Sugar Project Management - Not for service orgs?

[cactussean]

Maybe I am missing the boat regarding the typical needs for project management, but to me, Sugar really seems to fall short...

1) Duration is typically used to determine the number of days between the start date and finish date of a task. Sugar treats this as the amount of time actually required to complete. I may need 5 days to complete a task (duration of 5 days), but only want to allocate 5 working hours towards that. Can Sugar accomodate?

2) Is there any way to allocate planned hours, or even better, planned minutes to a task? I see there is some more options in the task details, but not in the grid layout.

3) Is there any place to enter actual hours spent on a task? From a project management standpoint I want to allocate X hrs for someone to work on a task, but I want to know how many actual hours were spent. Furthermore, I want to look at the planned vs actual hrs spent for a task type (website homepage design) for every project that contains that task type so I can better plan project or improve production efficiency moving forward. Don't see how this is possible.

4) The resource report only shows 1 resource? I don't want to run the report 5 times to see which of my 5 resources has time. I want to see them all on one page and then just select the one with availability...is this possible?

5) Lead and lag times don't seem to exist? I can only choose a predecessor. Typically, project management systems will allow you to have multiple lead and lag time dependancies on any number of predecessors. So, some tasks I may be able to start immediately after the predecessor completes, but must finish 5 days afterwards. In a typical system I would say...

<predecessor task ID> FS + 0d
<predecessor task ID> FF + 5d

...this essentially says when the predecessor finishes start the next task (FS = finish start relationship), but the next task must finish 5 days after the predecessor finishes (FF = finish finish relationship).

Without this, scheduling of tasks is manual. Ideally, you want a dynamic schedule. You want to "program" the project tasks with these lead / lag time relationships so that if any task is completed early / late the schedule is dynamically modified. Your start / finish dates are controlled by the start date of the project, dependancies/predecessors, and lead / lag times.

These are all core functionality of any project management system. Is sugar's project management system really meant for simple projects (support questions and escalations maybe), and not meant to manage the projects of a service organization with say 500 active projects and 100 resources?

[crmsiva]

Hi

Yes you are right. Project module is designed for simple project management activities. But you can customize the module according to your needs. SugarCRM is very flexible for customization.

[cactussean]

Hi

Yes you are right. Project module is designed for simple project management activities. But you can customize the module according to your needs. SugarCRM is very flexible for customization.

This seems like much more than creating a custom object or modifying the existing project module. Especially when you consider points 4 & 5 of my initial post....

4) The resource report only shows 1 resource? I don't want to run the report 5 times to see which of my 5 resources has time. I want to see them all on one page and then just select the one with availability...is this possible?

5) Lead and lag times don't seem to exist? I can only choose a predecessor. Typically, project management systems will allow you to have multiple lead and lag time dependancies on any number of predecessors. So, some tasks I may be able to start immediately after the predecessor completes, but must finish 5 days afterwards. In a typical system I would say...

<predecessor task ID> FS + 0d
<predecessor task ID> FF + 5d

...this essentially says when the predecessor finishes start the next task (FS = finish start relationship), but the next task must finish 5 days after the predecessor finishes (FF = finish finish relationship).

Have you, or anyone, had a good experience with a developer who may have built similar, or similarly complex at lease, modules? We would certainly entertain a quote for a one off build for us, or using us as "guinnea pigs" to roll it out to the larger Sugar using public.

I am certain that if the project module was more robust it would bring on more service orgs (ad agencies, web design companies, marketing orgs, etc) to Sugar. I mean, having order & case/issue history, along with product and basic contact management, seemlessly tied to project management is sooooo valuable. The current project module is just a tease though in my opinion.

[sugarcane]

Hello cactussean,

Intelestream has a great deal of experience customizing Sugar, and we can certainly help you customize the Projects module.

A bit about us:

We are made up by former employees of SugarCRM, Inc.
Our team has over 25 years of combined experience working with Sugar
We specialize in all stages of SugarCRM implementation
We develop deep Sugar customizations and industry specific verticals regularly
Some of our clients include H&R Block, the YMCA of America, and Wentworth Property Management

Our website is www.intelestream.net - there you can learn more about us and view some of our recent case studies. Please also feel free to contact Ray Stoeckicht at rays@intelestream.net or 888-435-2221 to discuss your needs in more detail.

[datawayEg]

Our company is also a service-oriented company. We had high hopes of using the Projects module, but found it rather lacking in functionality. Personally, I would like it to be as fully realized as the Case Management module. Currently, we ditched all attempts to use the Projects module at all and just create cases using a custom field "Case Type", where one of the case types can be "Project". Hopefully Sugar Inc will give the Projects module some seriously needed love.