Hi All,

I have been working on an effort tracking feature, all of my code has been pushed to GitHub but I would like to have some discussion regarding the implementation before I close this one down / continue to implement.

In have described in some detail how it all works below and screen shots are attached…

The Write Up…

Effort Tracking is enabled on a project by project basis - this allows for Flyspray to have both public and internal projects rather than assuming a one size fits all. All of the below is only displayed when effort tracking is enabled in the project settings.

I have added a new tab to the project administration page for effort tracking which will make it easier to add admin configurable settings at a later date.

Estimating Effort…

Estimated Effort is record on the Add new task page and edited on the Edit Task Page.

Estimated Effort recording is role based.  Only people with 'Can edit task' can enter Estimated effort.

History items are stored for when estimated effort changes.

Estimated Effort is by default entered in hours, At present there is no mechanism for recording estimates in minutes, is this required?

Effort Tracking…

Effort tracking can be performed in two ways:-

Only people with "Can Track Effort" role can manually add effort.

1.       'The Simple Way' - Manually input the amount of effort

a.       Effort is added in HH:MM format, entering 6 will add 6 hours, entering 6:05 will add 6 hours and 5 minutes.

2.       'The Enhanced Way' - Person working on the task starts and stops a timer when commencing / ceasing work.

a.       The system automatically calculates the amount of effort based on the start and end timestamps.

b.      An individual can only start recording effort against a task if they are not already recording effort against the task.

c.       An individual can track effort against multiple tasks simultaneously.

d.      The system displays that the individual is currently tracking work against a task (and for how long)

e.      Multiple individuals can track effort against the same task simultaneously.

f.        The individual has the option to cancel tracking actions once commenced.

Displaying Estimated and Actual Effort…

Task view displays the estimated amount of time and the aggregated actual effort.

A new tab at the bottom of the task view displays the history of the effort tracked against the task. Only people with the role "Can view effort tracking" can access this tab.

Roadmaps…

The roadmap displays the estimated effort and the current actual effort for each version.

Data & Formatting…

New field added to task table to record the estimated effort.

New table added 'effort' to record the effort records of individuals.

All effort fields are recorded in seconds and then reformatted to  X Day(s) XX:XX i.e. 5 Days 6:05 for display purposes. This is the simplest implementation as is just recording timestamps.

Things I still need to fix…

1.       Validation on the manual input to check that it doesn’t contain illegal values i.e. someone is trying to record an actual effort of 'pineapple'.

2.       Estimated Effort by adding a D,M or Y to the value will accept a valid input in Days, Months or Years, and then convert the value to days and hours for display purposes.

3.       Refactor some of the PHP out of the templates as they shouldn’t be there, particularly in the roadmap screen.

If people are generally accepting the value of this feature request and the mechanism in which I am proposing the implementation then I will be working on the fix of these issues over the next week.

Possible Future Enhancements…?

1.       Project Overview displays which tasks are currently being worked on and by who -- all the data is there so should be fairly straightforward.

2.       Visual alert to user on every flyspray page to tell them that they are currently tracking effort against FS#...

3.       Report on project showing who has been working on what - all the data is there so should be fairly straightforward.

4.       Report on individual user showing their activity and effort - all the data is there so should be fairly straightforward.

5.       Ability to record estimated effort for different individuals and then record effort against that estimate. (I think this is a step too far but is in the discussion thread).

6.       Estimate roadmap completion date based on estimated effort - again I think this is a step too far as this will require Flyspray to understand the amount of resource and the availability of that resource in order to know when the burn rate  of the effort will lead to an end date.

Thanks

Steve

Have finally got a working version pushed to github…

For those of you who are not avidly following FS#1838 here is the synopsis as some changes are significant and some conversation points are probably better if more widely debated.

As always feedback is welcome… and fix time is available.

Steve

1) I would not have a “Add new sub-task” button on each task. It seems to add clutter to the UI, but would like to hear other people’s feedback. In my opinion, instead we should use the same “Add new task” in the header but when adding a new task should have an option to make it a subtask of some other task.  Have moved to an action menu which is available on every task view page.

2) There should be an easy way to ‘move’ an existing task into a sub-task of another task. Under edit there should be a way to make this ticket a sub-task of some other ticket. - Done see action menu

3) When displaying the ticket list, sub-tasks should some how be listed under the super-task. Right now, they are all listed at the same level, but this should not be the case. I am thinking to have them listed directly under the super-task, and indented to the right from the super-task so it is cleaner to see these all as groups of tasks, rather than each as an individual task - this is quite complicated need to consider things such as sort orders, what is maximum levels of nesting permitted i.e. what would happen to the user interface at the 1000th level of subtasking… stupid I know but you get the point at the moment the UI is constrained by the max length of a task if we are adding n indents before the task name this needs to be handled properly (my suggestion would be to move this to version 2 as this is a classic object graph paradigm within a model layer)

4) On the ticket page, where you have sub-tasks listed tot he right of depencencies, I would instead list it below it. I would also have something there to easily associate add other tasks as a super-task or a sub-task. In addition, I would show the Super-task there is one there. - Have added new UI which I think covers this with a better layout… happy to modify if people don’t like it :)

5) Listed the super task in the top right above the project name adds clutter and doesn’t look good. I would instead do it as mentioned in point #4. Done as per point #4

6) When implementing above, need to add sanity checks to avoid circular dependencies. Have prevented a task being its own parent and a sub task from being its own subtask, suggest that as per my comments in point #3 we need to move the more complex implementation of this to v2.

7) the changes to the theme called CleanFS_wSubTs should be merged into cleanfs and then removed. - Have removed was broken to the point of no return and changes are no longer in line with original design.

8) any other changes, fixes, or cleanup you think would be good as pertains to subtasks - Loads ;)

From: flyspray-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org [mailto:flyspray-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Florian Schmitz
Sent: 04 March 2013 18:38
To: flyspray
Subject: Re: [flyspray] Subtasking Advice

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