This thread is a branch of: http://groups.drupal.org/node/39800#comment-112776
There are many good PM applications for managing milestones and tasks. There are also great time tracking apps. What I haven't found is what I would call a "virtual scheduling board." I would like to develop a spec for such a tool here, or discuss pre-existing apps that can address this need.
At my last position, I used a full office wall as a scheduling board. Horizontally, I had a column representing every work day for the next three weeks, and then a single column representing each of the subsequent 6 weeks. Vertically, I had a row for each developer on my team.
I generally scheduled developers in half-day "chunks". On an 8-hour day, a developer can invest 2 4-hour chunks on one or two projects. So, when a new client project came in, I would break out the budget into X number of 4-hour chunks, each of which was represented by a notecard. Reviewing my project estimate, I could roughly determine how many of these cards to distributed to each of my developers - based upon their discipline (ie, theming, module development, project management, etc.).
Then, I would start arranging cards on my board. I prioritized note card placement based upon dependencies, client need - what have you.
Taking this system to the next level, I color coded the notecards - "green" for billable work, "yellow" for non-billable work (such as internal development), and "pink" for warranty work or technical debt.
So, at a single glance at this board, I could see project status (by the color of its notecards and the # of cards remaining), availability of each dev, profitability of each dev, and the profitability of my entire team.
Frankly, I like that this system was /not/ tied to my agile task management system. I would combine the review of the project board with a daily scrum meeting (which, as an ops person, I didn't lead - I would just listen). I let my devs self-organize around project tasks. And I got the information I needed to make sure that we were on track in terms of the budget (asking for rough progress vs the # of notecards used) and client happiness.
This system was fabulous - save for the fact that it does require a big-@#$ physical project board. What I would love to do is develop this as an ajax-based drag-and-drop interface. If it is stand-alone, that's frankly okay. But if it could snarf in milestones and hours estimates from Harvest and Basecamp (or really, OpenAtrium, etc.), that would be even better.
Thoughts? If I could find the development budget to build this out as a SaaS, would any of you use it?
Cheers,
Sean Larkin
ThinkShout.com
Comments
Great specs
IMO, your specs show your experience. Most project management softwares are really just that, focused on the projects but not on the management of the people that will be working on them. That is hugely frustrating and, trying to compensate for that deficiency, is very time consuming. I'm increasingly surprised by how the so called project management softwares pay such little attention to efficient time tracking too, and they certainly seem not to have applied any notion of time management whatsoever.
I would love to see something like what you described put in place and I would even like to participate in its creation, if possible.
I really do not see so much the need to have it intertwined with an invoicing software (despite I would like it too) as much as with a project management software. It would make much more sense to me to see it working integrated in a software like redmine or trac. If those had a really good time management and tracking, getting the data to fill in an invoicing software would be a breeze. And project management would gain much more.
Roberto
the ultimate?
Wow, if we actually end up connecting Unfuddle and Harvest, that would make the icing on the cake and make Agile planning a dream. You could use the estimates fields on the issues in Unfuddle (push those into Harvest estimates), and add custom components for those classifications you mention (and use the deadlines to schedule which days things get worked on), and then track the time in Harvest and have that populate the completed time fields back in Unfuddle to track finished time.
LiquidPlanner
LiquidPlanner is the project manangement tool we use at my place, and although the interface can be a bit overwhelming at times, it really does allow you to do just what you described. It's not free though...
LiquidPlanner
LiquidPlanner is the project manangement tool we use at my place, and although the interface can be a bit overwhelming at times, it really does allow you to do just what you described. It's not free though...