Forum OpenACS Development: Re: dotWRK: Project Manager
Tasks should allow you to enter either (your choice):
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Estimated completion time
OR
Optimistic, Estimated, Pessimistic completion time.
This will allow us to create PERT or CPM charts, depending on what they enter. We can also compute confidence intervals (which as far as understand it, is the chance that we will meet the projected deadline).
Should tasks be hierarchical?
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It seems to me that it might be nice to provide a "Breakdown" option on tasks. That way, either the project manager or the individual concerned can break down a Task into several smaller Tasks. It would be nice to have the option to progressively break down a project into smaller and smaller pieces of work.
WBS
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It looks like it's kind of standard practice to break down the Tasks using a decimal place system, where the number of the task shows the hierarchy of the tasks. So I guess having tasks hierarchical does make sense.
For example, 3.2.5 is a Task that is a subtask of 3.2.
However, at the company I work, I seriously doubt that people would accept numbers like 132.417.3135.31 as a unique identifier for a Task.
We use tickets currently, and people really like being able to refer to it by a number. They even use the number in ways I didn't forsee, like using it to keep track of what's being sent out to customers. I'd personally much prefer a unique identifier on each ticket to a long code. Perhaps that can be optional as well? Who would want the longer codes?
Projects and Tasks
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I toyed with the idea of having these be the same thing. I don't think it makes sense, however, because there's going to be information about a project that you wouldn't need to keep track of for Tasks. I think.
What would some of that information be?
Deliverables - could be in both
Goals - could be in both
Team members - could be in both
Territory (northeast, northwest, california, etc) - not in both.
Hmmm, I'd like to hear other people's thought on this. However, right now it seems like it's not a good idea.
WBS
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There seems to be some disagreement in the field about whether to have WBS be a list of deliverables ("nouns"), or a list of activitiess and their dependencies.
I think we should allow flexibility either way. Our company probably will want to break everything down and build the dependencies right away. Others might not. I'm not so sure how hard or easy this is going to be to do.
Individual member goals
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Team members:
- I'm scheduled for more tasks than I can accomplish today. I want to know which task is most critical. Which tasks affect other people (critical path), and which ones have hard deadlines?
- I want to be able to see my schedule for several months out, and see if I'm over or underscheduled at any particular time.
Managers and Project managers:
- When I'm scheduling the tasks of a project, I want to make sure I'm not overscheduling an individual team member. I want to see how an individuals' scheduling will affect my deadline date.
- I also want to see who's doing what on a project, and if it is on schedule. I'd like to know how likely it is we'll meet the deadline. I'd like to know if there are any problems that I need to address.
Milestones
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Do we want to separately track important dates and milestones? I guess these should just be tracked as part of the WBS.
Scheduling again
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We're going to eventually need a calendar tie-in. What about holidays, for example? They are going to affect the scheduling of Tasks, and affect deadlines, etc.. Also, what if a person goes on vacation?
Here are some listed cons to MS Project
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(from the project management class link earlier)
- Illusion of control
- Workgroup features ok, still in-progress
- Scaling
- No estimation features
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And we're in agreement that we're going to use:
- content repository
- workflow / bugtracker
Right?
