Collaborate on To-Do Items – Comments and Messaging

August 31st, 2010

As a designer, are you looking for a quick way to poke your fellow developer to say: I finished all my tasks on item ABC. It’s now your turn to implement it.

As a manager, do you always have to remind workers to mark their tasks as done and log their time?

As a developer, do you find yourself wanting clearer specs on item ABC?

As a worker, don’t you wish you didn’t have to walk over to your fellow colleague to explain how to log into Planio and find item ABC?

As a busy executive, don’t you wish Planio could come and get you?

Well today I’m announcing a solution to these problems: comments and messaging. Items in Planio now hold comments and you can alert colleagues via email when you write a new one. They get a nice link driving them directly to the item in Planio.

Here’s How it Works

Open an Item and click on the Comments tab. Write a comment and choose who to alert.

Click Send and your coworker(s) will get a nice email with a link that leads them directly to the item in Planio.

Comments are saved and you can always go back and review them later. It’s a great way to document the evolution of a feature through discussions.


Wiki on a To-Do Item

Combine Comments and File Attachments and you’ve got yourself a wiki. Here’s a common use case demonstrating the power you have:

  • Martin the product manager creates an item for feature ABC.
  • He writes the specs and attaches the document to the item.
  • Martin then writes a comment and Planio emails Mathieu the developer and David the designer:

Please review the attached spec. Add your revisions and when done, let me know.

  • Mathieu receives the email and with a single click, he is brought to the item in Planio.
  • He opens and modifies the spec with his revisions and replaces it in Planio with a simple drag and drop.
  • Mathieu then writes a new comment alerting Martin and David of his proposed changes.
  • David does the same.

Here’s our final item with discussion and document.

So try out our new Comments feature, Planio just got even easier to use!

Martin

Posted in Updates

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jQuery UI Sortable – Slow to bind

August 20th, 2010

We broke down the time it took to generate a Planio plan page and realized that all that Javascript binding was taking much of the time. Out of that time, the vast majority of the time was spent applying .sortable() to enable drag & dropping of all elements. It turns out that time is vastly reduced if we removed the connectWith option, but then user cannot drag&drop items from an iteration container to another..

By playing with this today I realized that we can save a lot of processing and time by setting the connectWith option AFTER the .sortable() is initialized!!

Before:

  $(container).sortable({
    distance: 5,
    axis:"y",
    "connectWith", '#story>.iteration_frame>.iteration_container.allowdrop'
    cancel: 'div.disabled,div.opened,div.plan_table_message'
  });

After:

  $(container).sortable({
    distance: 5,
    axis:"y",
    cancel: 'div.disabled,div.opened,div.plan_table_message'
  }).sortable( "option", "connectWith", '#story>.iteration_frame>.iteration_container.allowdrop' );
  // For whatever reason setting this option AFTER initialization saves us 4X the time!!

The bottom line?

Here are times to do JS bindings (browser is blocked for that time so it’s a time the user feels!)

Plan, large page, all initiatives all items everybody,

Before: 16 935ms, 253437 calls

After: 5 617ms, 179336 calls


Work page, same selection

Before: 1200ms, 136 668 calls

After: 510ms, 39565 calls


The more sortable elements on the page the bigger the benefit!

Ticket #5886 was opened on jQuery UI to resolve this.

Mathieu

Posted in Coding

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Planio has Two Levels of Projects

August 19th, 2010

In my last demo of Planio, I found myself spending more time than usual describing why we introduced two-level projects. So in this post, I’ll describe and show how you can leverage that in your organization.

The top level is called an initiative. It is akin to a product or service: it associates a team of individuals to one or many projects. At the second level are projects which contain to-do items (and items contain tasks). Let me refer to this picture pulled from the Features page.

It is a Gantt-chart-like depiction of how we setup the Planio initiative to manage Planio itself. Notice we have three projects; a first for development of the web application, a second for marketing and commerce, and a third for the regular run of business.

Why do we manage non-development activities in Planio? Simply because management and marketing also have items which affect development of Planio. So tracking items for everyone in the same tool allows us to plan a common iteration. It also allows us not to forget anything and it maintains open communication between departments.

The Power of Filtering

On the Plan page is where two-level projects come in handy. You can quickly filter to-do items to see one or multiple projects. For example:

Permissions

There are things which need to stay private. In Planio, you can only see items for initiatives and projects you are involved in. For example, only allowed Planio managers can see items in the Run of Business project. So I can manage employee confidential items directly in Planio by putting those items in the Run of Business project, and be assured they remain unseen by employees.

Permissions are easy to setup in Planio. Go to the Manage page, open your initiative and then the project. You simply include a person in your project to grant him/her access to those items. Remove a person from your project and he/she will no longer see those items.

Administrator

Of course, only administrators have the ability to add or remove projects and people. We provide administrator privileges at the initiative-level. And you can have many administrators on a same initiative. An administrator is able to create, modify and delete projects. An administrator can also add/remove people from projects. And administrators can see all items in all projects in the initiative, regardless of whether they are on a project or not.

Initiative or Project?

Now that these concepts are clear, how to decide whether to create two distinct initiatives, or two projects inside an initiative? Try to answer these questions:

Will there be overlap between team members? Do the two need to keep separate identities?

If the two involve different teams, create distinct initiatives. If the two involve the same teams, create one initiative with two projects. What overrides it all is if the two need to keep distinct identities (i.e. two clients in a consulting firm). In that case, create distinct initiatives.

For example, in Bolidea (Planio’s incubator) each incubating company has its own initiative. Here’s a look at some of those I can see on my Manage page. Notice I even created myself a personal initiative. No one but me can see that one.

It would be the same for a larger company with distinct products; one initiative per product. A consulting firm could create one initiative per client. That allows you to personalize it by attaching the client’s logo. You can then grant the client access to see how his project is evolving. He would only see that one initiative.

And if you’re not sure because some resources will be shared, be assured that Planio was built to support that.


So as you can see, Planio provides all the means for an organization to manage their activities in one tool. So go ahead and give agility to your entire organization.

Martin

Posted in General

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Project Management Meets To-Do List

August 12th, 2010

When we took on the challenge of building Planio, we decided not to impose any particular Agile methodology like SCRUM or XP. But instead, to leave that up to you. This brings me to explain how Planio works, and how it can be used in any type of project management, even Waterfall.

At its base Planio is a prioritized to-do list organized by time period called iterations. When the Current iteration comes to an end, items completed are moved to history. Items not completed remain, and items that were planned in the Next iteration are brought up. At any time, you can drag and drop an item to re-prioritize it, and add/delete/modify items. And if you’ve got too many things on your plate, you can put them in the Backlog so they don’t get lost. The following diagram depicts what happens to the to-do list at the end of iteration Week 1.

Stepping back, this is exactly how humans work. On a day to day basis we constantly:

  • Take on new items (call the doctor to make an appointment)
  • Re-prioritize items (push to after lunch generating that report the boss wants)
  • Delete items (cancel boys night out)
  • Plan new items (schedule romantic dinner with wife)

And sometimes, if we have a gap in our schedule, we pull up from the Backlog a long overdue item and get it done (re-paint the white picket fence).

Managing projects as a to-do list is a natural process. And there are lots of tools out there to manage to-do lists. Except in the context of a project, it needs to be done for a team; where people share items. Collaboration and tracking progress are key.

Planio formalizes and automates that process for teams.

Even humans working on Waterfall projects follow the same process on a day to day basis. So go ahead, use MS Project, construct Gantt charts, and identify critical paths. Then export all those items into Planio so your team can start working, and get things done.

Martin

Posted in General

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Create or Import a New Initiative [import]

August 10th, 2010

Today, we launched a new interface for creating a new initiative. You can access that on the Actions menu.

It’s a wizard-style interface. It also allows you to import stories from a file, and invite people. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

We also support importing Pivotal Tracker files. In fact, we’re looking for people to test that out. So if you have a Pivotal Tracker export file, give it a shot. Or if you’d like to donate one for testing, send us a mail at help@planio.com. And if you know people using Pivotal, send them our way; we’d love to convert them!

Martin

Posted in Updates

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PMBOK vs Agile

August 9th, 2010

A few weeks ago I joined the Agile People Manifesto group. Great initiative to extend Agile principles to people. Kudos!

On question came up from Peter Dawson: PMBOK vs Agile

Ok here comes a classic question. How do Agile Believers sway the PmBoK believers during a classic cross team /department or inter company project ?

It’s a good question and something we struggle with trying to sell Planio to larger companies. So here was my two cents:

I think the key lies in demonstrating that Agile and Waterfall is a spectrum, and not two distinct territories separated by a huge wall. We traditionally place PmBoK on the Waterfall end of the spectrum but nothing precludes practicing Agile. Here’s an interesting article about it.

My own experience showed that introducing one or two Agile concepts at a time can work. For example, kick offs and reviews can be introduced to tighten teams and for individuals to know who works on what.

I found the biggest incentive to adopt Agile principles is to shorten release cycles to a few weeks. That naturally forces a team to do iterations. Features naturally become stories with planning, development and testing all occurring in one release. I’ve lived and seen that work in a few organizations. It’s actually amazing to see the transformation naturally (and often painfully) occur: it’s like a huge storm but eventually the waters calm down and life goes on.

I’m curious to know what people think. So join the Agile People Manifesto and get yourself heard. You’ll contribute to shaping its core principles.

Martin

Posted in General

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Work more efficiently with the new “My Work” page [work]

August 3rd, 2010

As you probably are aware of by now Planio is great for planners, it help them save time and organize their scarce resources: workers. It doesn’t mean worker cannot enjoy a couple of new feature once and then too. Today we announce some love for the work page, these changes will help workers be even more productive in Planio than they were before.

  • Work was renamed My Work
  • It’s now easier to drag&drop task around to mark them as complete.
  • Minor style changes
  • Users can now download attached files from an item in work without going to the “Plan” page.
  • It’s now possible to filter all tasks in My Work by a variety of way to help users spot exactly what they are looking for. Wether it’s remaining tasks or tasks some co-workers could use some help in these filters we believe are going to become the worker’s best friend. Their value is also saved from a visit to another so no need to re-click these checkboxes every time. 

     The filters also display informational messages if you are hiding something to make sure you never something gets lost.


Happy planning!

Mathieu

Posted in Updates

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Carrying items over multiple iterations [tips]

July 28th, 2010

Do you find yourself starting items and not being able to complete them before the end of the iteration? Are you wondering what will happen to that item when the iteration ends? Will it be moved to history or in the next iteration? How will that affect your velocity?

We hit that same problem long ago. So don’t lose sleep over it! Planio takes care of it as one would expect – automatically.

Items can be carried over many iterations. Tasks you have completed are logged in the iteration it was done in. For example, in Planio attachments took longer than one iteration to develop. Below are tasks for the original item near the end of the iteration. Notice some were completed and some weren’t.

When the iteration’s move to history happened, this item wasn’t finished. So Planio created a copy with remaining tasks. You can quickly spot carried over items with a superscript number indicating how many iterations the item has been carried over.

When the item is opened, you can see remaining tasks. Past tasks appear in a separate tab for you to consult. Of course, they can’t be modified since they are history.

Planio pro-rates estimates based on the number of tasks. For example, 4 development tasks were estimated to take 40 hours while 3 remain estimated at 24 hours. The accomplished 16 estimate hours were accounted for in the last iteration and used to calculate the new velocity.

Martin

Posted in Updates

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Less clutter, more productivity [ui]

July 21st, 2010

New ui goodies

New toolbar [ui]

Starting today in Planio, freshly baked new UI changes have been introduced.


The tooltip provided to help you edit/add/delete an item as been entirely designed. The new slicker look consumes less space and doesn’t overlap on other items on the page. We thank our mighty designer David for this concept, we hope you will like it. Here is the look for the item editor:

Let the team know what’s released and what’s not! [status]

Also, very few people knew that they could actually do stuff to mark a story “completed”, “verified”, “released” or “approved”/”rejected”. We decided to make these “hidden buttons” look more like actual buttons. When you hover a row you will now see that everything clickable looks like a button, clicking on the hourglass will then reveal a menu that looks like this:

Getting the clutter out of item editor [item, labels, description]

As some of you might have realized, creating a new label implies that every time you open an item, this label will show up. While it shouldn’t be an issue for small projects, it definitely is for projects that have been around for quite a while like Planio. The label selection screen is now better organized and consume less space. The label section will now only show up the labels selected for that item. The regular full blown view of all the labels will be available on mouse hover..

 

(regular view)

 

(mouse hovered)

You might also have noticed that is an item doesn’t have description, we now show a + Description link instead of a big white box so you can focus more on your stuff and less in empty white boxes.


Show me what I still have to do [filters]

Also, we are introducing a new filter to help people working on large projects. “Items I still have work in” under the story filter will reveal only stories for wich you still have tasks to complete in.

 

So that’s all for todays, most of these improvements were planned after being suggested by our users! Would you like to see one of your idea implemented in Planio? Submit feedback now to get your voice heard.

Mathieu

Posted in Updates

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Planio opens its door to the public [beta]

July 12th, 2010

Hello!

Good news! Planio officially opens up its door today to all users who subscribed to the beta. In addition, we decided we would also open the door to the general public so everyone will be able  to be agile in everything they manage: projects, product, people and feedback.

To register now for free, just follow this link:

http://www.planio.com/start/signup

Don’t hesitate to tell us everything that you would like us to add or improve – we attentively read all the feedback we get and use it to get better.

Planio’s features are innovative and easy to use in order for you to spend more time getting things done and less time playing in a complicated spreadsheet.

We encourage you to take the time to find out more about how Planio’s features can help boost your productivity:

http://www.planio.com/start/features

Planio is 100% free while in Beta so it’s worth inviting whoever you think might find the product useful.

Happy planning!

Martin Drapeau & The Planio Team

David

Posted in Updates

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