Collaboration software.

• Position: TechnologyTOOLS - Pragmatic Professional Edition of Software Planner

Pragmatic Software Co. has released a Professional Edition of Software Planner, its Web-based Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) tool. The Professional edition includes advanced project management features, time sheet management, project-based security and extended collaborative features.

Software Planner Professional allows project managers to create and secure hierarchical project plans within a project and secure the project plans so that only specific people may access them. Project tasks can be hierarchical and tasks can be linked to one another to prevent a specific task from beginning before others complete.

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Project managers can set baseline dates and costs and track variances as the project progresses. Project managers can also view all their project plans from a single screen, to determine the status of all their projects from a single location.

Team members are alerted via email as tasks are assigned to them, and as they update their progress using the Web-based interface, the project manager is alerted via email. Team members update progress by entering hours and percentage complete against assigned tasks. This time entry provides robust time reporting for timesheet management and client billing.

Clients that engage the team in project work can also view the status of each project. With appropriate security granted, clients can view the overall status of the project, and drill into the tasks assigned to ensure that the project is progressing as planned.

"Existing features of Software Planner include requirements management...