Dear all:
Now that our team at SFSU is getting bigger and starting to handle some longer term projects such as integration with Diva (http://diva.sfsu.edu/), Drupal, and/or e-Portfolio system and so on. We really need to have a good project management software solution to help us keep track of all projects. I wonder whether the Moodle core dev team (or your own dev team) is using any project management software at all, and if so, which software you are using? I was using Microsoft Project when I was working for the private sector, but would like to know if there is any good open-source project managment software out there? Many thanks!
Hi,
I don't know openworkbench, but I think you could give egroupware a try. We're beginning to use it at my university.
Regards. Nico
I don't know openworkbench, but I think you could give egroupware a try. We're beginning to use it at my university.
Regards. Nico
At the OU we are managing our project using a wiki (MediaWiki) and a bug database (Bugzilla).
We have a major release every 4-6 months. For each of those releases, there will be about half a dozen subprojects, and each of those subprojects has a page on the wiki where we gradually build up the list of requirements, the design of how we are going to meet them, and then a breakdown of the work into chunks.
Then each developer has their own schedule page. We break the time between releases into 2-week timeboxes and at the start of the cycle each developer takes responsibility for a share of the work on one of the subprojets, and they have to break that down into a whole lot of little bits, and say which bits they are going to do in each timebox. Then, as development proceeds, we can track whether each developer is keeping up with all the things they said they would have done by that time, and if not we know and can deal with it.
The last timebox or two in each relesase is reserved for bug fixing, and other odds and ends that crop up. Near the start of the release cycle, the schedule pages on the wiki are most important for knowing what you are supposed to be doing. Later it is the bug reports (and feature requests) in the database that you work on. And we use techniques like tracking bugs to drive the endgame of each release.
The wiki is also a repostiory of general documentation about the project, like some instructions for new developers in how to get their development enviroonment set up.
So it is project management lite, but it works for us. You always have to strike a balance between doing enough project management to know where you are, and whether you are on track, but without spending all your time on bureaucracy.
Using a particular software package has absolutely nothing to do with project management. PM i about managing people well and keeping good records. A particular software tool can either help, or it can get in the way.
If you will excuse the advertisement, I strongly recommend this OU course about software project management for anyone who really wants to understand the subject. As a developer, I used to think project managers were just a waste of space. Then last year I studied this course, and was suprised to find that it was interesting, and that there was a point to project managers. And one of the things I liked about the course was that it was not just about one software tool, or one methodology, it was about the underlying issues.
We have a major release every 4-6 months. For each of those releases, there will be about half a dozen subprojects, and each of those subprojects has a page on the wiki where we gradually build up the list of requirements, the design of how we are going to meet them, and then a breakdown of the work into chunks.
Then each developer has their own schedule page. We break the time between releases into 2-week timeboxes and at the start of the cycle each developer takes responsibility for a share of the work on one of the subprojets, and they have to break that down into a whole lot of little bits, and say which bits they are going to do in each timebox. Then, as development proceeds, we can track whether each developer is keeping up with all the things they said they would have done by that time, and if not we know and can deal with it.
The last timebox or two in each relesase is reserved for bug fixing, and other odds and ends that crop up. Near the start of the release cycle, the schedule pages on the wiki are most important for knowing what you are supposed to be doing. Later it is the bug reports (and feature requests) in the database that you work on. And we use techniques like tracking bugs to drive the endgame of each release.
The wiki is also a repostiory of general documentation about the project, like some instructions for new developers in how to get their development enviroonment set up.
So it is project management lite, but it works for us. You always have to strike a balance between doing enough project management to know where you are, and whether you are on track, but without spending all your time on bureaucracy.
Using a particular software package has absolutely nothing to do with project management. PM i about managing people well and keeping good records. A particular software tool can either help, or it can get in the way.
If you will excuse the advertisement, I strongly recommend this OU course about software project management for anyone who really wants to understand the subject. As a developer, I used to think project managers were just a waste of space. Then last year I studied this course, and was suprised to find that it was interesting, and that there was a point to project managers. And one of the things I liked about the course was that it was not just about one software tool, or one methodology, it was about the underlying issues.
This is very interesting you could also recommend them in using this link http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/02/02/43-project-management-software-alternatives which shows several project management software
For project management (more project-oriented than specifically software dev-oriented), dotProject is a pretty good option.
http://dotproject.net
For a very good combination (not free but well worth the price), Jira is very good for Bug Tracking/Issue Tracking/Project Management.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/learn/10reasons.jsp
Confluence is a really awesome enterprise wiki....head and shoulders above MediaWiki (which we used for a while) and XWiki (which we seriously considered). It also has some Jira integrations hooks.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/learn/10reasons.jsp
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/features/
I personally don't use Jira much....but doing my job with a wiki other than Confluence is painful to think about at this point.
http://dotproject.net
For a very good combination (not free but well worth the price), Jira is very good for Bug Tracking/Issue Tracking/Project Management.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/learn/10reasons.jsp
Confluence is a really awesome enterprise wiki....head and shoulders above MediaWiki (which we used for a while) and XWiki (which we seriously considered). It also has some Jira integrations hooks.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/learn/10reasons.jsp
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/features/
I personally don't use Jira much....but doing my job with a wiki other than Confluence is painful to think about at this point.
At Liip we use Jira with the Greenhopper plugin, which is for managing scrum projects and is really awesome.
We also use confluence, and I haven't had much experience with it other than using it, but some people I work with seem to have written some really cool plugins to do magic things.
We also use confluence, and I haven't had much experience with it other than using it, but some people I work with seem to have written some really cool plugins to do magic things.
One comment on Atlassian software Confluence is not accessible. They produce a lot of HTML that is not accessible and they don't give you the tools to make it accessible. They also have a fair number of reported accessibility bugs that have gotten 0 traction in their development processes. I was also disappointed when they completely removed wiki markup in version 5. I would not recommend it for new projects and definitely not for any end user documentation.
We use Jira for ticket management and Confluence for specifications. Jira has been very solid when you add structure (https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure). I don't think Jira is any more accessible than Confluence though.
For Open source I have used trac, github, and bugzilla all successfully. We also use Asana for project management when you just need tasks in an ordered list with due dates, which a lot of our project do. We don't need the extensive time tracking for some projects.
In reply to Wen Hao Chuang
Re: Project management software recommendation?
by Caio Moreno de Souza -
Hi.
Sure. There are a lot of good ones. I am using SugarCRM to manage my projects and as a CRM solution. It is free, open source and really good.
www.sugarcrm.com
Best Regards,
Caio
Sure. There are a lot of good ones. I am using SugarCRM to manage my projects and as a CRM solution. It is free, open source and really good.
www.sugarcrm.com
Best Regards,
Caio
Fork of sugarCRM VTiger another opensource CRM is on the threshold of releasing their version 5.
I am the system integrator for integrating Moodle with VTiger
Any further help in this regard you are always welcome
Nagarajan
I would like to integrated Moodle 1.8 with VTiger. have you any documentation of installation?
In reply to Caio Moreno de Souza
Odp: Re: Project management software recommendation?
by Adam kowalski -
I would like to integrated Moodle 1.8 with SugarCRM. Have you any documentation of installation?
is it posible to integration OpenGoo with Moodle? how?
I've just been looking at OpenGoo myself and came here to see if anyone had posted any thoughts on it. I had been searching really hard for something like this for a couple days to manage a new project I am involved in and it looks like it will meet our needs well. We were looking for something that would allow us to maintain a database of people and related documents and be able to give access to clients to only specific project materials and what I have seen so far is great in all those areas. It seems to work well and has a reasonably clear interface. I think it is has good potential for the future. I have the same feeling about it as when I first discovered Moodle 5 or 6 years ago!
I just wanted to follow up on this. The project last year never happened but at my new workplace, I have implemented Feng Office (the new name of Open Goo) for managing our programs for clients. It's been great and yesterday our development director told me he wants to start using it to manage the development projects as well. It has a really intuitive and efficient interface and very rich in features.
Just adding my two cents. I like dotproject because it's php based so I can run it on the same stack as my moodle if need be and all my php and sql knowledge I can apply to it.
otherwise it's a nice simple open source tool that does the basics I need. http://www.dotproject.net/
otherwise it's a nice simple open source tool that does the basics I need. http://www.dotproject.net/
We use sugar proo edition at Moodlerooms for project management, it lacks the capability to assign multiple people to one task, but that is supposed to be coming. In the community edition it also lacks gantt charts.
For free I would recommend dot project over sugar because dotproject has gantt charts built in and Sugar is designed more for account management, client calling and products, which I am assuming SFSU doesn't need because you already have an SIS.
dotproject is focused on just project management
I would also recommend trac for bug tracing as it also has an excellent visual diff built in. I would use trac over jira any day if I had the choice.
For free I would recommend dot project over sugar because dotproject has gantt charts built in and Sugar is designed more for account management, client calling and products, which I am assuming SFSU doesn't need because you already have an SIS.
dotproject is focused on just project management
I would also recommend trac for bug tracing as it also has an excellent visual diff built in. I would use trac over jira any day if I had the choice.
By the way just to report back to the community, we evaluated both Jira and Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/), and we finally decided to go for Redmine. We will be doing some testing to export our current Trac tickets to port them to Redmine, will report back to the community about how it goes. Thanks for everyone's reply!
You can check this http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/02/02/43-project-management-software-alternatives article out. It is about project management software alternative that is perfect for your concern
I would recommend continue using ‘Microsoft Project’ else upgrade to Microsoft Project Professional 2010 which includes all the capabilities of Project Standard 2010 plus more features like at-a-glance resource management and team collaboration tools. Project 2010, built on SharePoint 2010, offers flexibility and choice and helps effectively manage any type of work, from simple tasks to complex projects and entire programs. It is a big jump in capability and gives project managers a lot of visibility into project conflicts, overbookings, and under-utilization.
Hi all, MP is good but I would recommend great project management web based software for big projects. I use BamBam! and it's more useful for my team. You can find BB on http://www.dobambam.com
ps BB is integrated with Chime - time tracking tool you find it on getchime.com and with Springloops - version control.
Hello,
Taiga (https://taiga.io/) is a good one with a beautiful interface, focused on Scrum and Kanban.
Very easy to use and with a fast growing community, developed in Django, and with a Redmine importer, integration with github and other softwares and services.
Kind regards,
Daniel