A Semantics Aware Tool for Managing and A Semantics Aware Tool for Managing and Controlling ProjectsControlling Projects

SupervisorEnrico BlanzieriEnrico Blanzieri

(University of Trento, Italy)

Co-SupervisorAdolfo VillafioritaAdolfo Villafiorita

(Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy)

byby

Kamrul HassanKamrul Hassan(MSc Student, University of Trento, Italy)

Outline

Motivation Background Goals Tool Description Evaluation & Future Work

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Motivation Project management is the integrator between observations about a project and plan

Project manager uses different tools to manage their projects

- Gantt Chart, To-Do List, Web applications to store documents, database to store effort & budget calculation

Project managers are also often required to present the same information in many different ways

Project management tools do not attach semantics to the objects they manipulate -deliverables / milestones are presented as a graphical symbol and It is not possible to “attach” to its actual meaning.

Connection between the planning phase and monitoring & execution phase

10 open source tools analyzed Common Features:

Gantt Chart Web Based File Management Chat, Email, Feed Time Tracking Resource Management Wiki, Forum

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Background

Goals

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Investigate how a proper representation of the data of a plan can help provide a more integrated tool chain to support project management activities.

Experiment with an application developed in RoR, a framework that provides a robust API.

Tool Overview

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Developed in RoR [Rails 3.2, Ruby 1.9.2]

Divided into two parts:

Plan Creation Execution & Monitoring

Tool Overview (Components)

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Devise - Authentication

CanCan - Authorization

Rolify – RBAC

PaperClip – Document Management

Chronic – DateTime formater

Nested_Form – Nesting Model

Twitter-Bootstrap – Design

Tool Overview(Plan Creation)

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Project

Milestone WorkPackage

Task

Deliverable

Resource

Partner

RepositoryPlangeneratecreate

Tool Overview(repository)

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Project

Task

Deliverable

Milestone Perform tasksDeliver deliverablesDeliver milestones

View project statusMonitor &Control activities

Evaluation(case study)

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Project Title

Project Description

Partner List

Evaluation(case study…)

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Project Title

Project Description

Partner List

Evaluation(case study…)

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Complete Work Package

Publish Button To Generate Repository

Evaluation(case study…)

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Evaluation(result)

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Achievements

core concepts identification of a plan element

relationships and attributes definition are pretty correct

create the plan defined by a documentation plan

successfully generates the repository

intuitive monitoring & executing experience

Limitations

some model attributes are still missing

relationships among models need to be more flexible

there is no dependency defined in the plan creation

basic authentication and authorization support

low level repository security

no reverse engineering facilities

Future Work

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Reverse Engineering

Gantt Chart Generation

Resource Management (Effort & Cost Calculation)

Wiki, Forum, Calendar, Notification

Strong Authorization

Apply HCI Approach Towards UX & Conduct More Case Studies

Thank YouThank You

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The tool is available @ github.com/kamrulhassan/ospm