task management / graphing software?

rooster

hey all

I'm looking for some software that I could use to manage tasks and track progress, with some kind of visual progress tracking features like generating graphs from the data.

ideally it'd be fairly simple to use, and free or cheap-ish.. mainly for windows but I could also be happy with an ipad app

can anyone make any recommendations?

thanks
-Rich

Frankie

Check it out! http://www.hansoft.se/

Hansoft launches Start-up License, allowing teams of nine to use Hansoft for free
Hansoft today announced that a Start-up License for up to nine users is now available at no cost, making it possible for small teams to get access to best of breed project management software.

Frankie

Also I was really looking forward to hear how you got on with releasing PSC. I guess like a postmortem but also what it felt like to get it out and how its changed your outlook, it must have been great, I feel like I'm missing out not knowing!

rooster

sweet, I fired 'em off an email to apply

emm, yeah I guess I could do a post-mortem when I get the time! I haven't really had any time to take a breather yet but for now I can say I don't regret one bit going down this road, although there have been ups and downs for sure

cheeseplus

I'm going to do you a favor and tell you to stay as far the fuck away from Hansoft as possible. The software is bloated crap and there is no reason you should have to use an application where a web interface is infinitely better suited. It loads the whole damend database locally, which almost defeats the purpose of having the DB on a server (which you also have to setup), and when it starts to eat too much RAM, Hansofts official response is "Buy more RAM". It is shitty and I'd not like anyone else to suffer at it's hands.

Trust me on this one.

Alternate suggestions: Redmine, GitHub, JIRA, DevTrack, etc - basically anything else is better and more flexible.

Frankie wrote: »

Check it out! http://www.hansoft.se/

Hansoft launches Start-up License, allowing teams of nine to use Hansoft for free
Hansoft today announced that a Start-up License for up to nine users is now available at no cost, making it possible for small teams to get access to best of breed project management software.

Frankie

For the record I'm sure CP knows a lot more about it than me!

Glad to hear you don't regret anything though!

monster

I don't like JIRA. Finding bugs/tasks assigned to someone else is a 40 click process. When it could easily be a single query.

o2_is_alright

We use Scrumwise at work and we're very happy with it. It's obviously a scrum tool, don't know if that's what you want, but it has a very comprehensible and visual interface. The taskboard is basically a bunch of "post-it notes" with progress bars and descriptions of the tasks etc and there are burndown graphs where you can track your overall progress.
It's VERY easy to use and i think it might be worth checking out even if you're not using scrum.

seforin

Pivotal tracker is great, its pretty visual allows for points and for velocity scheduling and is very similar to treelo that anyone can just kinda jump into it. The team I work with at beachfront games uses this system exclusively

Blue01

Take a look at task management solution "QL Task"
It has many useful features.

Mark Dygert

I use excel. Yep I said it...

This will probably seem pretty ghetto but I've tried other project/task tracking solutions and it always seems to be a bunch of micro management. I'm a working lead so the majority of my time needs to go to doing actual work not tracking and filling in fields. With a lot of the trackers, I end up filling in the same fields 300 times, dealing with convoluted lists and search features that don't actually apply to our workflow, bla bla bla... screw it.


(Click to enlarge)

It's a Calender with Tasks
The three main columns are people on the project.
It's set up to work like a calender, each line represents a week and is broken up into 5 days.
Each task gets assigned a color, tasks can be as small as a day and as large as you need.

Links and Comments
You can embed links in the tasks, I link to an internal wiki that our designer maintains which is always full of ref and designer details, you can have it link to folders also.

You can attach comments to tasks to give greater detail without having to fit it all in a tiny box. This is good for those one day tasks that require a paragraph to explain.

Pseudo-tracking
People can change the color of a task when completed to a different shade, which serves as pseudo-tracking. There is probably some pie chart-graphing you can do based on the color but I don't bother.

Basic Automation
There is some automation in the sheet, the date is controlled through formulas, change the upper left date and the sheet magically updates the rest of the dates.

Sharing
You can save excel docs as html files and upload them so other people can view them easily from wherever, or you can publish them to google docs and let people edit them if they don't have excel.

Excel File:https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336353/ProjectSchedule01.xlsx
Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aoze1crhwLWZdHIybjVPOW1iNnNZbEprTlVrMk1peFE#gid=0


For me it works really well, with our small team. Normally I spend 30-40min setting up the schedule every 6mo and spend maybe a few min each week keeping it updated to incorporate changes, new tasks and track finished stuff.

Always be generous with your time estimates its always better to finish early rather than be pinched for time or worse going over.