Questions tagged [tools]
This tag is for questions about the USAGE or IMPLEMENTATION of materials or practices used by project managers to support their work-flow. As a superset tag, the "tools" tag should not be used when there's another, more-specific tag available. This tag should not be used for software recommendations, which are off-topic on this site per the Help Center guidelines.
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What are the current tools available for PM? [closed]
What are the current up to date project management tools to use? I have been using dotProject which I know is outdated, what ones are out there and the best for small to medium projects?
To be more ...
23
votes
15
answers
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What is better: a physical Scrum board or an online board?
I used to practice Scrum with a physical board. We often faced problems when working with distributed teams or just when going into a meeting room. So I decided to implement a SaaS service to provide ...
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18
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6
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What's a good way to do requirements management in Jira? [closed]
My team gets a pretty big corpus of requirement documents before each product... and by "pretty big" I mean roughly a hundred documents with 20-200 requirements a piece.
We're moving to Jira for ...
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17
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18
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How effective will be an iPad to take Meeting Minutes?
Usually I record notes of project meetings in pen and paper (regular notepad). If I am taking notes in a laptop, some people tend to think that I am not paying attention.
I have thought of buying an ...
- 171
16
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7
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How to suggest project improvements in a rigid / narrow-minded environment?
Briefing:
I'm a new employee at a small company that has a lot of talent but seems to have gotten by with ad-hoc processes simply because they've had mostly small projects and repeat customers who ...
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14
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11
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Requirements management software for mere mortals
I would like to discuss with you a special case of requirements management. I call it “requirements management for mere mortals”.
I had worked as a project manager in a small web development company....
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13
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4
answers
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Should small teams use Continuous Integration?
I recently switched to a start-up organization providing a social network site. In my new organization, we are a small team of 8 developers/designers.
I heard a lot about continuous integration (e.g. ...
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13
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7
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How can I use MS Project to manage an agile project
We use MS Project to manage a project. Although I know that MS Project is just a scheduling tool, we use it to get the current state of the project. We update the % complete field at the end of every ...
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12
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7
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Should test phones be taken home or kept in the office?
My team consist of 6 backend developers, with 4 different test phones and tablets.They need to use test phones to cross check front end developers work, and debug their API.
Testing in mobile is ...
- 229
12
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7
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How to Encourage Team Members to use Web Based Collaboration Tools?
I just took a new job at a company with 4 offices and many cross-office teams. The company is very email-heavy and I am a huge advocate of using web based project management/collaboration tools.
I ...
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12
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6
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What software can I use to complememt our useless company task planning and time tracker tool? [closed]
We have Remedy-based software that is used for task planning and time tracking. No real project management features are supported, but we need to use it because our budgets are calculated using the ...
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11
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4
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Can MS Projects be integrated in SharePoint?
I wonder if it's possible to integrate a template from MS Projects into SharePoint.
We have been using this tool to plan and illustrate workpackages. However, since we have moved into a bigger team ...
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9
votes
3
answers
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Good project management cheat sheet [closed]
I see various ones on the web (such at this one), but not being a project manager, I can't really tell which ones are good. I'm looking for a checklist of things to do and important terms; ...
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2
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How can I get my team to use our tools and follow a (any) workflow
I am a Software Engineer at a startup ( 16 employees ), and we are still working like we have 3 employees. The buy in for our tools is very minimal and renders them almost useless.
I know we are ...
- 171
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7
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Which tool do you use for creating good looking project timelines? [closed]
Which tool(s) do you use for creating good project timelines? I don't mean Gantt charts, but timelines that summarize the milestones so the team / others can have an overview of the plan ahead.
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What is the name for this type of chart?
I love using burndown charts, but they only work for finite chunks of work.
Since I also help out groups that do continuous operational work, I wanted to develop a similar tool that would work for ...
- 173
6
votes
7
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Open Source Agile Project tracker?
I have a small project I want to carry out.
I need an open source Project Tracker which could integrate with Subversion and has a Scrum oriented UI.
I'm trying to raise this as a client server on a ...
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6
votes
2
answers
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How to handle access to resources on a Scrum team which was previously a hierarchical team?
From what I've read and learned about scrum from my recent reading, as well as years reading the great questions and answers on this site, a scrum team is a team of equals, where there's no hierarchy, ...
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6
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2
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Project Management Tools for Embedded Software Professionals
I understand this may apply to very few but I hope there are some who can give me good advice.
I would like to know what project management tools embedded software engineering organizations/groups/...
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6
votes
2
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334
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What should be the methodology followed by a research and development project?
I am an Engineering undergrad and I am working towards establishing a 8-10 person team for a 6-8 month long academic research project.
Timeline
We will be starting the groundwork for the project in ...
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5
votes
2
answers
433
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Are GTD techniques applicable to PM?
Is Getting Things Done helpful in terms of understanding PM, and does it make any direct contributions?
I'm not asking whether GTD will make you better organized, or more effective generally. I mean,...
- 173
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10
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How to share information found on the internet with the team?
I need a simple way to share texts, links to frameworks, videos and, of course, actual project data with multiple people. Things that come to mind are blog, wiki and public Facebook page. I also ...
- 153
5
votes
4
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228
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Risk Management - minimum data?
I'd like to come up with a "3x5 card risk board" which is essentially a movable dry-erase board where 3x5 sticky cards can be posted by the team and moved/reviewed daily/weekly as needed. (I use the ...
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5
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2
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448
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Specifications in spreadsheets vs. stories in JIRA
I think this is a very common issue a lot of companies fight with. So I would like to ask for your input.
Product Owners often prefer to keep specifications in Google spreadsheet. And then write user ...
- 151
5
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2
answers
996
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How to manage different detail levels in a project plan to be presented to different audiences?
In any given project, a variety of detail levels are needed:
executive summary
technical summary
delivery team summary
delivery details
How can these different levels of detail be contained and ...
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5
votes
1
answer
121
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Project component - what exactly is this?
In order to better track issues and plan development of an ever-expanding web application, I am setting up an instance of Trac. As developer, I will use this system primarily, along with the ...
- 153
5
votes
1
answer
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How to calculate execution variance?
Our Program Management office is interested in identifying tasks where the projected execution differs from the planned execution. MS Project's "Duration Variance" field calculates the difference ...
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5
votes
2
answers
709
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What is the preferred PMI framework friendly - Web Application for Project Managers? [closed]
Don't go answer the question before reading below
Many companies follow a very distinct business specific project management approach. I am sure this is true for mid and big companies across the ...
4
votes
7
answers
2k
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Choosing a tool for Scrum [closed]
I'm considering the use of a software in order to help our team to implement Scrum. I saw iceScrum, but I don't know if it's a good tool. Do you ever used it? Can you suggest another tool?
- 2,172
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3
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Scrum+Kanban SaaS tool [closed]
Do you want to use such tool?
It will be some tool with product backlog, sprint backlogs, Scrum/Kanban dashboard...
Me and my partners want to develop this.
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4
votes
3
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Microsoft Project - How to quick-filter tasks in this week
As subject, on early Monday, I want to see "what we planned to do in this week". At late Friday, I want to see "what has done/delayed in this week".
However, I can't find how to quick-filter tasks ...
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4
votes
5
answers
367
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What's the most effective way of sharing the schedule with the team?
I'm keen to know the perceived best way of sharing a company wide schedule of work.
Here are some key considerations:
I want the team to be able to see what is upcoming in the next 1-6 weeks and the ...
- 611
4
votes
6
answers
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Which tools would you recommend for use when drafting, monitoring and reporting on a project schedule? [closed]
When managing a complex project (large enough for significant daily status updates), with a large team (in the 10's of team members), which tools would you recommend for use to draft the project ...
4
votes
4
answers
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What is the best way to manage dynamic sub-projects?
Management of the (non-technical, with team members based in different locations) project I'm currently working on has a huge issue - it is extremely dynamic, with a static team-size. At any given ...
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4
votes
2
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What should be in an Atlassian toolkit for website PM?
I'm requisitioing some tools for a large scale web development project.
Intending to start with the following:
JIRA for issues tracking, wiki, git or svn hosting
Greenhopper plugin for agile PM
...
- 308
3
votes
3
answers
401
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How to convince business team why software development IDE licensing is important?
Sorry if I'm asking in the wrong community.
In our company we have a "tradition" to not to pay for licenses for development integrated development environments (IDEs). The business team's arguments ...
3
votes
2
answers
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Engaging remote team members in sprint planning
Here is the problem: We have remote team members. Most of us are in Western Washington but a few are located in Texas and we lose participation from members of the team because we're doing everything ...
- 131
3
votes
2
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Best methods for IT Project Management
I have a person that wants me to build for him a web application and also design the database required. However, his idea quite complex and I got to the point where I no longer work without something ...
- 249
3
votes
1
answer
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Project 2010 opens with blank screen
I've run into a problem with my Microsoft Project 2010 file. Whenever I try and open it I just get a blank screen.
None of the alternative views (e.g. network diagram, resource sheet, tracking gantt,...
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votes
3
answers
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Tools to capture business requirements [closed]
Which tools would you use to capture business requirements?
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1
answer
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Consulting and separating internal and external tickets
So, I'm helping an agile software consulting company to create a workflow between themselves and their customers.
The goal is to provide the customer with an Agile way of approving features (stories) ...
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3
votes
3
answers
339
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How to simulate scenario's of possible project networks based on actual capacity by month?
I have calculated the available capacity in hours by month, taking into account overhead, training, holidays, sick leave, etc. (all based upon historical data and expected holidays during summertime).
...
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1
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On JIRA, how can I restrict a specific status of my workflow to hold only one issue per time?
On JIRA, how can I restrict a specific status of my workflow to hold only one issue per time?
Because we're automating all our workflow, I want to have a specific status (ACCEPTANCE) that only ...
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3
votes
1
answer
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Can I resolve an issue's sub-task using a FishEye smart commit? [closed]
Context
I have a feature request represented as a JIRA issue with the handle PRJ-11. My issue has a sub-task with the handle PRJ-23. JIRA has the latest FishEye and FishEye Plugin installed and smart ...
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2
votes
4
answers
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What to do when the team prefers private communications on mail and chat over collaborative tools like Jira?
I've noticed that a lot of discussion between a developer and a Product Owner happens in private conversations in various communication tools (Skype, Slack, email, etc). The reason is because these ...
- 2,719
2
votes
3
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410
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Tools in agile methods
We are currently in the process of implementing Scrum. I would like to let us started with a tool to help the team get along with it (see here about this point), but after a presentation I made where ...
- 2,172
2
votes
4
answers
303
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PM crash course
I have an engineering background and have accepted an offer from a tech company for which I will be leading a brand new web project (mix of PM + tech lead). There is no prior work done except overall ...
- 123
2
votes
3
answers
580
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Why are sticky notes used in sprint retrospective meetings?
Some of my team members wanted to email their feedback for sprint retrospective meetings instead of gathering in a room and write down their feedback in a sticky note. Other than telling them that ...
- 121
2
votes
3
answers
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How to shift to the semi-automatic estimation of the projects?
I am working at a custom software development company. The number of incoming custom projects has increased over the last few years.
The first problem is that not all customers are willing to pay us ...
- 171
2
votes
3
answers
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Do people use sticky notes for release planning still?
There is a perception in our company that Jira and other web tools have replaced the need for having scrum board and sticky notes.
Our release planning happens with lot of impromptu big-huddles and ...
- 121