Getting Collabtive working again

[Nicholas Andre]

I put up an install of collabtive on i.axfp.org.

We should start using this. Andy, how exactly did you use it last time? Any tricks?

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My PGP key

Nicholas Andre

[Andy Sayler]

We never fully deployed it, just played with it on a trial basis. Getting ebaord members to use it was the main challenge. In the end, we decided analog means would be simpler. We just used large sheets of presentation paper to make a calenders for the whole semester, hung them in the lounge, and then marked/updated/checked-off deadlines, goals, etc at each ebaord meeting.

The real trick is just getting good at setting deadlines for tasks and getting people to hold them (or at least update them as the need arises).The software  might help, but it's not a silver bullet. A bunch of paper calendars can help too, and they avoided the need to convince people to use a new piece of software. In the end, however, regardless of your tools, it really just comes down to convincing ebaord members to take responsibility for their positions, and put in the required 5-10 hours per week to get things done. Tools can help coordinate and track progress, but they can't make progress happen on their own.

If you do go the collabtive route, the forms/mailing lists were pretty active IIRC. They helped us work through a few install issues we had, etc.

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[WMFO Assistant General Manager]

I like the idea of being able to keep a list of what you need to do, and allowing everyone else to see what's done and not done.

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Nicholas Andre

Assistant General Manager

WMFO 91.5 Medford

www.wmfo.org

[WMFO Assistant General Manager]

Horrible, horrible date issues though. Click december 3rd, selects February 12th. Thinks today is september 8th...

[WMFO Assistant General Manager]

Oh I see it's british...

[Andy Sayler]

German, actually. But they use British-English.

[Andy Sayler]

There's probably a setting option to change the date format...

[Andy Sayler]

Basecamp is probably the main FOSS project management competitor if you want to shop around: https://basecamp.com/.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software

http://freelanceswitch.com/product-reviews/open-source-project-management-tools/

[Andy Sayler]

Although it looks like basecamp is just propriety now...

[Max Goldstein]

lol guys

I'm with Andy that no amount of tech will cause people to work if they don't want to, but you can give it a go...

[WMFO Assistant General Manager]

Well, having a list of exactly what you need to do and having a red light go off to everyone around town when you fail to do it by the date you agreed to is CERTAINLY a motivator. And all we can really add are motivators.

Plus everyone's clear on where everything is.

[Rebecca A.]

This would be nice. I would feed this pony.

[WMFO Assistant General Manager]

So I was wondering why you couldn't put comments under tasks. Then I found this page:

http://www.collabtive.o-dyn.de/plugins.php

Turns out they basically ship a shell as FOSS and then try to sell you basic functionality as an add-on.

Thinking about redmine instead (yay migrating content between database schema). Though I tend to trust a rails app less than php-mysql. Any other FOSS solutions?

[Andy Sayler]

Got to make their money somewhere... WMFO could totally afford a hosted subscription and/or plugins. I've corresponded with the developers in the past; they seem like good people running a small FOSS company. The trick is knowing if you actually want to use it before buying.

[WMFO Assistant General Manager]

So Mantis (bugs.wmfo.org) is considerably uglier but more free and requires more work. More oriented towards actual bug tracking, but I found a way to enable "due dates."

Paying for collabtive's suite of plugins would be fairly expensive but it's a much better looking more modern product. Basically better UI than mantis.

[Andy Sayler]

Paying for collabtive plugins would cost about the same as the 100 buttoned we just ordered, Less than 1% of our budget. Not too bad... You could also pay them for hosting if you didn't want to deal with it yourself, but again, it probably comes down to how much use it will get.

[Andy Sayler]

*1000 buttons

[Nicholas Andre]

After a little digging, mantis has most of the features available in Collabtive (although it's format is for bugs, not goals) it can still be used. Once you create a "version," all projects under that version will be displayed under a heading with a percentage complete bar. I may ask about ordering by "time till due."