[rt-users] RT for project managers

[Jesse Vincent]

On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 12:39:54PM -0400, Craig Schenk wrote:
> Indeed, a good topic. After spending months getting RT up and running and
> getting the users all happy, now, higer management has decided they want
> to get more of a "project management" type view on things. There are rumblings
> about abandoning RT (which works great for a task tracking orientation) and
> trying out tools like dotproject (www.dotproject.net) which give managers the
> nice hierarchical view of tasks with time estimates/tracking etc that they
> want but which nobody else cares about. However, since the decision has been
> made we're only going to use one task/project tracker, we can't have the
> engineers and programmers using RT and the managers using whatever they find.
> Since the managers make the decision, that means we need to make them realize
> RT is the better tool if we want to keep using it. I think it should be pretty
> easy using RT's existing features such as custom fields etc to give them
> something more project flow oriented.

We've done some speculative work on a hierarchical project managment
fronted for RT, as well as an experimental gantt-chartting tool.
Neither is anywhere near production ready, but both are available in the
subversion repository for RT 3.3.  Basically, we've had a couple
customers who expressed interest in the functionality, had us spec it
and prototype it and then failed to come through with funding to have us
actually build it for them. 


> 
> Some things they want RT does seem to lack though. You could for example set up
> a custom field in each ticket in a project to put in estimated completion time.

That's why we've got "Time Estimated" in RT 3.1.

> You can use RT's relationships to set higher level tickets as dependent on
> subordinate tasks. However, Pointy Headed Manager cant go into RT and easily
> click on a "project name" button, pull up a hierarchical (preferably graphical)
> view of all tickets under that project, and see an overal top level "this project
> has a total estimated completion time of..."

That would be a bit of logic to add for the project managment UI.

We'd be absolutely thrilled to build this tool for a customer if there's
someone out there who's interested.

	Best,
	Jesse

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