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I have multiple projects on my own, each one with a deadline and a (personal) estimate of the time that I should invest to get the thing done.
At a particular time I can be involved in multiple projects.
What I need is a software that lets me plan and display a "timeline": a line for each project that extends when I've to push efforts into it.
Did you know something that does something similar? I remember that this is a technique used in Software Engineering, but I don't remember the name...
EDIT
Thanks to duffymo, I know that I want a Gantt diagram manager :)
Related:
Which Gantt chart/Project management tool would you recommend for linux?
Project Management — resource chart
Can you recommend a good php Gantt charting development?
Is there any LaTeX package for drawing Gantt diagrams?
On the Feeware java-based front, you have GanttProject.
You can launch it from this jnlp link.
If you don't have Microsoft Project, you can do this in Excel using a stacked bar chart.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA010346051033.aspx
I think it's called a Gantt chart.
And Google can find a bunch of open source possibilities, including this one. I don't know if it's any good.
Microsoft project is a good one.
For Mac OS, you should take a look at OmniPlan.
Do you really need a Gannt chart?
You have a collection of work (a backlog) that includes items from several projects. You need to predict the end dates of projects based on the rate at which you're actually completing work (your velocity) and on the current mix of work items, and make decisions about shuffling the backlog to move the estimate completion dates of various projects. Right so far?
Given a velocity (units of work per fixed time period), you can plan ahead by dividing your backlog items into time boxes (iterations) that hold no more than a velocity's worth of items. The time box that the last work item for a project lands in is when that project is predicted to be done. Shuffle the mix accordingly.
This is called "reality based" scheduling in some quarters, since it's based on a demonstrated rate of progress and consistent estimation. Gannt is plan based; there's a tendency to want to make reality conform to the plan, which causes a lot of stress and pain.
There are a number of Agile/Scrum tools that will automate the management of your work backlog, and let you track work and calculate velocity. I'm a fan of Pivotal Tracker, which is web-based and free. (Full disclosure: I worked with Pivotal Labs.)
I would recommend you an online and free tool that will let you create what you want, it is called "Gantter"
For Linux and Windows: Planner
OpenProj is really capable, seems to be MSProject compatible, and works on Windows / Linux / Mac (it's Java based). It's also free.
About time management software, there are many kinds of it, one I have used is called EfficientCalendar, just an advise.
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So, a little background. We are a small company with a half-dozen developers. We have been evaluating many project management / issue tracking software packages (TRAC, Redmine, FogBugz, etc) and trying to create a decent process/workflow for managing projects, adding features, fixing bugs, etc. I'd like to think our requirements are similar to most other companies our size.
Essentially, what this comes down to is
1) An easy way for the PM and developers to track projects, issues, bugs, etc
2) An easy way for the PM and admin/executives to get a birds-eye view of progress and easily manage timelines, schedules, and priorities.
After trying TRAC, we moved to Redmine. We found Redmine to be easier than track to administer and the ability to have sub-projects and sub-tickets is great.
However, the big problem we ran into is the fact that it is very difficult to manage schedules and timelines. It seems like it would be incredibly time-intensive to manage because you have to manually enter a start date, estimated time, and end date for each ticket, project, etc.
So if you setup a month's schedule based on priorities, what are you supposed to do when a particular ticket/issue/subproject takes up more time than was estimated. Right now, it appears I would have to go back in and MANUALLY change the start/end date of every single item.
What would be ideal is to be able to set priorities/dependencies and estimated time on tickets/milestones, and have the software automatically manage the start/end dates. Does anyone know how to get Redmine to do this, or recommend a different software package that can do something like this!
From what I understand you need more than a issue tracking system. More exactly you need to also have a task scheduling mechanism. I do not know a issue tracker with task scheduling engine. I guess that with this feature you are entering somehow in the project management area so I would recommend a project management tool.
I think MS Project (as Kalven said) is too much for you. Try a simpler alternative like RationalPlan first.
If you use the "schedules" plugin (not sure if it's compatible with Redmine 1.1.0) you can set it up so that you can automatically set the start and end dates of issues. I'm not certain that it takes issue relations into account though, but if it does, it should be enough to just change the estimated time for an issue that is taking longer than you first thought and then refill the calendar/schedules.
I have also used many project management software for my small business. However, from last 8 months I am using Project Professional 2010 which is helping me a lot in project task management and time management. I will recommend you to opt for the same.
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I am going to be starting a new job in a few weeks where I will be responsible for both the maintenance and development of a couple of existing web applications and the development of new web applications.
As I will be the only developer on the project and the previous developer was more of a hobbyist, no formal project management or planning techniques have been followed. Additionally no bug tracking has been used or if anything has been recorded its just been notes on paper.
I would therefore like to introduce a better system to help resolve some of the issues and help ensure things run more smoothly. I intend to develop using an agile process (likely scrum) and would therefore like to know what all-in-one solutions people could recommend for me to look into further. I am looking for something which will provide at minimum:
Project Planning
Defining new features
Time estimating
Ability to organise tasks by priority
Project Management
Tracking active tasks
Reporting
Bug Tracking
I would also like to let other staff easily submit new bugs in the applications which they find or customers report. Additionally support for them to add new stories / high level tasks would be of use so they can note down other new requirments/features and I can then work with them to outline more detailed tasks and estimates.
So far I have looked at a number of systems including:
FogBugz - Seems great for bug reporting but would need something else for project planning / management
Agile Buddy - This is probably the best solution I have found so far
Trac
Smart Sheets
Pivotal Tracker
However, as I have not actually used any of these systems myself I do not know what ones would be best or whether there is a better solution out there??? So any recommendations you can provide would be much appreciated.
Actually, FogBugz does project management as well. It will even try to learn how accurate time estimates for features are from each user, and give you estimated milestone completion times accordingly, with probabilities of finishing at various dates. I've used it for the bug tracking, and really liked it, but I've also read enough about its project management features to know that it has them, and they're pretty good.
FogBugz feature list
When I was working as a solitary developer, I picked up a copy of Planning Extreme Programming and bought a pack of 3x5 cards and a plastic box for them. I used those in the Planning Game and stuck the ones I was working on on my wall. My boss could walk by and see what I was working on. This worked well and cost little.
We're currently using Zen at work - it's a web-based Kanban board for planning. This is nice when your stakeholders aren't co-located or if priorities/requirements change frequently.
You can enter bugs as user stories with either system, or you could use a separate defect-tracking system.
I'd question if Scrum is suitable for a one-developer shop. It's targeted towards project management. I'd rather not have a stand-up meeting with myself. ;) XP (minus pair programming) works fine for a solitary developer.
For a one-man show, you don't need any tools to speak of.
Tools -- generally -- are for coordination.
If it's just you, what -- precisely -- are you coordinating?
If you want to make things visible, a pair of simple internally-focused web pages built from static content will do.
Bugs.
Burndown for Features.
That's about it. Use the simplest tools you can possibly use. I recommend using docutils to generate the HTML from plain, simple text.
Don't go tool-happy until you have a large enough team that simple text doesn't work any more.
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Does anyone have recommendations for a good task/time management tool.
Ideally this would just keep track of programming tasks / the project and the time spent also the option to produce an end of week report would be advantageous
at the lower end, for free software, there's ToDoList
FogBugz is your friend too. FB6 is a great PM tacking tool, I've been using 5 to manage my team and I'm trying to pry the money for FB 6 out of those that hold the purse strings.
For open source/ 1 dev its free as well.
A good tool with collaboration feature as well:
http://www.producteev.com/
We have been using Eylean for our project management. It has all the features you are looking for and then some. You will be able to visualize your tasks as post it notes on a task board, estimate how much time they will take and then track them in order to see how much time they actually take up. It might be little more than what you are looking for, but i really enjoy the software.
JIRA has a log work feature. You log your work on a per task/issue bases. My boss rather likes the reports.
If you work with a large team, Team Foundation has it all. Work item tracking (which can be tied to checkins and builds!), reports, all sorts of metrics. For a small organization though the cost is probably too high.
Voo2do is pretty good. I've used it before and it's great because it's very simple to start, but you can use the extended functionality as needed. And there's an API, which can fill in the missing features.
organize tasks by project
track time spent and remaining
add tasks by email
publish task lists
as easy as paper, but on the web 24x7
supports software guru Joel Spolsky's Painless Software Scheduling method
fancy-shmancy “ajax” interface
API for custom applications
For basic commandline task tracking I use http://wtime.sourceforge.net/ It's simple but effective but only has top level tasks.
Here's another vote for FogBugz. Originally I bought it for managing client projects, but I've grown to use it for keeping track of almost everything to-do related in my life -- simple tasks, stuff to remember, small personal/home projects, books to read, etc. It's feature-rich and has a handful of nice integration points, and while it's still very much software-type-task-oriented, it's handy. Very reasonably priced for the value.
For task management for myself - Outlook
It's centralised
I have to have my email open so I don't need to worry about yet another application
Sync to server so I can get it anywhere I have a browser
Sync to phone so I get reminders when not at the desk
Emails can be flagged as tasks
For task management for a team - TFS 2008 with SP 1. There is some nice enhancements in there with alerting that makes a big difference.
We use Smartsheet as a tasking and collaboration tool. It's pretty well based on the idea of a spreadsheet that you can add your own columns to. The sheets can be shared amongst team members, it sends you emails when anything changes, it has file share (without limit) - you can also give external people access so that they can raise bug notifications etc. that then get notified to the team. Works very well for us as it is SO flexible
I recommend Task Coach, an open source, single person, hierarchical task manager that allows for time tracking, categories, reminders and much more.
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So, at my current job we're usually 1-3 developers, 1-2 art directors and 1 project manager on each project, with the smallest ones just being one of each and the larger ones being three developers and two art directors.
I'm looking for a software, combination of softwares or some type of service that will allow us to manage our projects individually, it's important that we're able to manage several projects at once within one system/piece of software (without going through a too complicated setup process for each project) since we usually have 2-3 ongoing projects in parallel.
We need to be able to integrate with SVN, Track bugs/features/request, Put up milestones and some type of agile management a´la SCRUM would be nice.
Preferably it should be able to run on Windows (without to much hassle, ever tried to put up Apache+Python+Svn+Trac on the same Windows 2003 server and get them all to run together? not fun.) since we mostly do .NET development and most of our servers run Windows 2003.
Since you seem to have a maximum of six people working in a single room - I'd give serious consideration to not using software at all.
A whiteboard & cork board for each project, plus a whole lot of index cards / stickies can go a long, long way towards meeting the project management needs of one or two small projects.
(Failing that - I've found basecamp a fairly lightweight tool for small projects - although it doesn't do any sort of source control integration. I've also heard good things about the latest FogBugz - but I've had such bad personal experiences of earlier versions I've not tried it yet myself)
http://www.project-open.org/ covers your requirements and is available for Windows. However it is targeted at larger organizations (>20 employees), so that you might find it overkill for a group of 6.
I personally use BaseCamp for my company and have had great luck with it!
Edit oops, I didn't notice the SVN requirement, BaseCamp can help with the other stuff.
You might want to try out Mantis (www.mantisbt.org). It is a little cumbersome at first, but with a little bit of customization, it will work for you. It has SVN integration, and a bunch of other stuff which I haven't used yet... :|... such as Mobile support, Wiki support, etc.
And it's OSS (Open Source Software). Written in PHP, works with MySQL, or PostgreSQL. Just check it out, it's good.
http://www.mantisbt.org/
Atlassian's Jira Studio sounds like exactly what you need. It's hosted, so there's nothing to install.
If you want something that is quick and easy to work with that integrates well with Windows I would suggest Microsoft Office Groove. I have been using it on my current project and it also easily allows you to start new projects and add members.
It is not the best solution in the world, but it is included with Office '07 and it has tools to help with project management, bug reporting, calendar, meeting summaries, etc.
The one major problem I have found with it is that version control is not included by default. From what I understand you have to setup a SharePoint server to have version control in Groove, but I have not done this yet and have been hoping that my backups will work fine.
+1 for starting out with a whiteboard, stickies and whatever other office supplies you can think of. Being able to visualize the state of your project in a big visible wall can be really useful, more so than software-based tracking, IMHO.
You need to make sure the team is committed to keeping it up-to-date, though.
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We are starting off on a new from scratch implementation of an eCommerce solution and have decided on the framework to use too. There will be people joining the project who never really had any experience working on this framework. How should we go about doing the knowledge management/transfer? What could be the other challenges we need to be prepared for and how?
I can think of starting a WIKI with the most often needed content and addressing the most common roadblocks...Is that a good idea?
A glossary will go a long way.
Make sure that you and your team use the glossary when talking. There's no point having specific words for things if you don't use them correctly.
Stand up meetings each day should help with whatever roadblocks you have.
Make sure that your team has as high bandwidth communication as possible but also allow for quiet time where people can focus. Maybe have the first 15min. of each hour as a time when people can walk up to each other and ask questions etc. Then the other 45min is silent time. Reassess this to get a balance that everyone fits with.
I second the wiki recommendation - we have had a great deal of success using it to form a knowledge base and glossary for our projects.
Another technique that has worked well for us is creating a scratch repository (e.g. SVN, Git, etc.) for the purpose of technology ramp up spikes. We're currently working on an enterprise-scale project leveraging Spring's OSGi support, and we created several spike projects to explore different facets of the technology. This helped us grasp the technology before getting too encumbered by the business needs.
As far as challenges for which to be prepared? Expect the unexpected. Any time you embark on using a new framework/technology, you will run into roadblocks and your initial velocity will suffer. My best advice - simple determination. Don't give up on your framework at the first sign of stormy weather. Work through the issues. Eventually you'll clear most of the hurdles and your velocity will increase exponentially as the entire team gets more comfortable with the technology.
I think this is the ideal situation for a wiki. Let the developers choose which wiki to use, because they're the ones that will be using it!
There is this thread:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.738060.3
You might consider Alfresco.com's open source solution for content management.
I think the Wiki is a good idea, but there is also no substitute for real code. To that end a good quality (reference) implementation of a single function, which shows all the layers in the code stack, ie from browser/form down to the DB and back again.