Flyspray

I’ve thought about this myself, but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that a gnatt chart is really out of the scope of Flyspray. It’s a BTS, not a project manager. We also don’t include when the task will start. Just because a bug was opened doesn’t mean it was started. Maybe a gnatt chart would be okay in the reporting section, but I really think it would add unnecessary bloat to the project.

BTS is one of aspects for manage a
flyspray must be a BTS only
think that flyspray has functionalities of project manager software (due date, percent complete, task
chart shows only tasks confirmed, not all bug reports.

I think gantt is not very suitable atm.  FS#392  and thus  FS#218  will be needed before. Also, I consider usual graphs more important and more interesting in particular. So these beed to be done first. I’ll simply change this task to a more general one.

Flyspray is a great program, and we use it intensively to track the bugs and feature requests of our software development projects. What we really miss is a Gantt chart giving an overview of the stati of the projects. Since all the information is tracked in Flyspray, we would not like to introduce a parallel system just for this purpose.

What you did and you are doing is great, and we would financially support this development. Please contact me to discuss the details if you think, that we can promote the Gantt chart integration in Flyspray.

Florian... this seem to be a frecuently requested feature.. can we discuss a way to do this , and implement it after 0.9.9 ??

Sure we can discuss it. But *after* we have taken care of 0.9.9 ;)

Excellent feature discussion.. The reason its a popular request is because currently, there is a lot of junk out there for project management .. applets that dont work, crappy vb programs with high price tags, features that don’t address a project coordinators’s needs, bad user interface. Having tried a lot of this funkware, I can honestly say that flyspray.. even as a BTS has more appeal than 99.9% of what’s out there. There are really not many programs that draw gantt charts reliably, can import from MS project, and manage project tasks other than dotproject (on a donation-based basis). So before saying “this is a BTS not a PM” consider than its not THAT much of a stretch to cover PM features and where there is demand, there is money.

Gyorgy, I just generate the gif from MS project and toss it into a free flash program called Zoomify and let them see the gantt charts + task lists that way.. for now. Flyspray is used to coordinate the high priority tasks and jobs that are currently underway.

Florian, If bloating the project is a concern, there is also the possibility of rebranding the next version as a PM component (ie: PmpSpray!*) then charge something modest for it.. programmers got to eat too. FYI I use flyspray as a PM on www.venusrises.tv (an independant sci-fi series), www.birdseyevid.com/afterhours (event videography), and am evaluating it for use on www.eventide.net (Rubies of Eventide, the massively-multiplayer game). But I’d need MS import for the latter... those projects are huge! Like Gyorgy, if you need financial support for adding boring PM features just holler.

*PMP = project management professional.. they make us put it at the end of our names when we’re certified.

Julia :

1. Is far too early to discuss about bloat, this is not even started to be implemented, nor is going to be before 1.0, so don’t hlod your breath :D

2. We are commited to free software, and if at some point we make some kind of business with this, will probably be service oriented, making profit directly from a flsypray module ain’t a good idea for a wide veriety of reasons ( services are more rentable, no piracy ..and there is no such thing as “flyspray module system” )

I totally understand your commitment to free software (I’m in the same boat with RoE).. there are some companies who charge hosting fees for web based gantt chart software.. that may be more up your alley. I’ll keep an eye on the change notes for the gantt feature. In the meantime, do you have any FAQs or hacks on how to make jpgraph (or any of those other libraries) work within flyspray? It looks like I’d need a list of what corresponds to where in the mysql db.. any help would be much appreciated.

julia : at the moment, We haven’t figured yet what is the best way to do this, nor the best library to use,before doing this, there are other direct or indirect dependencies on the matter that needs to be coded, also we are now focused on 0.9.9 stabilization and bugfixing mostly.

I ‘ll rearch for the best alternatives to do this,

Team, (I am trying to behave but still think this is probably the wrong place to post this, so am ready for flame)

I am a manager using flyspray, and would consider ‘sponsering’ this feature if $$$ is an issue and we could agree on something. Just willing to help support. But I very much want this feature and use FS as a PM tool vs. BTS at this time (with only some minor label mods.

I’ll also pay for support to get gantt charts working via one of the solutions above if it works well.

Flame away, but know I have $$ :)

Hehe ;)

Well, $$, especially $$$ and $$$$ could certainly speed development of a feature up, especially since we’d be able to use the resources then for tasks we can’t do on our own at the moment. So feel free to tell us more about your offer. Use team@flyspray.org for a more private response.

I want a charts (I from Russia, excuse my english). I have refused from Mantis and I wish to fix this only one issue. I plan to realise it using Adobe Flex Charting components () (http://examples.adobe.com/flex2/inproduct/sdk/explorer/explorer.html) on next weekend.

Charts:

simple

• Task Types
• Task Statuses
• Resolutions
• Severity
• Priority
• Categories

and complex (list is not full, I still will think)

• Created vs resolved

I missed this for a long time.

Now that I contributed some code for releasing Flyspray 1.0, I think gantt-like charts for Flyspray is possible.

I would like push Flyspray a bit more in the direction of project management, as I want use it more deeply for my work.

A first try implementing 'jsgantt improved' https://code.google.com/p/jsgantt-improved/ showed:

- It was quite easy to implement
- I am not satisfied with what jsgantt displays. Doesn't match my high standard/requirement.

A nice solution for Flyspray tasks would be some hybrid display of gantt chart and combined graphical presentation.
Like some auto positioning of tasks without set start/end dates, weighted by priorities, dependencies, creation date, last modification date, status

I think I will not use any existing ganttlibrary and try my own luck for following reasons:

• Flyspray has now more features that can't be visualized within the gantt's I saw.
• The existing gantt's I saw weren't beautiful as I have in my mind.
• no dependencies, no overhead due unused features

Things that must be considered for rendering timeline/gantt charts for Flyspray:

• estimated or explicite set start and end dates
• estimated effort (timeline bar length correlated with man days, work free days and number of resources (humans, machines) working on it
• dependencies between tasks
• sub tasks: should be grouped together under super task if possible
• user rights: Some tasks are maybe private, but a sub task could be visible to a user.. → to render a consistent graph it could be needed to paint "ghost" super tasks in graph
• priority/sorting of independent tasks
• related tasks

Technologies:

• HTML5 canvas element + javascript
• maybe SVG as export or fallback for browsers who disabled javascript

   flyspray_gantt1.jpg (11.1 KiB)