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As with all disciplines, project management has a set of rules that must be followed and a set of recommendations that make work easier. But as in all engineering, there is no single magical formula or equation, no matter how much managers and physicists alike would love to have it. We present a working solution tailored to academic projects that requires only a minimum of effort and discipline and results in huge benefits, which will be presented in this article. Commercially available project management tools are not suited to manage the diversity of work in research institutes. We have therefore adopted a set of open source tools, implemented some custom additions, and integrated the tools into a coherent product to suit our purpose. It enables developers to track their work and communicate effectively, project managers to monitor progress of individual projects, and management to supervise critical parameters of the company at any time. In the article, the experiences gained by using the system are presented. As it has turned out in practice, the product is also ideal for research institutes, as is demonstrated by its use in control groups of DESY and ANKA.
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