ProjectTRACKER Help - Project Management Best Practices / Curriculum
Software Project Management Techniques
ProjectTRACKER supports standard project planning and time / effort documentation techniques successfully used since more then 20 years of SW development. ProjectTRACKER also supports the Agile Scrum development methodology consisting of user stories and story point estimation techniques, and with this allows to close the gaps between Agile and Plan-driven concepts1). ProjectTRACKER in addition incorporates heuristic project scheduling and statistical estimation functions2) supporting Lean Six Sigma methodologies adapted to the Software development domain.
A strong differentiator is that ProjectTRACKER does not force a special method or planning rigor, but allows to use different methods based on the program, project or business need3).
The following table shows Software Project Management methods and planning rigor supported by the ProjectTRACKER:
Method | Agile / Plan / Both | Planning Effort / Rigor | ProjectTRACKER Support |
---|---|---|---|
Task / User Story Standardization / Templates | Both | Low | → Tasks → Scrum → Task Templates → Group Name Notations |
Task planning / structuring | Plan | Low | → Tasks → Group Name Notations |
Task time recording | Both | Low | → Efforts |
Plan control / prediction | Plan | Low | → Tasks → Schedule → Reports |
Scope / Feature Creep, Task / User Story Trending | Both | Low | → Task History / Trending → Burn Down, Burn Up Charts |
Team collaboration | Both | Low | → Efforts → Reports → Wiki Update / Export |
Remaining task effort recording / calculation (TR_REMEFF_MANDATORY4) not set) | Both | Low | → Efforts |
Epic / User Story / Story Point planning / structuring | Agile | Low | → Scrum → Group Name Notations |
User Story Done tracking | Agile | Low | → Scrum → Burn Up Charts |
Best Case, Most Likely, Worst Case Effort Estimation5) | Plan | Medium | → Estimates |
Resource planning | Plan | Medium | → Plan |
Activity recording | Plan | High | → Efforts → Program Activities → Default Activities |
Remaining task effort recording (TR_REMEFF_MANDATORY6) set) | Both | High | → Efforts |
Detailed Task planning | Both | High | → Tasks → Scrum → Task Description Free Text Input |
Task Import / Other Tools
There are very good “classical” Project Management, Time Accounting and Collaboration Tools available ProjectTRACKER is not competing against, but supports e.g. the initial planning via OpenProj and allows then importing the results to ProjectTRACKER. The following import / exchange formats are supported:
Supported Tool Types | Exchange format | ProjectTRACKER Support | Exchange Direction |
---|---|---|---|
Spreadsheet | CSV | Reports | ProjectTRACKER → Tool |
Spreadsheet | CSV | Import CSV | Tool → ProjectTRACKER |
Spreadsheet | CSV | ![]() | ProjectTRACKER → Tool |
Microsoft Project8) | MS Project 2003 XML export format | Import MS Project | Tool → ProjectTRACKER |
OpenProj9) | MS Project 2003 XML export format | Import OpenProj | Tool → ProjectTRACKER |
Task History / Trending
The ProjectTRACKER supports a full change history on all effort and date changes to tasks with a daily granularity via retaining a so called Task History. Clicking on the task trend symbols opens the Task History page, e.g.:
The example above shows that the admin user has changed the Story Point effort on 18th Jan. Old value was 8 SPs. In the line above you see the new value 10 SPs (ProjectTRACKER stores always the old, non-zero value before the field is changed to the new value - this would be visible also in the current SP value in the User Story). On 27th of Jan the User Story was set to “Done” by the admin user.
With the Task History, changes in the Task or User Story effort baseline can be simply detected and analysed via the ProjectTRACKER Burn Down, Burn Up Charts, like this one:
In the example above Story Points have increased around mid of January (details could be derived by the Task History above) with the effect that most probably the target date is not feasible anymore as the average velocity is not hitting the red, dotted Planned Effort line at the Plan Date.
The trend symbols are shown in the grid displays of the Tasks, Scrum, Estimates and Schedule pages. The trend symbol gives a quick indication of the effort trend:
![]() | Effort has decreased after the last update. |
![]() | Effort has not changed. |
![]() | Effort has increased after the last update. |
Notes:
Detailed Planning via Task Description Free Text Input
To allow a very detailed, free text task definition in combination with the effort rationales, the ProjectTRACKER extracts / parses effort estimations from the Task description text. It is recommended to describe the detailed efforts in a tabular form e.g. via the FCK Editor table function:
Task A | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Description | Bla Bla Bla | ||||||||
Risks | Bla Bla Bla | ||||||||
Constraints | Bla Bla Bla | ||||||||
… | … | ||||||||
Task Steps to do | Description | Responsible | Planned Effort | Min. Effort | Max. Effort | Risks/Issues identified | Effort Deviations | … | |
Task A Step 1 | Bla Bla Bla | Mr. X | 10 PD | 8- PD | 12+ PD | Risk UVW | +10! PH | … | |
Task A Step 2 | Bla Bla Bla | Mr. Y | 33 PH | 22- PH | 44+ PH | Risk XYZ | … | ||
Task A Step 3 | Bla Bla Bla | Mr. X | 11.5 PD | 10- PD | 15.5+ PD | Risk ABC | -2.5! PD | … | |
Task A Step 4 | Bla Bla Bla | Mr. X | 0:30 PH | 0:10- PH | 0:40+ PH | Risk 987 | +0:30! PH | … |
Efforts are collected from all numbers in the format 123 PD (in Person Days, with 8 hours a day) or 123 PH (in Person Hours). Hours can be also entered in the format 12:34. A '-' after the number indicates a Best Case Effort, a '+' indicates a Worst Case Effort and a '!' indicates a Effort Deviation.
Note: Be aware that small typos in the task descriptions (e.g. 8 -PD) will make the extracted efforts incorrect - so better double check!
Default Activities via Task Description
To reduce the efforts for the ProjectTRACKER user to record Program Activities, matching activities could be set by default in the Task description text, e.g. 100% verification via the text ##150 Verification Testing%%100##. This is very usefull when the Tasks strucuture reflects already activities, e.g. Scrum “tasking out”s are typically a good match to activity sctructures (see also the examples in Task Templates).
Task Templates
Task Templates are tasks with the Top Level Group letter 'T'12). They can be inserted at any position via the Task Copy Option. Template tasks can be freely defined by everyone who can create and edit new tasks. The ProjectTRACKER example (see ProjectTRACKER Quick Demo Setup) contains e.g. the following templates:
Example Template Tasks
ID | Grp | Task | Description | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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881 | T01# | Task Template |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
896 | T02## | User Story Template |
Notes:
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915 | T03## | Sprint Task Template |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
908 | T04##. | .User Story + Task Out Template |
Notes:
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909 | T04##1 | User Requirements |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
910 | T04##2 | SW Requirements |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
911 | T04##3 | Risk Assessment |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
912 | T04##4 | Technical Design Reviews |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
914 | T04##5 | SW Design |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
916 | T04##6 | Implement Code |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
917 | T04##7 | Unit Testing |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
918 | T04##8 | Verification Testing |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
922 | T04##9 | Validation Testing |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
920 | T04##A | Manuals / Instructions |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
919 | T04##B | Customer feedback |
Note: Task Efforts, Owner, Status see relevant ProjectTRACKER Task fields |
Task Templates Inheritance
When inserting task template via the Task Copy Option the parameters “program ID”, “task owner” and “task active” are inherited from the checked “copy” task. The parameters “task group”, “task prio”, “task name”, “task effort planned”, “task effort best case”, “task effort worst case”, “task story points”, “task status 1”, “task status 2”, “task time box” and “task description” are copied from the template task. This allows quick assignments of task owners to the inserted template tasks and also allows the use of generic estimation templates with efforts already included as a guideline for the estimation process, e.g.:
- T01 Small Size User Story ~ 1SP
- T011 Task 1
- …
- T02 Medium Small Size User Story ~ 2SP
- T021 Task 1
- …
- T03 Medium Size User Story ~ 5SP
- T031 Task 1
- …