How do we use dotProject to achieve efficient project management goals in a R&D team

Tommy Yan (tommy.yan@hp.com)HP Open Source and Linux Organization

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Know Status, Resource, Issues, Productivity.

Know my tasks, record my SAIEN,no conflict lock.

define, trace and report my projects.

Project Manager

Team Member

Share Holder

Project Data

Project Data

Project Management Challenges(with MS project/spreadsheet)

Tons of:

Emails

Meetings

Concall

Face

-Face

Spreadsh

eets

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What is DotProject• An online B/S project management software• Software under GPL• Hosted under http://www.dotproject.net/

and sourceforge. • Apache, MySQL ,Php based, almost 0 admin

cost.• Sourceforge Registered : 2001-02-28• Several hundreds of Downloads/day

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Benefits to PMs

•Know the progress well, based on task assignees’ input.

•Reduce unnecessary communications

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Benefits to PMs/shareholders

Status

Progress:35.5% Start: 21/03/2007 Finish Planned:13/09/2007 Finish Current: 13/09/2007

- Delivered draft Webserver blueprints to LP team- Completed several CDS/MySQL test cases and part of CDS documents.

Achievements

Deliver Redhat draft blueprint to LP teamPublish MySQL blueprints

LP team submit Redhat draft pdfsPublish Web blueprints

Deliver SuSE draft blueprint to LP teamPublish CDS blueprints

Deliver Redhat draft blueprint to LP teamPublish J2ee blueprints

Upcoming ChkpontDeliverables/status

- Software1 delayed to 11/Jun/2007. LP publish date changed from 8/23 - 9/20.

- Software2 release deffered. Need to know mgmt decision.

- Software3 not released yet. Will get the hot fix on Jun.6th. Need to get released agents no later than Jun. 25th.

- no Software4 plugins for rhel5 yet. Jayanth says it’ll be out about one week. Need to get released bits no later than Jul. 6th.

Changes/Exceptions/Issues

StatusTask

Details%

Complete:

49 31%

In Progress:

32 20%

Not Started:

78 49%

Past Due:

4 3%

•Provide solid data. (Red parts of the project dashboard are based on the dotProject.)

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Benefits to PMs/shareholders(cont.)

•Know the Engineer Resource Utilization

•Know the gap between estimation and reality

May Jun July Aug

Person1 98.33% 94.26%99.39

%62.78

%

Person2 70.04% 66.6%79.88

%54.02

%

Person3 58.76% 100%90.04

%51.32

%

Person4 51.65% 100%63.21

%60.54

%

Person5 100% 100%39.41

%25.79

%

Person6 100% 100%71.56

%32.42

%

Person7 61.41% 100%63.67

%19.54

%

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Benefits to Team members•Team members have up-to-date “Todo” list, help your memory

•No conflict lock

•Reduce unnecessary communications

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Other benefits• Importing a MS-Project xml• Tickets• Permissions

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Risks• Some reports not accurate/not act as

expected.• Tasks dependency does not work pretty

well.

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How was it picked out• Get a list of tools.

−Google search (Top candidates among several FOSS PM tools.(just google ‘project management tool open source’))

−http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_project_management_software

• List the comparison criteria −Ease of use and maintenance

−Expense

−Functionality of spreadsheet and schedule

−Multi users support

−Role control

• Rate and decide

•Try it out!: The dotProject Demo can be accessed at http://www.dotproject.net/demo/

Questions?