Planzone is a new project collaboration application available online. A project management, a document store and a wiki space per-project gives the first steps in sharing the project with team members or partners.

Project management is entering a new epoch. The long standing supremacy of Project management a la Microsoft Project has gone. In this antic model, the project manager is alone to work on his single Microsoft Project plan. Of course he discuss with his team, ellaborate plans with the management but he rarely share his project file with the team. The reason is that Microsoft Project is not shareable. It is not designed for collaboration and only one person can work on the project definition at a time.

Nowadays you are expecting more collaboration when you use an application. You see this with a number applications that Google develops such as the calendar, the document writer, the spreadsheet. In these application the same document can be changed, displayed by several users. The technology is here to do this. With the establishing of Web 2.0, it's not only a matter of technology but a matter of individuals who are willing to share what they do. The project management has to catch this Web 2.0 wave.

With Planzone the project management is jumping on the Web 2.0 wave by providing a space, called a Planzone, where a project is organized and grows. The project is not a matter of an individual (like in Microsoft Project) but rather a collaborative work of all the team. The project manager organizes and drives the project as usual but team members and partners can share information on the project , modify it and exchange information, documents, ideas, tasks with each other. This is true Web 2.0 not only by the technology (it's full of AJAX stuff), but also by the social engineering nature that it creates.

Within a Planzone you can invite users who will work, are interested in or must be informed by your projects. You create your projects, build your team by inviting those users and assign them tasks. A document storage space allows to share documents on the projects. It can be used to save deliverables associated with the project. The project wiki space can be used to write online documentation.

The Planzone is at the beginning and many functionalities will be added like mail notifications, calendars, activity scheduling, budget management and others.