At UCLA, we've been trying to get a better handle on project management, 
and have developed a set of practices using a suite of tools.

We begin projects with a One-Pager, a project proposal or description.  
It includes description of the problem, proposed solution, scope, 
deliverables, risks, and fiscal impact.  The project manager and 
management sponsors are identified, along with other staff resources.

The One-Pager goes in Confluence (a wiki from Atlassian), where we keep 
our technical documentation.  We use the label feature and the 
metadata-report macro to provide numerous views of our projects 
according to status (pending, approved, complete, canceled), by team, by 
priority, and by fiscal year, and various combinations of those factors.

Once a project is approved, the project manager uses MS Project to 
develop the WBS/task list and schedule, and identify sequence and 
dependencies.  This tool works well for the project manager planning, 
and provides good Gannt charts, reports and views. Its main limitation 
is the amount of work needed to keep it current.

To make it easier to keep project plans up-to-date, we found the Ceptah 
Bridge (a plug-in for MS Project) and Jira, a task/ticket tracking 
product from Atlassian.  The Ceptah Bridge allows the project manager to 
generate Jira tickets from MS Project, and to update MS Project on 
demand as programmers update the tickets.

This might sound complex, but the division of labor works out nicely.  
The project manager only needs to work in MS Project.  Programmers can 
update individual tasks in Jira without having to mess with MS Project.  
Schedule problems are reflected in MS Project as a result of a 
programmer updating a Jira ticket.

Atlassian provides plug-in that link Confluence and Jira, but we have 
not yet explored that linkage.  We expect to find value in adding such 
links, but are still adjusting the the workflow described above.

I did not evaluate many PM products.  Because we had a large body of 
technical documentation in Confluence when started improving our PM 
practices, we looked for tools that would integrate well in that 
existing context.  Jira seemed like a reasonable component, and the MS 
Project and the Ceptah Bridge filled in the gaps to make the workflow 
easier.  Our practices are not yet complete, but we've made big progress 
over the past 18 months.

cheers,
-- 
-- Gary Thompson
-- Web Services Development Supervisor
-- UCLA Library Information Technology
-- 

On 2/23/2012 7:32 AM, Patrick Berry wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:04 PM, Brian McBride<[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> Question for all the code4lib developers out there:
>>
>> --What project management software are you using?
>>
>>
> We're getting into Asana.
>
>
>> --What made you choose the system?
>>
> Other departments had tried it and actually stuck with it, as opposed to
> everything else they tried for two weeks and forgot about.
>
>
>> --Has the system met all of your needs? If not, where does it fail?
>>
> Pretty much.  I'm not sure this is a "fail", but it doesn't do management
> charts.  It's more about getting it done than anything else.  If you've
> ever read Getting Things Done, it will seem very familiar.
>
>
>> --Overall opinions?
>>
> Nice, fast, web-based, the pricing is good (free for up to 30 people)
>
>
>> --What systems did you evaluate and decide not to recommend?
>>
>>
>>
>> Any information would be great!
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Brian
>>
>> Brian McBride
>> Head of Application Development
>> J. Willard Marriott Library
>>
>> O: 801.585.7613
>> F:  801.585.5549
>> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>

-- 
-- Gary Thompson
-- Web Services Development Supervisor
-- UCLA Library Information Technology
-- 390 Powell
-- voice: 310.206.5652
--