Re: Planner questions and improvements

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend schinstad gmail com>]

2009/8/28 Reinoud Zandijk <reinoud 13thmonkey org>:
> I also noticed some references made to planner's ability to be used
> distributively with an SQL database; does this mean that more than one person
> can work on a planningi simultaniously?

That sounds like a very bad idea, even if it were possible. There should be one
project manager and only one.

> Finally, I noticed that it lacks `sparse' tasks; i.e. a task that say has 20
> hours but has to be done in a time-period of say 40 days, the 40 days being
> dependent on other tasks. Imagine a phtotographer taking pictures of the
> project at intervals.

Planning shouldn't be used to plan how people work. It should be used to plan
what you'll have at given moments throughout the project. In other words,
instead of saying "you have 20 hours to spend on 40 days", you say something
like "On september 15th, I want you to deliver your product. For that,
we'll pay
you x amount of cashunits". Wikipedia has a good article on the WBS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure

There are other tools that are more suited for individuals to track
their own work.
Evolution, for instance, rocks at that. I only wish it were possible
for the project'
manager, the Planner user, to automatically send Evolution tasks to
the resources
defined with emails in Planner. That would be cool. :)

Have fun!

Jo-Erlend Schinstad