PROJECT PLANNING/MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: [candidate product/service] Date: [submission date] Copyright (c) 2000 [author's name] All Rights Reserved Associated project: "Specification Writing for Web-based Project Planning Software" (sXc ID: 24) Project URL: http://sohodojo.com/techsig/project-planning-project.html sXc Project detail: http://sourcexchange.com/ProjectDetail?projectID=24 Project coordination: SourceXchange Sponsors: Opendesk.com and Collab.Net Core Team: Jim Salmons and Frank Castellucci When complete mail to: project24@lists.sourcexchange.com 1 Overview The intent of this document is to provide feedback from analysis of products that are comparable to the general goals of the project. The focus is on key technological areas with an overriding concern in regards to role collaboration capability. 2 Product/Service Profile 2.1 Name of offering 2.2 Publisher/Author/Service-provider 2.3 URL for more information 2.4 Type - one or more of local client, client/server, web service, etc. 2.5 Pricing/Availability 2.6 Assessment based on hands-on experience or info-only? 2.7 Reviewer comments 3 System Constraints 3.1 Physical Limitations 3.2 Software Limitations (operating systems, plug-ins, drivers) 3.3 Implementation Limitations (number of projects, tasks per projects, users, roles) 3.4 Does the software assume a specific project management methodology, if so which one(s)? 3.5 Reviewer Comments 4 Collaboration 4.1 What is the interaction model? (Real-time dynamic views, publish/subscribe, email, user queries, etc.) 4.2 When used in project planning mode, is team communication support? 4.3 When used in project monitoring mode (more modest a target than project management), how is team member interaction handled? ('project-manager-centric' or peer interaction; is there an ad hoc issue management facility, etc.) 4.4 What are the 'key indicators' used to keep project team members and stakeholders informed of the state of the project? 4.5 Does the product or service's concurrency features facilitate or hinder team member collaboration? 4.6 Security features 4.7 Reviewer Comments 5 Role Support 5.1 What is the 'person/role' model? 5.2 How are 'person/role' elements related to 'organization/group' elements? 5.3 Can one person fill many roles? Can one role be filled by many persons? (resource/skill pools, etc.) 5.4 Reviewer Comments 6 Concurrency Concurrency is defined by the implementations locking and transaction model. As such, the granularity of the locking will determine the liveliness of the system. The finer the granularity of locking, the more lively the interactions may be. Another aspect of concurrency is in regards to work-flow and the transaction model, does the system support "conversational or long-term transactions" for example. 6.1 Single or multi-user 6.2 What is the implementation technology supporting concurrency? 6.3 Revision Management 6.4 Reviewer Comments 7 Accessability 7.1 Web-based 7.2 Interchanges support (MS Project, XML, RDF, etc.) 7.3 Import/Export (MS Project, text, etc.) 7.4 Mobile Users 7.5 Reviewer Comments 8 Project Proposal Management 8.1 Vision/Goals specification 8.2 Business Processing Rules 8.3 Implementation Specific Rules 8.4 Reviewer Comments 9 Requirements Management 9.1 Documentation Controls 9.2 Relationship to Task Management 9.3 Implementation Specific Rules 9.4 Business Processing Rules 9.5 Reviewer Comments 10 Task Management 10.1 What is the 'activity/task' model? 10.2 How are roles related to activity/tasks? 10.3 Is the product/service 'project-manager-centric' or can team members extend and/refine the plan within the realm of their own activity? 10.4 Views: Predefined, user-configurable or both 10.5 Status reporting mechanisms (percent complete reports, 'flag-raising' or issue management features) 10.6 How are consumable/required task-specific resources handled? 10.7 Reviewer Comments 11 Task Constraints 11.1 Task Dependency Internal (intra-project) 11.2 Task Dependency External (inter-project) 11.3 Resource constraints (expressed as percentage) 11.4 User defined constraints 11.5 Reviewer Comments 12 Reporting 12.1 Pre-defined, user-defined or both 12.2 Publisher-push by project manager or team member dynamic views? 12.3 Stakeholder-specific views? 12.4 Multi-project analysis 12.5 What-if analysis 12.6 Security features 12.7 Comments 13 Multi-project Management 13.1 Role Template library? 13.2 Repetitive Task library? 13.3 Reviewer Comments 14 Post Mortem 14.1 Analysis and Reporting 14.2 Is there an interface to a 'reputation-building' rating system for team members? If so, is there a 'disputed assessment' system to resolve conflicting opinions. 14.3 Reviewer Comments 15 Subjective Impressions 15.1 User Interface: Strengths/Weaknesses 15.2 Project Modeling: Strengths/Weaknesses 15.3 Technology Platform: Strengths/Weaknesses 15.4 Overall 'Wow' factor: 1 (low) to 5 (high) 15.5 Reviewer Comments 16.0 Reviewer Profile Properly attributed (your name and email address) experience reports and technology evaluation are encouraged from the Open Source community and other interested parties. Attributed contributions will be added to the project working documents archive on the project's public web site. Anonymous contributions are acceptable and will be used as points of information by the project's core team, but will not be maintained in the project's working documents. IF YOU WANT TO CONTRIBUTE OPINIONS AND/OR EVALUATIONS 'OFF THE RECORD', DO NOT submit your contribution to the project's public mailing list. Anonymous contributions may be made to the following email address: mailto:evaluations@sourcexchange.opendesk.com 16.1 Reviewer name: [name] 16.2 Reviewer email: [email] 16.3 Reviewer URL: [your homepage or other appropriate link] 16.3 Evaluation performed: [dates] 16.4 I DO NOT work for, or have an undisclosed relationship with, the author or publisher of the evaluated product or service: [TRUE or FALSE. If FALSE, please explain.] 16.5 Reviewer Comments: [Optionally tell us about your experience, interests or opinions about project planning and management.] WHEN COMPLETE: Mail public contributions to: project24@lists.sourcexchange.com Mail anonymous contributions to: evaluations@sourcexchange.opendesk.com DOCUMENT HISTORY Version 1.0 - Included as Part 2 of sXc#24's Milestone 1 deliverable Version 1.1 - Edits to Role Support Section Version 1.2 - Expanded to support voluntary reviewer contributions ### end of sxc24-analysis-data-capture-outline.txt (Version 1.2) ###