XPlanner

And now for something completely different. As I've advanced in my current work position, I've had to take on more management responsibility, specifically in overseeing the technical aspects of projects. I come up with the system designs and hand them off to developers, who then report to me on their progress. As my projects got bigger, I started looking for tools that would help in the coordination. MS Project is too cumbersome, does not necessarily provide what I want, and not everyone has access to it because of licensing restrictions and cost.

I few months ago, I discovered the XPlanner application and would recommend it. It's a free, open source java web application that serves as a project planning tool. What is nice about it is that it allows me to break down the project into discreet tasks, prioritize them, assign them to my developers. Each developer has their own page where they can see their to-do list, with all the tasks assigned to them. The developers can then track their time to each task, allowing me to keep track of progress and to identify any bottlenecks. It also allows analysis of the actual time spent on a task compared to the estimates.

I run it on my PC desktop at work behind a Tomcat app server connecting to a MySQL database. I installed it in a couple of minutes and it ran fine right away. I tried to get it to run behind a Resin server too, but got an error. I'm sure it was just a configuration thing, but I didn't feel like investigating since I use Tomcat for my web apps. I'm sure it will work with other databases too, but changes to the database setup commands may be required to handle the different DBMS's.

In addition to the Web interface, the application provides SOAP services to all the data, allowing users to build their own UIs or tools if desired. Data export to Microsoft Project, XML, and PDF reports are also provided. Finally, integration with calendaring applications is also provided through ICS files the application can create.

Anyway, it is an application that I have found very useful and will now plan all my projects with it. It is simple and easy to use. Admittedly it has bugs and I don't necessarily like all the things it does. (In particular, I don't like how a project phase is determined to be closed after its scheduled end date, even if the tasks for that phase are still open. When the iteration is closed, the tasks, open and closed, and removed from the developer's to-do list, which is a problem if the project is running behind. But when the schedule is adjusted, the tasks reappear.) But, I recommend it to anyone else who has to manage projects.