Re: [Planner Dev] Resource feedback

[Alvaro del Castillo <acs barrapunto com>]

Hi Kurt!

El lun, 17-04-2006 a las 22:09 -0400, Kurt Maute escribió:
> On Mon, 2006-04-17 at 17:14 +0200, Alvaro del Castillo wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > First of all, the target of this email is to share some needed features
> > and ideas to implement them. I plan to find time to work on it.
> > 
> > I know we have had long discussions in the past about how the resources
> > of a project should feedback the project manager in order the schedule
> > for the project could be updated. 
> > 
> > I have been talking with a mate in the work that is working scheduling
> > projects (with MS Project for now) as me and we have started to have a
> > clear vision of a minimal implementation that we need.
> > 
> > 
> > 				     >	Resource 1
> > 
> > 
> > 				     >	Resource 2
> > 
> > 	Project Manager --> Planner
> > 				     >	Resource 3
> > 
> > 					..........
> > 					
> > 				     >	Resource n
> > 
> > 
> > The project manager once the schedule is completed wants to communicate
> > it to the resources. Currently we have the export as HTML report and it
> > is a nice way to do it, but what we really need is a individual report
> > per resource in order each resource doesn't get confused with the
> > complete and normally complex schedule of the project.
> > 
> > So the first thing we need is to improve a bit how to communicate the
> > individual schedule to the resources, maybe with a new style sheet that
> > creates a individual page per resource.
> > 
> > Once a resources has its own view of the schedule she can easily report
> > feedback about the progress on her tasks using this view. It could be
> > ideal that the per resource report include a little GUI in order the
> > resource can feedback about the completion status of the work.
> > 
> > A quick idea could be to offer the report as a HTML page, like the
> > actual HTML complete schedule report, with a button to indicate the
> > completion of a task.
> > 
> > Once a user hits the button a CGI (I think we have had a CGI in the past
> > in MrProject) could be invoked that updates the schedule in Planner
> > obtaining a lock against the planner file before modifying it.
> > 
> > Currently planner is designed as a single user application but with a
> > very basic blocking system using lock files, we can have a good
> > concurrent control system.
> > 
> > With this simple schema we start to give Planner feedback about
> > execution and I feel it will be a more useful tool for managing the
> > execution of projects.
> 
> Hi Alvaro,
> 
> Let me test my understanding - please correct me where I'm wrong.
> 
> We have a fully developed Planner xml file saved in a shared folder.
> The project manager opens the file in Planner and creates resource based
> HTML reports.  The reports go where?  Saved to a shared folder,
> published on a web server, or emailed to the resources?  One or more I
> guess so long as the resource has access to the shared folder where the
> Planner file resides.

Yes, as a first try we could create one file per resource in a directory
the user select using the save dialog box.

> 
> The user can click either a checkbox to complete the task or perhaps
> enter the %complete for each task (should allow user to note when it was
> completed).
> 

Yes

> Here's where I think the problem arises...  

For sure :) This is where we need to think carefully about the way to
solve it.

> What if the PM makes a copy
> of the plan an takes it home on his laptop to work on off line for a day
> or so?  There may be lost changes if he comes back and simply writes it
> back to the shared folder - right?  So there would need to be some merge
> function... unless when the resources make their updates via HTML page,
> they're written to the shared folder as temporary update files.  Next
> time the PM goes to open the plan from the share, the updates are found
> and the PM has the option to merge them in at that point.
> 

Not sure if Planner should try to resolve these issues or leave to the
PM the work for coordinate the changes in the team.

> Personally, I think the best solution for this whole issue is to create
> a web interface for stakeholders that communicates with the database
> rather than the xml files.  It would be a great way to handle both
> resource updates and stakeholder reporting, albeit a bit more work than
> what you're proposing here.
> 

Yes, maybe the right solution for this new step is to work with the
database backend. Currently we have some support for versions in the
database backend. 

Ok, so the way to follow will be to use libplanner, in C, Python or C#,
to implement a web interface that works against projects in database.

Now it is time to decide the web technology. Now I prefer to use C and
libplanner directly so this will guide us to program cgi's in C
language.

Cheers

-- Alvaro