Free team manager application ?

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+3 Q:

Free team manager application ?

Hi all, recently I start to take a bigger responsability because I was developing a project and now is in production, so im coordinating the manteinance and other developments (with 6 more developers), what I need is to assing/manage task to developers and graphics-designers and see when they are busy or idle to take better decitions.

im looking alternatives like openproject with gantt diagrams and resources admin, but webapp.

can you give me advices for my new functions? thanks.

+1 A:

You could use a bugtracker like bugzilla for it.

Create bugs (=tasks) and assign them to users. People can estimate and comment on their tasks. You can categorize tasks and build dependencies among them. Tasks walk through a series of status and can be prioritized and voted on.

Using the reporting and search functionality you can check how much work each user has and how long it will take until all tasks are (expected to be) done.

Bugtrackers usually don't show nice flow charts but are used by most companies to do this job.

Wolfgang 2009-10-27 18:36:23

thanks, actually we are using Trac for that, BUT, if I assing you a Bug I have to set a deadline to you (fix it tomorrow all day. for example), I need to know what are you doing today and what are you gonna do tomorrow.

panchicore 2009-10-27 18:44:22

I don't know the details about TRAC but ususally a deadline is optionally in most bug trackers. Ask yourself if it is really necessary to give the users a fully planned order of tasks or if it is sufficient to use priorities etc. I also agree with Bill Yang: you don't need to track everything in such a system. If you want to know what somebody is doing just ask him.

Wolfgang 2009-10-28 08:43:35

+1. Thanks :) im agree with Bill Yang, but what happens in work-in-home enviroments? I need to register in somewhere what are they doing to take better decisions, If there comes a new development, I need to know if I need more resources. or devide resources. or reject the project. :)

panchicore 2009-10-28 13:53:15

on thewolfgang's point of using priorities, I believe this in most case would suffice. You cannot tell a programmer to finish task x in y amount of time, unless task x is "make coffee" or the like.

Bill Yang 2009-10-28 18:38:21

I cannot tell a programmer to finish task x in y amount of time ?

panchicore 2009-10-28 19:19:58

You can set a deadline for a task. And you can assign bugs to certain milestones which may function as I a sort of deadline as well.Except from that you usually have to notions of time: the estimation and the amount of actually used time to work on a task. Something like 'you have 3 hours for it' is not useful, anyway.Bug trackers go a more defensive way: the customer describes a task, the developer estimates the amount of time required for it, and then the customer can choose to pay for it or not.

Wolfgang 2009-10-29 13:32:44

+2 A:

Assuming you're managing a group of professionals, you don't really need more than a bug/issue tracking system (since you're using TRAC, this would suffice).

What you want to do is assign a few tasks to each developer for them to do, and let them do it. You don't have to know if someone is idle, because they're not machines and if they have no work to do they will ask you.

To find out what the developer did, you read their time sheet(for how long) and issue tracking(for what they did). But again, if someone does not log anything for 1 or 2 days, don't panic, they're probably dealing with a complicated problem and developers normally do not log anything until a problem is solved. (some do not like writing at all, those you do need to push them a little)

Lastly, congratulations on the promotion!

Bill Yang 2009-10-27 23:01:16

+1. Thanks. I need to know if developer finished tasks (¿where are registered? -in Excel? -no i need to do more coraborable like basecamp but with g) (aka idle) to assings free task of investigation for future developments.

panchicore 2009-10-28 14:04:42

I suspect you can finish/close tasks in TRAC, although I haven't used it personally. Also, you assign them more than one task at a time, and get them to let you know when they are low on tasks (you should be able to find this out from the task tracker too), so they will always have something to work on.

Bill Yang 2009-10-28 18:28:45

Im gonna put an answer (I will never mark as answer ;) ) but the idea is to discuss and give software names, for example, take a look at: DotProject "the Open Source Project Management tool"

panchicore 2009-10-28 19:09:08

nice recopilation: http://apps.open-libraries.com/best-open-source-project-management-tools/

panchicore 2009-11-16 19:21:01

ansaurus

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Free team manager application ?

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