Well, planning was never a difficult task. It's the execution and monitoring part which is a bich with a t.

Tools like MS project are useless to me because a. They don't allow easy sharing and update of tasks at a central location (unless you go for the Project Central which is a bad idea for point b), and b. Updating a project plan and making course corrections is a mystery I haven't been able to figure out yet.

Outlook Tasks do many of these things for me. I have categories to represent phases, modules and whatnot. I can assign resources to tasks and assign efforts to tasks. Most tasks are simple (meaning not many dependencies). I can simply assign the task to a teammate by sending him an email, and he can update the status of the task by sending periodic emails. Wonderful!

Where it lacks is a little bit of polishing here and there so that it serves all my requirements (and no, I don't need critical path management or other complex project management techniques incorporated)

The other option that one of my friends suggested today is the Team Foundation Server. How good is that?

The biggest advantage in using either Outlook or Team Foundation Server would be they would be used by almost everyone in the team through emails or Visual Studio.

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