#322 To Do Lists
How many people are planning simple projects with excel, and struggling planning complex projects?
How many people are struggling planning simple projects with msproject or psn or ... (gantt like tools)?
One of the tricky side of planning (among many others like size & effort estimates) is to find the most appropriate granularity level.
To high granularity and you spend your entire day managing & updating your plan.
To low granularity and your plan is just used by marketers to advertise your work, but your plan remains useless.
Which optimum level for your WBS?
One of the best practice is to come up at a point with a toDo list. (High level plan in gantt like tool, low level plan in excel)
It sometimes does not matter to design a gantt chart for defining tasks that should be completed within 1 week period.
On the other hand, It might make sense to set up a list of 10 to 20 elementary activities.
Why not adding a pop-up to do list (spreadsheet like) attached to a gantt task (all other tasks scrolling down).
(Who What/Action Deliverable When Completion% ...)
Is it enough as a description of user's needs?
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I would strongly vote for that enhancement. If it is too much work to incorporate such a feature into GanttProject, it could be solved by a better import/export functionality in order to use Excel or OpenOffice for that.
E.g. it should be possible to export one csv file for one resource (= person in charge). This could be regarded as a to-do-list for that person/resource.
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If you do so (export from GanttProjet to Excel), you're loosing all the benefits of the integrated version of the planning tool.
Let's keep GanttProject as a standalone / integrated tool to plan the work of the team.
But I agree with you, excel-like presentation is convenient.
This is a strong indication about the usability/user interface requirement:
- fold / unfold a gantt task into a to do list
- keep the todo list incorporated with the Gantt Chart, not a pop-up window.
- it would be possible to unfold more than 1 todo list at a time
- it would be possible to fold all of them at a time
Scenario1:
Open GP & create a new project
Create the Work Breakdown Structure
Click on a "leaf" task (a task without any child), declare a ToDo List
Task unfolds, user fill in fields
Scenario2:
Click on a task owning childs: it is not possible to declare a ToDo list attached to it
Scenario3:
Click on a "leaf" task.
Unfold the ToDo list
Declare some toDo activities as completed (for an amount of envisionned effort)
The progression bar of the task evolves according to the ratio of effort accomplished wrt the overall effort of the task.
Remaining issues to address:
- is the length of the task being defined by a todo list driven by the amount of effort associated to each activity of the to do list?
- is it possible to delete a part or the entire todo list?
- do we have to drive the length of the task by the timeframe or by the effort + # of allocated resources
- fields for the todo list
All this to prepare for EVMS metrics, including capability to predict budget/cost at completion and end date for the project, ... but this is another story. Let's do it at the level of elementary tasks/todo lists and we will move later at the level of the project.
There is another critical point to address: I've read somewhere that GanttProject "merge" with another tool in charge of the tracking of activities. How to transfer this ToDo activity paradigm to the other tool?
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You are absolutely right, keeping things in one tool together is better than using many tools. In most cases you have to cope with keeping the data consistent when updating or changing it somewhere. It might be a problem getting the data back if it has been changed in Excel or OO or whatever tool you use.
On the other hand, Excel is a mighty tool and it will be hard to incorporate its features, resp. the needed features, into GanttProject. So it has been just an idea to keep the work for the programmes as small as possible.
One usage scenario:
One chief planner (CP) and a handful of co-workers (CWs). The CP uses GanttProject and sends to-do-lists from time to time to the CWs. The CWs inform the CP about their progress and he/she updates the data in GanttProject. In this scenario it would be sufficent if GanttProject generates to-do-lists as pdf files.
There is one more issue to discuss: Do we need some kind of computation (eg. sum of cols) within GanttProject's to-do-list? Should it be implemented as a spread sheet?
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Sorry for barging in your conversation, but is it OK that one of you talks about TODO with respect to tasks while other assumes resources :) ?
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No, we are both speaking about ToDo list. But one of us is dealing with planning, while the other is speaking about tracking.
Planning and Tracking are both side of the same object. One does not make sense without the other.
Generally speaking, people fail to learn from the past. We learn only while comparing tracking & planning information.
Let's go back to the initial topic:
I agree with you, we could spread to the team (pdf + email), the todo activity they have to perform.
Maybe using a internet/intranet way of communicating is more efficient (see ]project-open[). I'm personnaly feed up with general purpose email way of communicating.
How to move on? Do I/we have to build a software requirement document?
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Well, we may try to write a lightweight one :) Please email me if you are interested and register on GanttHive (http://ganttproject.biz/hive) if you haven't registered yet