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If you are sending work/progress reports to the project lead on a daily or weekly basis, I wondered if you would consider using Twitter or similar services for these updates.
Say if you're working remotely or with a distributed team and the project lead has a hard time getting an overview about the topics people are working on, and where the issues/time consumers are, would you set up some private accounts (or even a private company-internal service) to broadcast progress updates to your colleagues?
edit Thanks for the link to those products, but do you already use one of it in your company too? For real-life professional use?
Try Laconica: An open source Twitter-like system you could run on your own servers.
Look at http://www.yammer.com for a corporate version of twitter.
Maybe try campfire or basecamp.
We use Laconica on my team, it's very useful for those updates that you want to send to the whole team but aren't really worth wasting an email on.
Since only my team is using the installation of Laconica that we have, I take the RSS for the public feed and I integrated that into SharePoint.
So while the developers and PM's on our team use Twhirl to manage sending and recieving updates, management is still able to see the updates directly on our team site.
It's quite transparent in that nobody actually has to go to the Laconica instance I have setup to do anything except initially register.
Check out this post for information on how I integrated Laconica with SharePoint: How can I integrate Laconica update stream into SharePoint?
What about confidentiality and information security? I'm certain a company run IM service would be a better alternative.
I've viewed Twitter and similar services to be used as marketing tools to engage customers and prospects.
Or, the layer above Laconica called Identi.ca There's a good talk with the founder of Identi.ca about such usage over at IT Conversations.
Many of my colleagues are posting work updates on Twitter, being careful not to disclose company confidential information. From those working on open commercial development projects, I've even seen Twitter updates indicating which work item they were working on. Coolness.
I can see the appeal of using twitter in this way. Where I work, we send a daily project "snapshot" to basically everyone else in the company. As the company grows (we are nearing 35 employees now), this is becoming a bit of a burden to read through (or at the very least file/delete) all the status emails as they arrive. I don't know that I could see Twitter replacing these emails, however, because these emails are not necessarily supposed to tell someone when something is completed, but rather to tell someone what it is I'm working on today, and what my upcoming projects are in the future.
I guess most of our project updates are actually done more frequently in person. For larger projects, we now employ what's referred to as a "burndown". This basically means we gather for a quick re-estimation of how much work is left on a project, which then results in a nice graph that should show whether the project is on track or not.
We do also throw in the occasional email when there's something more immediate, or if someone isn't available for discussion/notification.
I would consider what the reports were meant to accomplish, and then discover a solution that accentuated that objective without being a logistical nightmare :)
Twitter might only be appropriate if the updates had a short shelf life, and if scattering them among other updates wasn't destructive.
There's also a question of confidentiality on any 3rd party service like this.
Check out https://presentlyapp.com/
The Prologue theme for WordPress was designed with this in mind.
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I'm working with my brother on a website idea we have, and we'd like to use a tool to plan sprints and assign estimates to individual tickets.
Atlassian's JIRA+Greenhopper looks fantastic but costs $20/month and at this stage we're just validating our idea and would rather not spend money on a tool if we can avoid it.
Are there any free alternatives to these tools?
Taiga is 100% free and has all the features that comes with something like JIRA.
http://taiga.io/
It even has a burn-down chart! So that's a win!
Here's a site with a nice overview of what Taiga integrates with and real developer opinions on the tool.
http://stackshare.io/taiga
Trello is a good tool for creating task boards and tracking work for small teams.
https://trello.com/
I get this question a lot as a Scrum Trainer.
I strongly recommend Index Cards and a Physical Scrum Board. While it won't calculate time addition for you, that task is trivial and the 'information at a glance' that a Scrum Board offers is hugely beneficial.
If you absolutely HAVE to have an electronic board, try Visual Studio Online (TFS in the cloud) which, at present, is free for up to 5 users.
Another option (We use Jira) would be YouTRACK. http://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/buy/
It is free for up to 10 users and seems to offer pretty much the same functionality.
DISCLAIMER: I have never used YouTRACK on any level. IntelliJ is a great product though.
For Agile project management, I have used extensive Thoughtworks - Mingle
It's free for 5 users.
Another good alternative could be agilefant. Agilefant offers a free and open source product that can be downloaded and deployed into your own private cloud.
If you are looking open source project management, which you can host on your own, the following list could be useful:
ProjectLibre is a java based ms-project rich client alternative
LibrePlan is a rich client and based on these videos it seems like ms-project and includes hours spend by user on task, collaboration was not visible in the videos
OpenProject is a web based software with features such as issues, time lines (gantt chart), calendars, meeting notes and more
Redmine is a web based software using the Ruby on Rails framework that includes issues, work log, a wiki and a gantt chart and more.
You can also check TargetProcess (http://www.targetprocess.com/pricing/) it's free for 5 users
i use it for three months and it's very good
I used Trello (http://trello.com) and Mingle (http://getmingle.io) on two different projects. Trello is great for tracking tasks and collaborating for small team. My trello project team had 3 members, we were distributed. We also use Google drives to track unstructured information. My mingle project team have more than 10 people, and used it for years. Team love using it for standup on big touch TV and different roles (BA/QA/PM) like it because you have have your own workspace track different tasks and sometime build their own report).
IceScrum.
It's open source and you can run on your own server.
The best open source project planning in my opinion!
https://www.teamwork.com/pricing
"If you don't pay after the 30 day free trial you can still use Teamwork Projects free forever"
"We also have a Free Forever Plan with 2 projects and 100mb space"
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I tired my hands on bazaar(launchpad), for the reason that i can host my project at launchpad, and bazaar (my local machine) would be tightly integrated with launchpad. I have posted my question at launchpad forum, and have not got any answer. Anyways...
So i was thinking about shifting it from there to some other site. I dont know why, but couple of friends said sourceforge has not remain that good, but i still see too many project linking to sourceforge.
PS recommendation. Is there a place where you guys upload your personal projects, and also SVN I think is the most popular, but with git/bazaar, I dont know if it just a hype or distributed version controlling is really the way to go.
I'm very happy with Assembla for my personal stuff. They offer all kinds of version control and project management tools (SVN, Git, Trac, etc). It's free for public projects (though there is a storage limit for these) and they offer rather affordable private plans (which I like a lot for managing my personal stuff with tickets, wiki etc).
I have many personal projects at Google Code. It's easy to use, and lets other people find and use my code.
For minor personal projects (mostly projects I show off on my web site), I actually use Dropbox. It's got what I need for my own needs:
I can work on my code on several machines (it syncs files across machines.)
I can access my files through the web (it has a web interface.)
If I need to go back to an old version of a file, or restore a deleted file, I can do that through the web interface (it stores a revision every time the file is modified, and it's easy to see a list of versions and download them or choose to replace the current version.)
It's also got support for making part of the structure public, so that others can download the latest version of the code. You can even share the folder so that others with Dropbox can modify the files.
Check it out!
Well, there's 2 problems here. 1) What to use for SCM, and 2) Where to host your project. I'd settle on a SCM system first, then choose a host that you like which supports your provided system. As for personal preference, I like SVN, and have been hosting projects at google code lately. Google code is kind of new, and not super feature-rich, but isn't too bad as far as hosts go.
Mercurial (and Git I believe) has a built-in web interface that easily links to your repository and allows you to host the code yourself. It provides a customizable web interface for code browsing, and allows other to clone a repo from your site instead of from SFEE. Additionally, you can set up password protection to allow a certain set of users to check into each repository.
Check out this link to see how to host repositories using Apache, and this link for Mercurial info in general.
http://bzr.bz (my project) does private bzr + trac hosting
its not free but its cheap
perfect for personal projects etc.. that are not open source
I can't believe nobody as mentioned Github yet! Github offers free git hosting for open source projects, and paid hosting otherwise.
Beanstalk offers free SVN hosting, but with a Diskspace limit of 100MB and only 3 users. You can pay to have it upgraded.
Both of these are good choices (Depending on whether or not you like Git/SVN of course), and are obviously globally accessible via the internet.
It might be a late answer by now, but personally I recommend http://repositoryhosting.com/
They offer SVN/GIT/HG hosting with Trac support, WebDAV, unlimited projects/unlimited users for 6$ a month.
I've tried other providers (assembla, github and even tried to put it on my own server), but this deal beats all competitors. I was even able to put it on my own subdomain.
Their interface is a bit minimalistic, but it does the job very well.
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I was asked to manage and develop a project. The client does not really care if I hire people who would do it or I do it myself. Thus, I've decided to be more manager than developer.
Are there any (free / low cost) web projects that could help me to communicate with each "sub-developer" outta there on Internet?
What I expect is to have similar project as basecamp, however sub-developers wouldn't know about each other because I would be communicator between them. It's possible that basecamp includes this kind of service, but I am not going to pay to every possible similar service to know this.
If you have some real-life experience with this kind of problem I'm about to encounter, please, write it here.
Thank you
As many open source projects found, trac is a good fit - lightweight project management with integrated subversion interface:
Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team's established development process and policies.
It provides an interface to Subversion, an integrated Wiki and convenient reporting facilities.
Trac allows wiki markup in issue descriptions and commit messages, creating links and seamless references between bugs, tasks, changesets, files and wiki pages. A timeline shows all current and past project events in order, making the acquisition of an overview of the project and tracking progress very easy. The roadmap shows the road ahead, listing the upcoming milestones.
Both trac and subversion can be used from anywhere on the Web, using one of the free or low cost providers (for some references, see TracUsers).
I'd set up sharepoint if i were you. It's perfect for handling projects and talking to members. Also set up a couple of mailing-lists where you all can easily communicate.
Good Luck
I would suggest looking at Assembla, it has issue tracking, version control and Trac support all in it - and it's free.
It is possible that you can do this with the free version of AceProject.
There are quite a lot of software available to manage projects easily, here I'd suggest you to check out ProofHub - https://www.proofhub.com (heads up - I work there). It allows you to capture both the full picture and a detailed snapshot of your plans and progress. The Gantt charts and task management feature provide clear picture for you to understand what is being worked on and what needs to be done. You can track task dependencies on your Gantt chart to see the progress of your projects. Here's how it looks:
ProofHub Overview
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I manage a small group and I'd keep my work breakdown in project. However, it's difficult to provide my team with an adequate view into the project and ability to report on their progress. I looked at MS Project Server (the sharepoint webpart) but it's an expensive proposition.
Has anyone had any experience with any other tool (commercial is fine) that helps team view and report on their work as managed by MS Project? FWIW, I have looked at OpenProj and it appears to be a decent solution for viewing project files on the desktop. Anything web-based, keeping in mind that I'd like people to report on their work not just view their work.
**A good web based hosted Project Management software that suits my EPM needs is called valleyspeak project server, which I found at www.valleyspeak.com. One of the main reasons why I like the software is the fact that I could continue to work in Microsoft Project 2007 while sharing my Microsoft Project plans with my teams.
Because it is a hosted service, I did not have to buy expensive software or deal with installation and maintenance headaches. The functionality that I have with valleyspeak to manage my geographically dispersed teams works well for me.**
Not exactly the tool rather technology, but i lately start reading about scrum and find it interesting and useful.
As "llya" suggested before maybe you should have a look at scrum as a methodology.
But on your question here you have some really good web-based alternatives:
acunote works pretty well also, and is web based and free for small teams.
The one I personally use trac
scrumworks
Here are a few open source apps to look at:
Joynet Connector
http://joyent.com/connector/
Clocking IT
http://www.clockingit.com/
RedMine
http://www.redmine.org/
You can host them your self, but the first two do offer hosted versions
Jason
You could try Work Bench.
Take a look at www.ibnportal.com
Take a look at Projec.to online Microsoft Project viewer. It allows to upload MS Project files (.mpp), view them online, and share with others via browser, apart from Microsoft Project.
Disclosure: I'm one of the developers of this service.
Daptiv might be worth a look. http://www.daptiv.com/
Try InTask Professional (www.intaskrnd.com) - fast, cheap, tons of features, multi-user multi project, frequent updates. really good piece of software. alternatively you can try basecamp but it's much more expensive...
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I've recently begun evaluating a few project management projects for the company I work for. It's the classic case - growing company looking for the right solution (meaning, free or really cheap). It's a combination shop - Windows, Macs, and Linux on the desktop. The tech savviness, of course, ranges from newbie to unix guru.
I have yet to find anything really close to a total solution. I don't expect to find one, but I am looking for suggestions/guidance/any sort of feedback based on people's experience.
What I'm looking for:
web based
methodology independent (not looking for an agile solution, etc.)
free or really cheap
document management
timelines and milestones
task tracking and assigning
reporting
source control
development wiki
I've looked at Trac, Projectivity, Basecamp, JIRA, RT, XPlanner, and SharedPlan. I've stayed away from Bugzilla due to previous unhappy experiences with it. None of these things really does everything - some are extendable, but I'd check here before going down that path.
Thanks,
Read through Edward Tufte's long-running Ask E.T. topic Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts). There is no consensus answer, but a lot of things have been evaluated.
link text
Trac - integration of tickets / wiki / commit-comments is great.
Caveat: installation can be PITA...
Check out Jira Studio. All of Atlassian's apps, hosted for you.
http://www.jira.com/
You get wiki/tracker/svn browser and more.
Have a look at Redmine, it's a Rails app. Haven't used it yet myself, but thinking about moving to it from activecollab. This applications seems to be evolved quite fast last year.
My experience of Jira (with Confluence for the wiki) has been rather good, although it is quite pricey the support people were very responsive and helpful. The place where I used that had svn for version control, and the two played together OK. On the other hand I found Xplanner to be a very odd app - really inflexible if you don't want to be doing XP, and surprisingly documentation-centric for an XP shop.
If you don't mind doing a bit of configuration yourself and have a windows server somewhere in your shop then you could set up your very own customized project management system in SharePoint.
* web based
* methodology independent
* free or really cheap
* document management
* timelines and milestones
* task tracking and assigning
* reporting
* source control
* development wiki
The source control system is not a part of SharePoint so it is really a question whether that requirement is paramount or not. But besides that you will have all of the above for free if you install WSS (comes free with a 2003/2008 server)
There is even a book from O'Reilly about how to set up a PMIS in SharePoint
One solution for the more visual of us would be to use Drupal 6x. with the Project and Subversion (now Version Control) modules. I prefer Joomla with ProjectFork, but until its modded with a repo browser, this will have to do.
Hope this helps.
http://drupal.org/project/project
I looked hard at Alfresco and Joomla.
None met my needs because I wanted the ultimate in simplicity. But, you seem to prefer having the kitchen sink included (while keeping it easy to use, I guess), so either one of these might be right for you.
Currently, I'm throwing together my own using Django, keeping only the project-deadline, forum and file-versioning concepts.