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What Does Everyone Use For Task/Project Tracking?
JerBear0 writes "I work as the sole IT employee at a company of about 50 people. I handle programming, support, pretty much anything that is IT related, or even that plugs in. As seems to be true with many small companies, the priorities seem to shift quite frequently. As a result, I've always got multiple programming (both new systems and improvements/changes to existing systems), integration, research, maintenance tasks/projects on my To Do list, in varying stages of completion. At any given time, I need to be able to jump back to one of these items and pick up where I left off. I am currently using Outlook Tasks, and then end up referencing my notebook and email for those dates to figure out exactly where I left off. It works, but not well. If it's been a while, I'll end up losing an hour or two just tracking everything down. I looked at using MS Project / OpenProj, but they want an individual file for each project, and I want at least the project/task list all on one screen. Essentially what I'd want would be a Task List on steroids, allowing for hierarchical subtasks, attachments, and prioritization. Ideally it would be a desktop app, but a locally-hostable web app would be okay. In some of these projects I may want to include proprietary information, which I really don't want floating out in the cloud outside of my control. I know I'm not alone in this problem, so what do you guys (gals) use to address this?"
I use redmine, see http://www.redmine.org/
Atlassian Jira seems to be a good solution for you!
I used to use Mantis and create tickets for different tasks.
I have switched to OpenGoo, this is a slick easy to use web based lightweight project management software. It can be used to give visibility to others in the organization regarding what you're working on if you so choose.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Although not strictly for tracking projects, I recently started using Microsoft OneNote.
...and if there are similar things out there, let us know. It is not the specific product that is the important, but the functionality.
I find it really great for keeping lots of notes in a semi structured way. I used to have a lot of files and pieces of paper with notes. Now I have it all in a OneNote file.
It also integrates with other MS products, so you can create an Outlook task directly from some note in onenote.
Don't take my word for it. You can most likely download a time limited trial from Microsoft and check it out, or watch the demos available.
Of course it is from Microsoft and it costs money, but if you can get over those hurdles, it is a good product.
I'm partial to AbstractSpoon's ToDoList. It's a hierarchical todo list that supports priorities, notes, attachments, time tracking, etc. Freeware, to boot!
A commercial solution is Atlassian jira (http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/) and confluence (http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/). The place I work at uses those and I can't imagine being without them anymore. I don't know if the cost as opposed to bugzilla / wiki is worth it and I'm not familiar with the fees involved. I'm just a happy user. :)
A motivation of footing the bill may be that confluence (and possibly jira) can be used for much more then just your purposes. I know functionals at my office use them as well.
A combination of Bugzilla and Wiki. Wiki keeps track of backlog. Bugzilla keeps track of tasks.
If you're going down this road, then just install and configure Request Tracker. It's got great workflow management, uses email (which works for all but network-related tasks) as the primary interface and has some great reporting tools, so at the end of every month you can hand your boss a shiny little report showing just how productive you are.
For bonus points, it also stores the history of every request, so if you need to, you can also demonstrate to your boss what a prick Henderson in HR is, and that you cut off his Internet access because he didn't seem to be able to stay away from Furry sites during working hours.
Okay, seriously: RT is well-designed, well-documented and well-supported. It's got a lot of solid add-ons (which might or might not have significance for a 1 man IT dept.), and though it takes a little effort to grasp, it's remarkably rewarding in terms of simplifying your day.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems
You and your customers create issues describing what they want done. You estimate them. They prioritize them in the order they want them done. You track your time and status on each issue. You can add notes and artifacts to each issue so that you can pickup where you left off if priorities change.
This might sound like a lot of extra work. Not only is it not a lot of work, it is hugely to your advantage in two ways:
1. When the time comes, and it will, that whoever pays your bills wants you to justify your existence or justify why tasks are taking longer than they want, you can point them to this system and show exactly what you've done, where your time has went, and when priorities and requirements have changed.
2. When you're ready to move onto a larger company, having personally been responsible for rolling out and implementing an issue tracking system is a nice accomplishment to put on your resume.
Indeed. Not to mention that if someone comes by and asks "Why isn't this done yet?", you can point at the 20 tasks ahead of his and ask him which one ought to be re-scheduled in his favor. It drives home quite nicely that you aren't just waiting for people to grace you with requests for work.
Alternatively, I've found TiddlyWiki immensely useful - it's lightweight, allows for cross-linking and makes searching for those meeting notes a cinch.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
TaskFreak!
- project/task list all on one screen CHECK
- a Task List on steroids CHECK
- hierarchical subtasks (not 100% sure on this feature in TaskFreak!)
- attachments CHECK
- prioritization CHECK
- a locally-hostable web app CHECK
Not sure how secure TaskFreak! is for public internet access but it is multi-user with passwords and permissions.
Big Question: Why aren't you using the Outlook Journal to at least track projects? It can link all of the information (messages, tasks and files) into a single location. Very handy and you've already got it.
Another option that will work nicely is Onenote by MS. It's now part of Office and expands on the Outlook Journal capabilities. It uses tabs to keep things organized, you can add pages as needed, link in other documents such as research information, web links and maybe track emails like the Outlook Journal. It also has a shared notebook feature that's for networks and the best thing is, you might be able to convince the boss to get a copy since it's fairly cheap from your normal office super store. I've only been using it for 6 weeks now and it's already become the must have tool for me. Can't say how well it'll work for you but worth giving it a try
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I must agree. After a few months with OmniFocus, it really does help me reduce stress and stay focused (well, more focused anyway ;-).
I wrote a personal review last summer: Getting Things Done App Reviews: OmniFocus, Things, Life Balance, ThinkingRock and Chandler (no ads link). Chandler being open source.
Animoog.org
There was a similar comment posted, but it lacked explanations and has not been modded up yet, so let me go into more details.
Your current task management solution does not work so well, and you are looking for a tool that, you hope, will automagically make everything work for you. Let me tell you from experience: this won't happen. You may get a small boost at first, when using a new shinny "todo list on steroids", but it does not come from the tool: it just comes from your increased motivation. And when the novelty wears off, you will find yourself facing the same problems as before, blame the tool again and start looking for a new one. Rinse, repeat...
So, rather than looking for a technical solution to your problem, you first need to find a better task management method. And as a previous poster wrote:
1) Read the book "Getting Things Done" (GTD) by David Allen.
2) There is no 2). The GTD method works very well with just pen and paper, and you can probably implement it with the tools you are currently using.
Once you are familiar with the GTD method, you may start looking for some GTD specific tool. In that case, I suggest OmniFocus. I reviewed many such tools, but I think OmniFocus is the one that is truest to the method. In particular, it is very important to be able to easily turn a task into a project when you process your inbox. And OmniFocus makes it the easiest: you just drag and drop the task to the project sidebar. All other software make you click extra buttons, input the project title again, and this extra clutter just gets in the way of a smooth inbox processing. OmniFocus is also an iPhone application, that can sync with its desktop counter-part, so you can have access to your GTD system anywhere. Only issue: the desktop version is unfortunately Mac only.
I code, therefore I am.
I've used Request Tracker (RT) in a number of organisations and found it to be very useful.
It links in with email well, so you can create tickets via email, forward emails to existing tickets, or to make it even easier, have email conversations via a ticket. That way decisions are tracked.
It would also mean that when someone asks you to start a new task, they can either email you via RT or you can forward their request email to RT and it will create a ticket. It allows you to include attachments as well and you can set things like priorities and due dates. Then you can put all the info relating to the job into the ticket to track it all in one plac.
RT also allows you to assign permissions to users and these permissions can be assigned on a'queue' basis. So someone might be able to view and/or write to some queues, but not others. Or you could just make yourself the only one with access.
I've used so many groupware projects that claim to have excellent task tracking. They all wind up being projects that have a bazillion modules and none of them are much good.
We stumbled upon OpenGoo. It's a modern web app (very ajaxy), very very fast. It uses Ext, so it's nicely cross browser and is very similar to a desktop app. It has a great ui for very quickly creating tasks and milestones. That's my biggest complaint about many task managers and groupware projects, is that it just takes too damn long to create and manage tasks.
It also has a contact manager and calendaring, a document manager, time tracking, and reporting. And it does everything quite well. It has due dates and priorities, a messgaeboard for just about every item. You can drag and drop tasks between milestones (projects), you can also tag items. There are configurable workspaces (ie: entirely separate groupings for personal tasks, company tasks, and client tasks). It has a role based permission system, and it's generally just pretty damn awesome.
opengoo.org
Disclaimer: I don't work on, or currently contribute to opengoo, I'm just a happy user.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
So what was the benefit again?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();