Diary of a Network Geek

I do things on the cheap.

I’m so used to working with a minimal budget, or a non-existant one, that I can pretty well come up with software or IT resources for any project for nothing or almost nothing. Granted, it may take some time, but I still manage to do it. Well, project planning and management are no different.
I’ve been trying to get reorganized since getting out of the hospital and stabilizing my health. This is no small task, especially at work. So, I’ve been thinking of ways to organize my thoughts, goals and projects, both at work and at home. That led me to search for free project management templates of various kinds to move me closer to that goal. You, my faithful readers, reap the benefit of my efforts.

First, I found a place called BusinessBalls.net. Not sure where they got that name from, to be honest, but they’ve got a great collection of free templates you can use to layout both business and personal projects.
Next, I found Matt H. Evans’ collection of free Excel templates. Though he didn’t create them all himself, he’s got quite a collection of financial, budgeting and analysis spreadsheets there that should help with all kinds of project management issues.
Finally, there’s the Free Project Decision Templates from RFP-Templates.com. Again, a fairly good selection of decision making templates to make project management a “kinder, gentler” process. A word of warning about this site, though. It seems to be more geared toward advertising their Request for Proposal “package”, for which they charge. Still, some of their stuff is free, so they can’t be all bad.

Oh, and if you need a free office suite to do all this with, why not try OpenOffice? It’s free and compatible with Microsoft Office, so there’s nothing to lose but the download time!

Now, I’m off to plan and implement Operation Wacky Weasel!
(No, I don’t know what that is, but the name sounded so, so good, I couldn’t pass it up.)