Django Project Management
Simon Morris
You posted a bug on Django Project Management asking me to get in touch.
Hope you don't mind - I added you to the mailing list as the
conversation might be interesting to other users.
Django Project Management is still fairly new - I use it in the
organisation I work for (we have far too many projects and not enough
staff) and that user base is about 40 engineering staff.
I've had some interest from other people via the Google Projects site,
but there is a lot of documentation to do.
How can I help you?
Thanks
~sm
Roy Prins
Hello mailinglist,
Introduction time: the name is Roy Prins. I am a 32y old from Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
I work for a small/medium consulting firm, with projects mainly for housing corporations. My education is in the field of building technology.
Currently i am following a course of Prince2 project management and coincidently my firm decided to review our internal project management, looking for improvement along the same lines.
I started fiddling with Django (being a small time hobby), to outline a basic toolset for the job.
Then the famous quote struck me: "for any project, no matter how remotely useful, there is bound to be a silly bunch working on a django app for it". Hi guys, i found you.
I like the question "how can we help you?", but please reverse it. I'd like to provide some assistence, learning on the way. My programming experience is limited, but at least i got the company intranet on django.
My goal would be to learn more about django / web development and project management tools. Possibly i would find use for Django Project Management within our organisation.
So, how can i help you?
Regards, Roy
p.s. I would be able to write documentation in Dutch, English and German(hopefully).
Simon Morris
Thanks for the introduction and the interest in the project - I've had a few people ask me about the project (Jerry from China, Anne and Markus from Belgium and yourself) but we are definitely at the very early stages of a Free Software project.
I use the product in my daily work, in fact this morning I spent a few hours getting a project ready for a go-live date, and assigning people and deadlines to Work Items.
This afternoon I started a new project and did an entire Project Initiation Document in it.
So it has real users. What we love about it here is the ability to instantly generate documentation in PDF format to send out to clients. MS Project is a much more capable Gantt chart and WBS tracking tool but that isn't all there is to projects.
The roadmap is
* Django 1.2
* A REST Interface for the backend to make development a bit more predictable and to get rid of some lazy crappy code
* Email functionality to inform users of upcoming tasks
* User profiles to allow users to subscribe to email alerts rather than being spammed
* Take inspiration from other Project Management applications and add new features
What do I need at the moment?
* Users! Which will lead to bug fixes, questions and therefore documentation
* An install and setup guide
* Maybe some case studies on how people are using it
* Some ideas on improving the existing feature set whilst I get the first couple of items on the roadmap implemented.
Anyway - glad to have you aboard.
~sm
Markus Neteler
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 22:56, Simon Morris <moz...@gmail.com> wrote:
...
> What do I need at the moment?
>
> * Users! Which will lead to bug fixes, questions and therefore documentation
I have added documentation material here:
http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/wiki/GettingStarted
Cheers
Markus
Roy Prins
In the coming 2 months I have to get to grips with both the Prince2 methodology and the application itself.
Practical application in projects will be the step after that. That will not stop me from installing, toying around, reviewing the feature set and contemplating application within my organization.
Furthermore I plan to put the stuff i learn in my Prince2 course to the test in django-project-management. That should generate more ideas and comments.
As far as practical contributions go, is see Markus did some work in getting started. What work is best delegated to me? Furthermore, how do i contribute:
- Issues: submitting issues is clear to me.
- Patches: I have no previous experience contributing this way
- Documentation: Do we only use the wiki? How do i edit here?
Roy
p.s.
Should we not be on http://djangopackages.com/grids/g/project-management/
Simon Morris
> Practical application in projects will be the step after that. That
> will not stop me from installing, toying around, reviewing the feature
> set and contemplating application within my organization.
Great - sound exciting.
> Furthermore I plan to put the stuff i learn in my Prince2 course to
> the test in django-project-management. That should generate more ideas
> and comments.
That's good, I hope the definitions that you lean in the PRINCE2 course
match up to what we've used in the project. Geoff, the Project
Management Officer helped design the Django models and attributes and we
tried to stick to the correct naming terms throughout.
> As far as practical contributions go, is see Markus did some work in
> getting started.
Yeah, I saw that too - that's great, thanks Markus.
> What work is best delegated to me? Furthermore, how do i contribute:
> - Issues: submitting issues is clear to me.
> - Patches: I have no previous experience contributing this way
At the moment I'm the only committer but I'm not precious about giving
commit rights to others. I have some patches from Anne (sorry, I haven't
merged them yet) so in the first instance I think identifying areas for
improvement and then passing patches back through the mailing list is
the place to start.
> - Documentation: Do we only use the wiki? How do i edit here?
RIGHT! I didn't realise how to give people more access in the Google
Project application. I've now given Wiki edit rights to the following
people
guan...@gmail.com
Prin...@gmail.com
netele...@gmail.com
a.gh...@gmail.com
Please let me know if you can't edit the wiki.
Thanks
>
> Roy
>
> p.s.
> Should we not be on
> http://djangopackages.com/grids/g/project-management/
>
Ooh, not seen that site before - I used to visit a site for Django
packages but it disappeared. How did I not see this before?
Sure, I'll add the project in!
Roy Prins
I tried visiting the django packages site too, but was redirected there. Seems to be the genuine successor.
On 6 Oct 2010 12:55, "Simon Morris" <moz...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Roy,
> Practical application in projects will be the step after that. That
> will not stop me from insta...
Great - sound exciting.
> Furthermore I plan to put the stuff i learn in my Prince2 course to
> the test in django-project-...
That's good, I hope the definitions that you lean in the PRINCE2 course
match up to what we've used in the project. Geoff, the Project
Management Officer helped design the Django models and attributes and we
tried to stick to the correct naming terms throughout.
Yeah, I saw that too - that's great, thanks Markus.
> As far as practical contributions go, is see Markus did some work in
> getting started.
> What work is best delegated to me? Furthermore, how do i contribute:
> - Issues: submitting issue...
At the moment I'm the only committer but I'm not precious about giving
commit rights to others. I have some patches from Anne (sorry, I haven't
merged them yet) so in the first instance I think identifying areas for
improvement and then passing patches back through the mailing list is
the place to start.
RIGHT! I didn't realise how to give people more access in the Google
> - Documentation: Do we only use the wiki? How do i edit here?
Project application. I've now given Wiki edit rights to the following
people
guan...@gmail.com
Prin...@gmail.com
netele...@gmail.com
a.gh...@gmail.com
Please let me know if you can't edit the wiki.
Thanks
>
> Roy
>
> p.s.
> Should we not be on
> http://djangopackages.com/grids/g/project-management/
>...
Markus Neteler
>> getting started.
>
> Yeah, I saw that too - that's great, thanks Markus.
> RIGHT! I didn't realise how to give people more access in the Google
> Project application. I've now given Wiki edit rights to the following
> people
>
> guan...@gmail.com
> Prin...@gmail.com
> netele...@gmail.com
> a.gh...@gmail.com
>
> Please let me know if you can't edit the wiki.
Works! I have redone my comment and moved it into the regular Wiki space.
Feel free to modify/improve...
Cheers
Markus
PS: In the first place I would like to see the few ?? replaced with
content, I simply
don't know what these indicated items are. thanks.
Simon Morris
> Works! I have redone my comment and moved it into the regular Wiki space.
> Feel free to modify/improve...
I've made some edits....
http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/wiki/GettingStarted
The Engineering Days part is probably the most useful aspect of the
tool, and it isn't documented anywhere... yet :-)
There are relationships between users (django.contrib.auth.models.User)
and skillsets (projects.models.Skillset) which means that a user can
have multiple skills.
In the organisation I work in we have skills such as:
* Infrastructure
* IT Management
* PC Support
* Mac Support
* Database Administrator
So my user account might have one or two of these skills.
When you create WorkItems you are asked which skillset is required for
the particular task. Choosing a skillset is mandatory.
Some tasks are very small ("Send an email to the customers") and of
course some are very big ("Migrate the SQL database to another server")
For big tasks you might want to assign an EngineeringDay
(wbs.models.EngineeringDay) to make sure that there is a suitable
resource allocated to the job.
In my organisation we have problems where unless we book people out for
tasks they get reassigned.. or go on holiday.. or forget to do things.
By allocating a named person (with the correct skillset) a day and a
period of time (Half-day AM, Half-day PM, Full day) it is more likely
the task will be completed correctly.
You can see engineering days in the Rota section.
Have you guys managed to get this working? By creating users with
skillsets... creating a project with tasks that require the skillset...
assigning a specific day and time for that task to the user?
Would someone like to create a Wiki document for this?
Thanks
~sm
Markus Neteler
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 10:02, Simon Morris <moz...@gmail.com> wrote:
...
> In my organisation we have problems where unless we book people out for
> tasks they get reassigned.. or go on holiday.. or forget to do things.
thanks for the explanations which make perfect sense also here.
> By allocating a named person (with the correct skillset) a day and a
> period of time (Half-day AM, Half-day PM, Full day) it is more likely
> the task will be completed correctly.
>
> You can see engineering days in the Rota section.
Question: What is ROTA? :)
Thanks
Markus
Simon Morris
On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 11:47 +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
> > You can see engineering days in the Rota section.
>
> Question: What is ROTA? :)
>
It's a calender based view of who is assigned which task...
I uploaded a screenshot of our rota this week
http://django-project-management.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/screenshots/rota_example.png
This is one area of the project I would like to improve on.
( If the term 'rota' isn't clear what is a better name to call it using
international English language? )
Also - I made a branch in the codebase last night. I'm working on the
REST API stuff now in a branch [0] and I'll upload some working code
there tonight.
If you haven't looked at REST before it's a really interesting topic,
and not at all complicated. There is a good O'Reilly book on the subject
[1] and a great Django example in the django-piston project, which is
what I'm using in the branched code.
Thinking about adding new features I think we should discuss what people
would like to see and how that would be implemented in the REST API and
then how the UI is built on top of that is a lot clearer.
Thanks
~sm
[0]
http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/source/browse/#svn/branches/rest-api-branch
[1]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/RESTful-Web-Services-Leonard-Richardson/dp/0596529260/ref=sr_1_1?
[2] http://bitbucket.org/jespern/django-piston/wiki/Documentation
Markus Neteler
> On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 11:47 +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
>
>> > You can see engineering days in the Rota section.
>>
>> Question: What is ROTA? :)
>
> It's a calender based view of who is assigned which task...
Ha - I mixed it up for an acronym.... Sure, got it now.
> I uploaded a screenshot of our rota this week
>
> http://django-project-management.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/screenshots/rota_example.png
Thanks, linked in the wiki.
(... useful things skipped....)
> Thinking about adding new features I think we should discuss what people
> would like to see and how that would be implemented in the REST API and
> then how the UI is built on top of that is a lot clearer.
I wonder how to signal things. We have some wishes and some bug reports
accumulated. We could try to implement something here but perhaps, for
transparency we should do it via your issue tracker to keep all people in
the loop.
What do you think?
Cheers
Markus
Simon Morris
> I wonder how to signal things. We have some wishes and some bug reports
> accumulated. We could try to implement something here but perhaps, for
> transparency we should do it via your issue tracker to keep all people in
> the loop.
> What do you think?
>
I think both wishes and bug reports should go into the Project bug
tracker, but then have the meaningful conversation on this mailing list.
There is a mailing list where the SVN commit messages go to, but I'd
like human interaction and discussion to come here really.
Lets get started! What do you have currently?
~sm
Markus Neteler
>
>> I wonder how to signal things. We have some wishes and some bug reports
>> accumulated. We could try to implement something here but perhaps, for
>> transparency we should do it via your issue tracker to keep all people in
>> the loop.
>> What do you think?
>>
>
> I think both wishes and bug reports should go into the Project bug
> tracker, but then have the meaningful conversation on this mailing list.
(http://grass.osgeo.org).
> There is a mailing list where the SVN commit messages go to, but I'd
> like human interaction and discussion to come here really.
> Lets get started! What do you have currently?
Wishes
- In "Project management", add "Add Project Stages" to menu
- Make dashboard sortable by column
- Add some relevant help texts (RTO etc - what's that?) - see here
- Add "budget" voice to projects: planned budget, spent budget with individual entries (+ "add" entry). Calculate remaining budget automatically
- Add overall project Start-Stop time already when registering a new project (rather when adding the deliverables)
- Add a "Notes" tab in the project menu (like URL or other short stuff where a file attachment is overkill)
- When adding work items, the "Duration" time unit is unclear and should be displayed (since defined in the admin panel only)
Bugs
- Fix lessons_learnt -> lessons_learned
- In "Add a Work Item", it is not possible to insert a double precision number in "Duration" field
- In Projects management, change "Duration Type" -> "Duration time unit"
- In "Add a Work Item" it is not possible use double number in "Duration" field
cheers
Markus
Simon Morris
> Perfect. That's the same style which we use in our open source project
> (http://grass.osgeo.org).
Hi Markus,
That project looks interesting, will look at that closer when I have a
moment.
> Wishes
>
> * In "Project management", add "Add Project Stages" to menu
> * Make dashboard sortable by column
> * Add some relevant help texts (RTO etc - what's that?) - see
> here
> * Add "budget" voice to projects: planned budget, spent budget
> with individual entries (+ "add" entry). Calculate remaining
> budget automatically
> * Add overall project Start-Stop time already when registering a
> new project (rather when adding the deliverables)
> * Add a "Notes" tab in the project menu (like URL or other short
> stuff where a file attachment is overkill)
> * When adding work items, the "Duration" time unit is unclear
> and should be displayed (since defined in the admin panel
> only)
All of the above look good, I'll start working on them.
> Bugs
>
> * Fix lessons_learnt -> lessons_learned
Well - this is one we discussed before internally. It's a bit of a
debate on which term is correct in English language.
Google says...
http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=lessons+learnt+or+lessons
+learned&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=21352e299d88a25
I think Learnt is taken to mean "I have learnt and it's now finished"
whereas Learned means "I am continuing to learn"
I've opened a bug for it so we can discuss but either term should work.
http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/issues/detail?id=13
> * In "Add a Work Item", it is not possible to insert a double
> precision number in "Duration" field
Yes, this should be fixed. What are your opinions on database schema
changes? Obviously doing an 'svn update' which includes a different
definition in a model file might break your install of d-p-m. Is this a
problem?
Raised as
http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/issues/detail?id=14
> * In Projects management, change "Duration Type" -> "Duration
> time unit"
I've fixed this now in r287
http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/issues/detail?id=12&can=1
Thanks
~sm
Anne Ghisla
> On Wed, 2010-10-06 at 15:57 +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
> > Works! I have redone my comment and moved it into the regular Wiki space.
> > Feel free to modify/improve...
>
> I've made some edits....
>
> http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/wiki/GettingStarted
>
>
> In my organisation we have problems where unless we book people out for
> tasks they get reassigned.. or go on holiday.. or forget to do things.
>
> By allocating a named person (with the correct skillset) a day and a
> period of time (Half-day AM, Half-day PM, Full day) it is more likely
> the task will be completed correctly.
>
> You can see engineering days in the Rota section.
>
> Have you guys managed to get this working? By creating users with
> skillsets... creating a project with tasks that require the skillset...
> assigning a specific day and time for that task to the user?
>
> Would someone like to create a Wiki document for this?
I will do this now.
> Thanks
thanks,
Anne
--
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Anne_Ghisla
Markus Neteler
sorry for slow, I was travelling.
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 10:07, Simon Morris <moz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 14:55 +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
>> Perfect. That's the same style which we use in our open source project
>> (http://grass.osgeo.org).
>
> Hi Markus,
>
> That project looks interesting, will look at that closer when I have a
> moment.
It is perhaps one of the most long-term open source projects out there :)
Meanwhile running for 27 years...
>> Wishes
>>
>> * In "Project management", add "Add Project Stages" to menu
>> * Make dashboard sortable by column
>> * Add some relevant help texts (RTO etc - what's that?) - see
>> here
>> * Add "budget" voice to projects: planned budget, spent budget
>> with individual entries (+ "add" entry). Calculate remaining
>> budget automatically
>> * Add overall project Start-Stop time already when registering a
>> new project (rather when adding the deliverables)
>> * Add a "Notes" tab in the project menu (like URL or other short
>> stuff where a file attachment is overkill)
>> * When adding work items, the "Duration" time unit is unclear
>> and should be displayed (since defined in the admin panel
>> only)
>
>
> All of the above look good, I'll start working on them.
Thanks a lot! We'll test and test... With Anne I'll figure out how to
maintain a productional version while merging in new features and
fixes.
>> Bugs
>>
>> * Fix lessons_learnt -> lessons_learned
>
> Well - this is one we discussed before internally. It's a bit of a
> debate on which term is correct in English language.
Ah ok - I was perhaps just driven by my school English.
> Google says...
>
> http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=lessons+learnt+or+lessons
> +learned&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=21352e299d88a25
>
> I think Learnt is taken to mean "I have learnt and it's now finished"
> whereas Learned means "I am continuing to learn"
>
> I've opened a bug for it so we can discuss but either term should work.
>
> http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/issues/detail?id=13
Thanks for that - I would say 0 priority since there is more important
stuff to focus on.
>
>> * In "Add a Work Item", it is not possible to insert a double
>> precision number in "Duration" field
>
> Yes, this should be fixed. What are your opinions on database schema
> changes? Obviously doing an 'svn update' which includes a different
> definition in a model file might break your install of d-p-m. Is this a
> problem?
This is pretty much a problem!
I dunno but perhaps we need some DB migrator for this case. I got inspired
by the CMS which we are using (see link at bottom of
http://gis.fem-environment.eu/)
which is naturally open source as well. They have assigned a versioning system
to the DB scheme and which each update (i.e. simply overwriting the existing
installation with the new files) it runs an update SQL script which detects
the existing version and migrates it to the new scheme. Pretty cool since you
can even skip versions in between when updating an old instance of this CMS
to the actual version. The guys did a great job on that.
I dunno the DB internals of d-p-m but maybe something similar would be
feasible?
> Raised as
> http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/issues/detail?id=14
(I have added my comment above to the ticket)
>> * In Projects management, change "Duration Type" -> "Duration
>> time unit"
>
> I've fixed this now in r287
>
> http://code.google.com/p/django-project-management/issues/detail?id=12&can=1
Thanks, appreciated.
Markus
Markus Neteler
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 10:07, Simon Morris <moz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 14:55 +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
>
>> Wishes
...
> All of the above look good, I'll start working on them.
>
>> Bugs
...
Out of curiosity - while we are interested to get things fixed or implemented
(and through Anne we are able to even contribute code), we would like to
discuss the "community based" development model of D-P-M.
What are your thoughts? Should we work on a separate branch or send
patches or ... ? For us a branch would facilitate the public peer review of
our changes; it would also open up the development to new developers
since full transparency is given at this point. Sending patches is moreover
extra work (for the commit enabled people) and prone to not scale due
to the potential bottleneck of individual rather than public review.
Please let us know,
Markus