Edmund,
I will try to answer your questions, but first a little bit about myself
and the environments I have worked in. I have been involved in project
management (of software development) for over 20 years. Scale of projects
have been single developer projects to multiyear projects involving over 40
developers. I have also used project management tools to manage the
workload of a staff of over 100 people using a super-project arrangement.
I have used commercial project management tools and had selected a product
sold by ABT called Project Workbench. I found the features of Project
Workbench to be exactly those that were essential for a project manager.
The issues I and my staff ran into with this tool had to do with user
interface, which some people did not like, and the handling of sub and
super-projects and roll-up algorithms. I now work in a university
environment, both on the academic side and on the administrative software
side. We are extremely interested in mrproject and we are thinking of how
we might participate in the development of the tool by setting up some kind
of a student project for some of our CS graduate students.
What kind of project do you manage? Please describe a little bit.
Software development. These are projects executed by either one developer
or a team of developers.
What Project management tool do you use currently? (paper qualifies as
tool
too!)
Paper task lists.
What data do you enter in your PM tool? How and when do you enter it?
Dates, resource commitments and dependencies.
What for and how are you using your PM tool?
(What infos are you trying to get from your PM tool?)
To try to plan projects as well as to track and plan workloads (resource
leveling).
Who gets what PM information from you in what form?
Do you change your plan while project is going on?
It is important to maintain a baselined project plan as well as update the
plan as you go. We need to periodically compare the current plan to a
baseline.
What features do you find most usefull from your PM Tool?
What functions in your PM tool do you use most of the time.
What functions of you current PM tool would you need
at least in a new PM tool to be as productive with the new tool
as you are with your current tool?
What do you find most annoying when using your PM tool?
What aspect of your PM tools would you like to have improved.
When the tool focuses first on user interface but ignores many of the
critical features. Eye candy software design is frustrating when you need
to get the job done.
What feature would you ask us to implement
so that you can be much more productive?
There is a set of critical features that the absence of would severely
limit effective use. A good example of this in the version of mrproject I
have used is the lack of finish-to-finish, start-to-start, and
start-to-finish dependencies. Baselining is another critical feature, as
would be an automated scheduling feature (with the option to be either
resource constrained or not, so you can get a what-if-we-crash-the-project
view). Another would be a working network view or report. These are just
a few.
How much more productive/cost effective would this make you
(your organisation) compared to now?
Could you give us a typical PM File of yourself?
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| | [email protected]|
| | efactory.se |
| | Sent by: |
| | [email protected]|
| | actory.se |
| | |
| | |
| | 09/06/2002 05:00 AM |
| | Please respond to mrproject|
| | |
|---------+-------------------------------------->
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| |
| To: [email protected] |
| cc: |
| Subject: MrProject digest, Vol 1 #292 - 3 msgs |
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
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Today's Topics:
1. collection of possible target groups and feature list (info)
2. re: Mr. Project DB (info)
3. Re: DB? (gem)
--__--__--
Message: 1
From: "info" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 20:39:33 +0200
Subject: [MrProject] collection of possible target groups and feature list
Reply-To: [email protected]
Dear MrProject enthusiasts!
As I offered my help to this list for managing a feature list for the
development
of MrProject and my help was accepted I want to start with a request of
help.
I will collect all information I get from you and condense it into a list
with reasoning.
If you know people working as project managers or use project management
tools,
please ask them to answer (some of) the questions below. It might result
for
them in a
free good project management software designed for their needs.
If you have some good questions, please tell me:
Here are my questions (and my own answers):
First I want to focus on possible target groups.
So please tell me what target groups you know of.
Thanx for your help
Edmund Humenberger
Target group list:
==================
What type of projects do have use for and do profit from
project-management-software:
a) government for their major acquisition/development projects/programs
b) large Engineering/Construction companies
c) event management (Sport events, fares, PR events, conferences...)
d) big house building, factory building projects or construction projects
e) EU funded Software development projects (also Open Source)
f) product design projects (e.g. design a car or video recorder)
g) founding of a company (not much need for now)
h) release of a product in a new market (Marketing plan)
i) movie production
j) research project?
k) space mission programms (not a big user group)
l) ??
m) ??
n) ??
List of absolutely required features for what target group:
===========================================================
multiuser design (a, )
strong resource management and cost management capabilities (a,e)
central data-repository-deamon (Database) to be able to interface with
other
data sources
CPM (Critical Path Method)
plan<->reality comparison
possible permanent change of plan with change documentation
...
...
Questions:
==========
What kind of project do you manage? Please describe a little bit.
What Project management tool do you use currently? (paper qualifies as
tool
too!)
What data do you enter in your PM tool? How and when do you enter it?
What for and how are you using your PM tool?
(What infos are you trying to get from your PM tool?)
Who gets what PM information from you in what form?
Do you change your plan while project is going on?
What features do you find most usefull from your PM Tool?
What functions in your PM tool do you use most of the time.
What functions of you current PM tool would you need
at least in a new PM tool to be as productive with the new tool
as you are with your current tool?
What do you find most annoying when using your PM tool?
What aspect of your PM tools would you like to have improved.
What feature would you ask us to implement
so that you can be much more productive?
How much more productive/cost effective would this make you
(your organisation) compared to now?
Could you give us a typical PM File of yourself?
thanx for your help
--__--__--
Message: 2
From: "info" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 20:40:05 +0200
Subject: [MrProject] re: Mr. Project DB
Reply-To: [email protected]
Thanx for taking your time and listening to me:
>First of all, thanks for the input. Second, I think you are getting down
>to implementation details which imho isn't really relevant yet.
>
Might be.
>What I'm currently curious about is how to get the multiuser UI useful
>and behaving like one would suspect. If you call the feature of
>committing to the repo/database/server save, publish, commit, ..., isn't
>really relevant here either (though you explained a few difference
>between traditional save and publish it's basically the same).
>
I think that some small differences in function sometimes make a big
difference
for users. And I still think that not beeing able to delete something is a
big difference compared to the concept of "Save" so that a new word should
be used, as I think to "publish" is a new concept seen from the user
perspective.
But you are right that seen from the programmers perspective it is quite
similar to "save".
>> Why in the hell a user has to know that there is RAM where the CPU can
>> manipulate data (and therefore the user manipulate data), and there is
>> Harddisk, where the user has to "save" after he manipulated the data
>> before he will switch down the computer or before the next crash. This
>> he has to do because in case of no power supply or crash RAM does loose
>> all data. Only Data on Harddisk do survive Power loss or crash.
>
>This is not a discussion to be held in the MrProject project. This
>should be discussed in a mailing list at GNOME or KDE or any other
>desktop environment. Because basically, MrProject should behave in the
>same way as other GNOME (GNOME Office) applications.
>
You are right here too: I just wanted to make clear where my suggestions
come from. My general experience with Linux people (KDE or Gnome) is that
they say: "It is good as it is because it is this way since ever, so it
must
be good and therefore we dont need to change it"
Just look at the crap email clients (from a user perspective) the Open
Source
community produced for the last 20 years.
Then there had to be Microsoft to introduce new concepts, and users loved
it,
and open source programmers started to copy the concepts.
But Open Source programmers "very rarely" introduce new user interface
concepts or
make software more easy usable. They just dont get it even when I explain
then
the advantages of new concepts.
>> Now to the questions of "should we work on the DB" or "should we only
sto=
>re
>> in the DB"
>>
>> First: XML is a much more flexible dataformat that storing data in
>> relational Database.
>> What I would opt for would be an Object orientated DB (or XML Database
wi=
>th
>> transactions).
>> Limiting ourself to relational defined DB strucutre would be (in my
point=
> of
>> view) a mistake for the expandability/flexibility of Mr.Project.
>
>Hmm .. not sure I get what you mean here? Why would an XML file be more
>flexible than a relational database?
>
Because you can throw an XML file to a XML database and the database doesnt
need to have tables set up for the data. An XML database does not have
predefined
tables and relations for the data (records). When throwing an XML file at a
XML DATABASE,
the strucutre of the Database comes with the XML file.
So when you throw a new scructured XML file at the DB, it just takes it. No
admin interaction is needed.
>> >What I'm unsure of is that when you work in this mode. Do you want your
>> >changes to be written back directly (you change something in the UI and
>> >it's updated on the database directly). Or do you want something like
>> >"save" or "update database" instead.
>>
>> I prefer the concept of "publish".
>
>Which is pretty much like saving in a public place and keeping each save
>file.
From the technical point of view: yes
>Anyway, it doesn't solve the issue that you have by having live
>data in your client (which you would get with a push protocol from the
>server), imagine the following scenario:
>
>Both person A and person B opens the project on there computers. It just
>so happens that both person A and person B tries to edit the same task
>at the same time. Person A finishing his changes before person B does
>and commit his data to the server, which in turn pushes the changes to
>p
>erson B. Person B would now (while still editing the task) get all of
>person A's changes updating his local copy. He will be very confused and
>he probably didn't want this.
As every task is owned by a person, only the owner can edit it. So no
collision
can happen as described by you. The person can break a task into subtasks
and make
more detailed plans from a big task it was assigned as beeing responsible
for it and
it accepted beeing responsible for it.
Yu can change ownership (of process) if you have the right to do so.
>So, how can it be solved. Maybe in some way similar to how CVS works:
>
No.
>When you want to commit you check for changes in the repository
>(server), if there are changes you have to update your local copy first.
>This makes sure that all conflicts are handled on the client side. If a
>conflict arises the user must resolve it before committing.
>
>This might be a good idea, but it will probably add a bunch of UI
>issues, like how to resolve conflicts in a good and easy-to-understand
>way. How should it be visualized and so on. I prefer to leave most of
>these thoughts to the future until after we have decided what might be
>the best way to go here.
>
I dont think that that kind of features are needed (at least not for the
far
future).
>> >If you want the first, it's harder to implement, if you want the second
>> >it's a piece of cake.
>>
>> But the question might not be "what is easy to implement" but much
>> more "what makes MrProject a killer application to a certain type of
user=
>s"
Yours
Edmund
--__--__--
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 00:11:44 -0400
From: gem <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [MrProject] DB?
Reply-To: [email protected]
Mikael Hallendal wrote:
>
> Yes, a database backend is planned (probably by using libgda which gives
> transparent support for different backends, mysql, postgreSQL and
> possibly others).
>
> What I'm unsure of is that when you work in this mode. Do you want your
> changes to be written back directly (you change something in the UI and
> it's updated on the database directly). Or do you want something like
> "save" or "update database" instead.
>
> If you want the first, it's harder to implement, if you want the second
> it's a piece of cake.
>
Hi - its me the p3 user again - P3 actually does both after a fashon -
changes
not involving dates are written immediatly, dates and related numbers are
calculated at the update (applied current data date) - sometimes this
causes a
situation where a resource must be deleted and added new because the
forecast
calculations must be innitialized. Since the dates are in the database it
is easy
to do monthly or quarterly summaries or even sliding reports showing the
calculated dates from a series of updates (because the database file is
usually
renamed at each update and retained) These features also allow the creation
of
various targets and scenerios which can also be reported and displayed
graphicly
in various ways. If you go too far down this path you may have to change
your
thinking about resources and calanders, maybe a different software is
needed for
large projects. P3 is expensive software. and must be paid year by year
because
the complexity cannot be learned out of a book - I have used it since the
original IBM PC first came out and learned stuff bit by bit. New users are
forced
to attend expensive training and spend hours on the phone with tech support
just
to keep going from month to month. Hmm this begins to sound like a business
model
for open source. #;->
--__--__--
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