costs change before your eyes!

Did we mention it's much easier to use the Microsoft Project?

JCVGantt Pro 3 takes project planning into a new realm that will reduce the time it takes to plan projects, guaranteed, or return it for your money back.

Try it free for 21 days and prove it to yourself!

New! "Office 2007-style" Ribbon control makes using JCVGantt Pro even easier than previous versions!

Every function is exactly where you'd expect to find it. Editing a task? Look on the task menu. Need to change what you see? It's on the View menu.

Oh, and we guarantee a reduction in planning time  (or return your license for a full refund)...

How can we guarantee a reduction in planning time? Let's get down to the details -  Every feature in JCVGantt 3 has been designed to let you "think once", and "use again".

1. Reuse project information and jump-start your thinking with Gantt Parts™
   Drag a reusable Gantt Part™ onto your chart and all outline, phase, task, resource  costing and dependency information is transferred, instantly. Costing reports change instantly. Create your own Gantt parts in seconds using snippets from your own projects!
   
   You'll find Gantt parts included for Six Sigma, Military Missions (SMEAC), Naval Situation Analysis (SOS), Risk Analysis, Extreme Programming, Strategic Planning, Project initiation and MANY more...
    
   
    

2. Re-use Team Resource Information
   All the resource information you've already entered for the last project can be reused, effortlessly.
   
    

3. Never type the same information twice. Create plans automatically while you brainstorm
   MindManager users synchronize all project information in "real-time" (i.e. while you're typing it in) in the world's top brainstorming tool which means plans can be created automatically while you brainstorm!
   
   
    

4. Track project completion with a click and a drag
   There's no need to key in tracking information. Click to the right of any task bar and you can drag the percent done
   
    

5. Track project cost with a click and a drag
   Size any task bar using your mouse to both increase the duration of a task while simultaneously showing you the increase in cost for that task!
   
    

6. Enter task information rapidly
   Floating property panes let you user your mouse to enter task priority, date information, percent done without ever waiting for a dialog to popup.
   
    

7. Calculate project duration accurately
   Advanced Calendaring allows you to match schedules for those odd-ball employees who don't work Thursdays, or have the night shift from 3am t 11am.
   
    

8. Create and re-use your own project metrics
   "User Sheets" allow you to create your own project management calculations using the same formulas you've come to know and love in Excel, to export then in Excel format and import them into your next project.
   
    

9. Enter an entire project plan without ever using a keyboard!
   "Ink entry" allows Tablet PC users to enter an entire project plan using ONLY the stylus. All project tasks and resource information supports ink as does the "task note" feature allowing you to scribble notes or technical drawings related to each task

   

    

10. Vista, Tablet PC, and MindManager Pro 7 Compatible
    
    Use it with Vista or Windows for Tablet PC for Pen-Only project planning!

    If you run Vista or Windows for Tablet PC, you may never touch a keyboard again while you plan projects with JCVGantt 3.0's "ink entry" mode which permits an entire project plan to be sketched in using your stylus.

Use with MindManager 7 for the Ultimate Project Solution

MindManager 7 is a fantastic way to brainstorm ideas.

What it lacks, is a way to clearly represent "time". For that, the best visual way is called a "Gantt chart" which represents both a task and the time it takes to complete a task....



Simply type tasks into MindManager, or JCVGantt 3 and you'll instantly produce professional "Gantt charts" while you brainstorm.

Enter resource information such as hourly fees for various workers and it can instantly estimate project cost too!