What Does Everyone Use For Task/Project Tracking? 428
Posted
by
timothy
from the tribal-tattoos-mostly dept.
from the tribal-tattoos-mostly dept.
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?"
redmine (Score:5, Informative)
Re: What we use (Score:1, Informative)
Atlassian Jira seems to be a good solution for you!
Something WebBased (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:redmine (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft OneNote (Score:2, Informative)
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.
ToDoList (Score:1, Informative)
I'm partial to AbstractSpoon's ToDoList [abstractspoon.com]. It's a hierarchical todo list that supports priorities, notes, attachments, time tracking, etc. Freeware, to boot!
Re:Bugzilla and Wiki (Score:1, Informative)
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.
Re:Bugzilla and Wiki (Score:5, Informative)
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 [bestpractical.com]. 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.
Use a proper issue tracking system (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Microsoft OneNote (Score:1, Informative)
Microsoft does provide a 60-day free trial - fully functional.
Re:Nice big (Score:4, Informative)
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.
TaskFreak! definitely. (Score:3, Informative)
TaskFreak! [taskfreak.net]
- 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.
MS Onenote (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Omnifocus! (Score:4, Informative)
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 [blogspot.com] (no ads link). Chandler being open source.
Salvation is in the method (GTD) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:redmine (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bugzilla and Wiki (Score:1, Informative)
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.
OpenGoo (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Bugzilla and Wiki (Score:4, Informative)
So what was the benefit again?
Re:redmine (Score:4, Informative)
"I use redmine, see http://www.redmine.org/ [redmine.org]"
I'd say, yes... but not.
Look at the environment:
"I work as the sole IT employee [...] 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"
So:
1) His best tool must be his mind: he must use it to set his own procedures (and exceptions), so pointing to reads like David Allen's "Getting Things Done" or "Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators" are a foremost.
2) Given the right ideas are in his mind and given that it's a solo show, the leaner the tools the better: he don't need contrains on the tools when he can adopt them by his own criteria. That's where even such a fine tool like Redmine is a bit of an overkill. I'd find in this case its conceptual father to be a better fit. Trac, that is.
Let's have a look about how Trac fits the bill:
* For a start it really helps the guy that do the thing instead of getting in his way in favor of the one that plans the thing (so, i.e. there are not -at least by default, fixed workflows nor fancy flowcharts to the content of a project manager but absolutly unuseful for a single or a short development/multitasking group).
* It allows (but not commands) tight but lean integration between wiki pages, tickets, milestones and source code management. You will fastly and easily group your tickets by milestones (like, say, "work as usual year 2009" or "summer campaign"), by components (like "central servers", "help desk"...), by type (like "bug", "enhancement"...), by priority and severity but you will be *not* forced to use them if you don't want to (as an example, shorter shops tend to use either priority or severity, but not both).
* It lacks "proper" multiproject and nested tickets support but, as I already said, that's not a problem since you are alone and workflow/procedures are basically in your head (and described on a wiki page too). In example, a component/milestone combo provides for a nice solution for your short, unbudgeted, as time allows, personal/internal "microprojects", and being wiki-based, hierarchycal tickets can be easily mimicked using a "superticket" ticket type that links to all the related "subtickets" which in turn "backlink" to the parent.
So, my recomendation is Edgewall's Trac because of it leaness and functionality, more or less like this: ...and your own intelligence and discipline to firmly tie everything in place.
* Wiki pages organized by "machines", "services" and "procedures" with proper links among them (a procedure affects some services that are offered by some machines; a machine hosts some services -or parts of them; each service has some associated procedures and expands through one/some machines).
* Bug/Enhancement tickets for "usual" day-to-day activities eventually grouped by milestones (like "operations 2009") and components (like "core services", "helpdesk", "CRM"...). They allow for a description and a variable number of notes either direct or question/reply style, so you will know exactly where did you gave it six months ago, when you last time worked on it; its wiki syntax will allow for links to the pages for the affected machines/services/procedures and even the exact transaction on the source management system where/when you activated that new service or corrected that bug.
* Project-like components/milestones/tickets for bigger tasks (aka "microprojects").
*
Re:redmine (Score:2, Informative)
If you want to use redmine (or some of the other software mentioned below) on windows, bitnami have a stand-alone package for this. Just run the setup.exe and you'll be live in 5 minutes.
Redmine
http://bitnami.org/stack/redmine [bitnami.org]
Trac (issue tracker)
http://bitnami.org/stack/trac [bitnami.org]
Tracks (gtd app with a familiar sounding name)
http://bitnami.org/stack/tracks [bitnami.org]