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Tracking Dynamic Completion Dates in Development?

Posted by Cliff on from the moving-deadlines dept.

cronostitan asks: "We are a small software development department inside a big print media corporation. As in most departments nowadays, we have very few people but a high workload. We are currently working on a code rewrite of an in-house CRM application. Beside this big project, there are always a number of urgent, smaller projects coming in with a timeframe of 1-3 days that we do 'in between.' There is no way to delay these small things, as these are always of the highest priority." What's needed here is a time tracking system that automatically adjusts completion dates based on the current workload. Read on for more details of cronostitan's situation. "The problem is that if we set a completion date for the CRM project it is always delayed by these smaller projects. Since I am doing the project management, I am a little desperate, since I can never tell my superiors WHEN the real completion date will be. My idea was to find software where you have your usual project management function (with GANTT charts, etc.) to preview the managed project(s), but also have some type of individual time-tracking for 'in between' projects and daily works. Whenever time is spent on any of these urgent projects, the completion date of the CRM project should be shifted dynamically into the future. This would require a login into this imaginary tool so that developers can track what amount of time is spent on specific projects, so that an accurate timeline can be kept. Does something like this exist, preferably as OSS? Do we have to invent the wheel again, or are we going down the wrong path?"

5 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Recommended Reading by Vaevictis666 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Some recommended reading on the topic of scheduling: Painless Software Schedules

  2. Project Management, etc., software for Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Call Center, Bug Tracking and Project Management Tools for Linux

    http://linas.org/linux/pm.html

  3. Have you checked out... by renjipanicker · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... any of the Agile project management methods? I am using Scrum and it works perfectly for this kind of situations.

  4. Agile? by Ramses0 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Do some reading on Ward's Wiki:

    http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors ...specifically "Velocity":

    http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?MeasuringProjectVelocit y ...and maybe take a look at X-Planner type software.

    http://www.xplanner.org/screenshots.html

    I'm also a fan of the gummy-bear model, and regular, working customer demonstrations. Provide value as early in the process as possible, not as late as possible. If you don't have your deliverables specified, you'll never know when you're done. Thus, Nail down your deliverables, break them into equal sized chunks, complete them and demo them to your customer, and determine your project's velocity after 2-3 iterations of doing the above.

    --Robert

  5. Time tracking for IT related companies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.dovico.com/

    You won't find anything better for reporting on projects, ETCs, and Actual vs Estimate times.