Work Breakdown Structure, Gantt and Budget Template

December 4th, 2007 at 4:42 PM EST

While the quest for My Event continues I thought I’d share with you a super useful template for managing events.The template is based on Openproj

What is Openproj?

As for its website

“OpenProj is a free, open-source desktop alternative to Microsoft Project. OpenProj has been downloaded over 150,000 times in the first weeks since it was released and has quickly become one of the most popular open-source applications.”

Now, you can believe me when I tell you I am a busy person and I got no time to waste. I can tell you this software is extremely easy to learn, even if you have no previous experience with project management software. It is a clone of Microsoft Project and it is very intuitive.

Hopefully I convinced you by now. So what you need to do is downloading your free copy of Openproj here. If you’re on Windows download the .zip file, for you Linux mates out there I don’t think you need explanations, just select your platform.

Now you need to download the event template I’ve prepared for you to enjoy. You can find it here.

Now let’s have a look at what you’ll find in the file.

In the starting screen you can edit this column according to your needs. I must say this list is very comprehensive. It has been conceived with two purposes:

– Giving you budget Items to think about

– Clearing the path to create a comprehensive WBS

On the right hand side you can see the Gantt outline which has a preset time interval of 1 day between every item. You can modify that according to your needs and estimates. Very easy to use…

By clicking on the fourth little box on the right you can decide everything about people working in the project. You got cost per hour, emails and you can divide them in groups of competency.

You can also add machinery cost, even though we don’t really need this feature for events.

This section will allow you to easily allocate resources to tasks and then it will automatically compute costs which will appear in your budget…awesome. Change this section according to your needs.

You also got on the sixth little box an automatic WBS… again super easy.

I’ll let you explore the rest of it.

If you have any question either comment on this post or mail me (address on the right column)

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