Table of Contents
This is a requirements document for the Project Tracker (PT) web based project management tool.
Planning a project is all about organizing and tracking tasks. In planning a project we organize tasks, estimate duration, and match them against resources. In tracking a project we mark tasks as completed with the allocated resources, or adjust plans for chagnes in scope, resources, or schedule. PT will help you achieve these planning and tracking needs collaboratively. Powered by the ACS and the ACS-Workflow, it will bring people, partners, and processes to come together in a common application.
Project Tracker takes care of how tasks in a project are organized. Tasks, are built on the ACS 4 Workflow engine.
Here's a breakdown of the high-level activities that Project Tracker will support:
Entering Tasks The PT will allow a set of tasks to be entered quickly and easily.
Organizing Tasks The process of reorganizing the task hierarchy must be easy and efficient.
Tracking Tasks The PT must enable users to update the status on their tasks. Users can input the actual time spent to complete the task.
My Tasks, or the Universal Task List Tasks entered in Project Tracker are also viewable in the workflow task-list. The workflow task-list all tasks assigned to a user from different applications.
Cast of characters:
Marc Manager: The Vice President of Technology
Peter Project-Manager: A Project Lead well versed in the profundities of project management.
Paula Programmer: A stellar programmer with a degree in Quantitative Physical Modeling and a minor in Group Dynamics from MIT.
Kai Koder: A new employee
Claus Client: Fortune 500 client
Peter Project-Manager works with Clint Client to define the objectives and deliverables Project X. This and other broad information (client, project-manager in charge, start date of a project, etc) are entered into the project-tracker.
Peter works with his (Paula and Kai) to estimate the effort required to fulfill each of the requirements, and then assigns each functional area a team members. Paula is now assigned the task deploying the bboard system. At this point the bulletin board task appears on Paula's universal task list in ACS-workflow, and she receives an email notice. Paula breaks this task into installing the bboard package, modifying the datamodel, customizing the UI, and testing and enters this information into the Project Tracker. She estimates duration for each subtask.
Peter is now ready to show the project plan to Claus. However Peter doesn't want Claus to change the plan. So he defines access permissions for Claus and gives him the url to the project plan. Now Claus can see how the tasks are organized but cannot see who is assigned to them, and he cannot edit the task information.
As the project progresses, Peter and his team are getting continuous email updates on the status of different tasks. Peter checks in on what everyone is working on, and which tasks are behind schedule. A report shows him that many tasks are taking "longer than expected". Peter sends out a little memo on accurate estimation techniques.
Peter's boss, Marc Manager supervises four project managers. Every so often Marc checks in to view a status report for all the projects. He is able to quickly assess which projects are behind schedule, and how close a project is to completion. Marc sees that Peter's estimates are mostly on target and sends Peter an email to congratulate him.
The project is a huge success, and Peter and his team receives ample appraise from Marc. Peter adds some closing remarks and closes the project.
There are numerous project management tools available, both open and closed sourced. While writing this document several system were reviewed to find useful features. The results can be found in Reviews of Existing Systems. Features found in MS Project is discussed in a separate document Review of MS Project
VI. A Requirements Datamodel
10.0 Projects
A project is the starting point of all tasks. It is also the point of connection between PT and other ACS applications (eg. Intranet II).
20.0 Tasks
20.10 Basic Information
The following attributes must exist for each task:
20.20 Extended information
In addition, tasks may have the following attributes:
30.0 Subtasks
30.10
User must be able to organize a set of tasks into a hierarchical structure of tasks and subtasks.
30.20 Rules
80.0 Workflow
80.10
The different states for a task must be handled by the ACS-Workflow.
80.20 Initial workflow type
The initial workflow type for project tracker must do the following:
80.30 Flexibility It must be possible to implement different types of task with different workflows.
VI. B Requirements API
100.10 Create a task
100.10 Delete a task
100.20 Provide answer to the question "What project does this task belong to"
100.30 Move a task
100.40 Start project
100.50 Drop a task from a project
100.60 Delete a project
VI. C Requirements UI
150.0 Management functionality
User must be able to add/edit tasks easily within the context of the task-list (ie. do not take user to a separate form page for each task)
100.20 Organizing tasks
User must be able to move task branches
150.30 Task maintenance
User must be able to perform the following updates on tasks.
200.0 Viewing Information
210.10 Task information
User must be able to view the following information about a task
220.10 Task list
User must be able to view a subset and a sorted view of the task list organized by the following criteria:
300.0 Permissions
Administrator (project owner) must be able to define who has read/write permissions for each project.
Document Revision # | Action Taken, Notes | When? | By Whom? |
---|---|---|---|
0.6 | Converted to DocBook XML and updated | 3/07/01 | Nobuko Asakai |
0.5 | Dependencies and scheduling features dropped. Document updated to reflect changes | 2/13/01 | Nobuko Asakai |
0.4 | Reviewed by Kai Wu | 12/13/00 | Nobuko Asakai |
0.3 | Revision with feedback from Marc A. new emphasis on historical data | 12/13/00 | Nobuko Asakai |
0.2 | Added user scenario and requirements | 12/11/00 | Nobuko Asakai |
0.1 | Creation | - | Kai Wu |