Project Management Requirements Introduction

Project Management Information System

Proposed Development Introduction

Tiki already has an existing simple Task system that provides a code base for Task management and assignment. It is proposed that this is used as a foundation to be built upon to provide a richer Projects Feature.

Project Management however, as opposed to the current simple 'To Do List' style of Task management, requires some additional sets of functionality and the following are suggested:

• To be able to establish multiple Projects, each with an assigned Project Manager, and which can be arranged in a hierarchy so that 'Programmes' with multiple Projects can be defined and maintained
• Each Project should have a defined set of Tasks associated with it - and the Tasks importantly need to have a defined sequence/dependence as well being tagged if they are part of a particular Activity within a Project.
• The tagging will then allow some basic 'work breakdown structure' reporting to be carried out and the sequencing, with more development for later versions, will allow the more complex areas of critical path analysis and indeed graphical Pert & Gantt charts to be considered.
• Each Task should also have Resources associated with them - so that initially, basic 'manual' Resource Management/load levelling could be carried out by understanding which Tasks have Resources that are overcommitted. Much more development would be needed to allow automatic load levelling so this could only be considered in a much later version.
• 'Real' Project Management however is more than just Planning and Resource Management, which require the features discussed above; it also involves the management of a wide range of documents, budgets, meetings, actions, risks, issues etc., etc. This wider need tends to have a style and 'flavour' that is dependent on both the Project and indeed the Project Manager, and this is where a Tiki based Project Management approach will have the unique capability of being able to integrate other standard Tiki features e.g. Trackers, Wiki pages/Structures, Calendars, Spreadsheets etc. Within Tiki this mix of features can be utilised in a very flexible customised way, to great effect, in order to meet the specific needs of an individual project.

The proposed approach for a new Tiki Projects development therefore is:

• to map out a basic 1.0 Projects feature set specification, additional to the existing Tasks features, with an associated design for an expanded db data structure to underpin the development of the additional set of 'core' Project Management Planning and Resource Management features for 1.0
• to implement this 1.0 specification level with its associated new data structure and to also
• identify and promote ways of integrating Trackers, Calendars etc., in useful ways

The following set of pages documents the more detailed requirements to implement this proposed development.

Table of contents: