Free Project Management Tools

I have spent the last few days evaluating free project management tools, as we have decided that we'd like to plan out our latest development in a bit more detail. I've never really been much of a fan of Microsoft Project (a bit to overly complicated), so I have been looking for something that is easy to use and web based.

The solution that I have decided to use is Mingle by Thoughtworks. This is free if you have 5 users, or if you are lucky enough to work for a non-profit or charity. The only requirements are a web server with a mySQL 5.00 database.

Mingle is based around a wiki based system and uses items it calls "Cards" to store information about the project. For example, you can create a card for each of your Use Cases and then add a card property of Requirement status which would allow you to move these cards through pre-defined project states (such as Analysis, Design, Implementation and Completed). You can even create card trees, which in this example would allow you to break the Requirement into software engineering tasks (such as Code, Unit Test etc).

Cards can also be used to keep track on defects and other project items. Mingle is highly configurable and can be adapted to a variety of project management uses. Thoroughly recommended.