Oh the joys of Gantt Charts. I’ve done them by hand. A lot of them. And then I used Excel for a while, which was tolerable. I even learned how to schedule in Primavera and Microsoft Project, both of which worked very well. But when I was in school, the most practical and friendly method I found for use on a team project was Google Spreadsheets.

Yes, Google Spreadsheets. It’s great on a student budget because it’s free. Google Docs became the location of your files, and if you can connect to the internet and login, you have access to your project. But by far the best feature of the Google Docs Suite was the collaboration element. With the ability to have multiple contributors editing at the same time, this was how we scheduled and estimated construction projects. It just worked. Flawlessly.

Now, out of stage left comes Tom’s Planner. It seems someone had the idea and initiative to take the concept behind online document collaboration and craft it into a sophisticated planning app like MS Project or Primavera.

More information on the app can be found at Tomsplanner.com. The details on pricing are few and far between, but I can definitely see Microsoft watching this very closely. Who knows, maybe Google will decide to buy it. After all, they’re just about buying everything right now.

Via LifeHacker