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"Task" Management

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"Task" Management
I'm in need of some advice or opinions on various programs.

I'm looking for a group Task Manager program. At the moment, we're running MS Outlook on a network of around 7 PCs. This has the ability to share "tasks" and can be useful when trying to manage a project which involves a number of people.

However, I want to try and move away from Outlook and to a dedicated program, if possible.

Does anyone have any ideas or experiences with project management or task management? What programs have you used to keep everything in order?

Please note: I am not looking for Project Management software, ie timesheets, cost analysis etc. - I am simply looking for a good solid tool for communicating and sharing tasks, responsibilites etc.

Cheers

- wil

Last edited by:

Wil: Jan 8, 2002, 6:35 AM
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Re: [Wil] "Task" Management In reply to
I have over 10 years experience in juggling multiple projects, employees, clients, budgets, etc., and believe it or not, I found that paper must play an important role in task/project management. Use the electronic end to update statuses and inform of changes/revisions, but every project should begin with a written form (can you say "CYA").

"Face to face" meetings are important for accountability reasons (peer pressure). It makes it harder to save something to the last minute when you know on every Tuesday your going to have to sit in front of everyone and explain your status.

Email should be used for updating and informing, not for group discussion (hence the face-to-face). The reason for this is that if you email 10 people and all 10 people email each other, suddenly you have 100 emails to wade through, each branching off into a different direction of discussion.

What kind of projects in general do you have to deal with?

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Re: [Watts] "Task" Management In reply to
Hi

That's why I opted out of Email.

We have a development team that get assigned jobs. Say there are 8 people working on a bigger project, each contributing bits towards it. We do have weekly planning meetings and everyone knows what exactly they are doing. But the most efficent way I've found to do share the tasks and see where everyone is going is to create a to-do list that looks roughly like:

[name] [task] [due date] [status]

This is currently managed by Outlook tasks which works well, but I'm looking for a dedicated product.

This is a good system IMO of project management. Once you've done the job, you tick it off and move onto the next. It's working well with our workers at the moment, and management where everyone can see precisely where everyone is.

This is the kind of system I am looking for again, if you know of any?

Thanks



- wil
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Re: [Wil] "Task" Management In reply to
hmmm ... interesting question that I've been musing about for a while really.

Why a program? (ever since I got OSX and have apache abilities the question rasied it's interesting little head)

Outlook / NS Communicator ... doh programs ... obviously programs are the first thing to come to mind for most people ... but ... why?

I got this guy bugging me about suggestions to his site ... about this script that script this option and that host. I wish he'd read a little more about the scripts he's looking at instead of asking me (or at least offer to buy me a book for my troubles) but ... he never asked about his local programs on his computer.

You see where I'm getting at?

Wil the great pundit of KDE (just having a go at yah Laugh) I bet you're missing the fun of unix lifestyle.
*nix users like to make their own things, they love to fiddle faddle with everything.

Why don't you look into a script solution ... I came across a few at hotscripts.com that actually need root to install and they basically have all the functions of Outlook (not as nicely packaged or from Redmound) but should do what you need. And the added benefit is that if such a script doesn't exist you could always modify one that is close to what you want.

hope that this helpful

openoffice + gimp + sketch ... Smile
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Re: [QooQ] "Task" Management In reply to
Hi

Of course I tried to script this myself! :-)

But in the end the scripting langauges I know and the methods used simply ain't fast enough. I was using Perl/MySQL on a local server which is lightning fast but it's not nearly-real-time as applications have you believe. And therefore I had a hard time to convince people of the "one-click and it's there" mentality of Outlook people to switch to the "one-click and it refreshes the page with new information" of my Perl/SQL solution.

It would be great if I could program Java for this sort of stuff, or maybe C++. Anything that would give me a more real-time solution.

My Perl/SQL solution is simply too slow. I have colleagues who are just not willing to wait for a new page to load for every click they do (even if the page takes milliseconds to load). They would much rather the information appear "instanteenously" like it "used to" in their Outlook.

Best

- wil

Last edited by:

Wil: Jan 9, 2002, 1:41 AM
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Re: [Wil] "Task" Management In reply to
Have you looked at Microsoft Project - http://www.microsoft.com/office/project/?

Seems like a more robust solution than MS Outlook and also is not a script, but an application that can be shared among your officemates.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me
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Re: [Heckler] "Task" Management In reply to
Yes, looked that one. Thanks for the link. It's too much though unfortunately. We need a much simpler package. I don't need all of the timesheets, cost analysing stuff - that is done by our accounting package. I just need a better tool for communicating.

Thx.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] "Task" Management In reply to
Welp, I really don't know of any other package that you can use...good luck in your research.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me
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Re: [Heckler] "Task" Management In reply to
Thanks. I'll let the forum know if I come up with anything worthwhile.

- wil
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Re: [Wil] "Task" Management In reply to
hmmm .., java solution ... have you looked into WebObjects? Apple runs most of their site with it now ... also allows building of complete java applications.

don't let the name apple fool you ... this is Next technology at work

openoffice + gimp + sketch ... Smile