project management app

[Shankar V]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:42 PM, John Boland <jj.boland-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> i'm looking for suggestions/ideas/pointers for what folks are using for
> project management.
>
> i need to track/update/report on about a dozen folks and their daily and
> long-term projects and assignments.  i was thinking about something
> wiki-based for portability.  some of the users are windows-philic.  the
> array of things on sourceforge is ... immense and not always suited to what
> i think i'm looking for.
>
> plus, if it looks pretty for pointy-haired management that's even better.
>
> thanks.
>


We had a similar requirement at work a few years ago. Since we use Twiki
extensively for various project-related documents, a few folks here created
a plugin (in Perl) for project planning/management. This plugin has been
open sourced and can be downloaded from the Twiki site:
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/OoProjectPlannerPlugin

The plugin lets you create tasks, put in effort estimates and can create
summary reports on done or remaining tasks, tasks and days per developer
etc. You can also create fairly complex queries and display certain things
as simple bar graphs within the Twiki page. Our management seemed quite
happy with it since they could export some of that data to a spreadsheet and
create more fancy charts for the higher ups. Each task in the table can be
made a WikiWord and linked to either the specification related to that task
or could take you to a Twiki page that the lead/manager created that has
more details on the task.

The one major missing feature is that it doesn't track dependencies among
tasks, but we've all learned to partition our tasks such that dependencies
are obvious. This is not a tool for complex projects, but may suit the need
for a smallish one.

Hope this helps,
Shankar