Project Plan with automatic visualizations of the tickets

Notice: This plugin is unmaintained and available for adoption.

Description

This plugin provides automatic visualizations of the ticket set used in the project (filterable). This should overcome the problems that appear while managing many developers or many tickets. This plugin provides a configurable and graphical overview of ticket types, states, owners, dates and priorities.

The plugin introduces the following ticket attributes:

• time to assign: by the project plan at the latest at this date the owner of the ticket should start working on the task
• time to close: by the project plan at the latest at this date the ticket should be closed
• dependencies: tickets that have to be closed before the current ticket

These attributes are used to draw for example networks of tickets representing the suggested (topological) order of the tickets. Furthermore, it is a development base for several representations. The architecture enables contributors to add their own visualizations.

documentation

documentation

documentation

Key features (examples​):

• works nearly out of the box
• GraphViz based network
• GraphViz based hierarchical network
• critical path analysis for simple workload bases
• sorted reports for delayed tickets and slack times
• animated burn-down charts
• time table of developers and tickets
• ticket statistics

Example usage

Add ticket dependencies and close/assign Times:

• Network Graphics: Use [[ProjectPlan(macroid=...)]] for network graphics with several options enabling project runtime estimation and (workload based) critical path analyses.
• Special Reports: Use special reports which show delays and slacktimes.

Macro Samples:

1. Both networks (hierarchical and non-hierarchical) use critical path analysis. This won't work without ticket times for all tickets (either start, end, or both).
2. The critical path analysis won't work with cyclic dependencies.
3. Dependencies are saved in ticket-custom fields. A dependency line consists of Ticket Identifiers "#<Ticket ID>". Sample Dependencies: #6 and #5,#3 #4.

== Hierarchical Network

[[ProjectPlan(macroid=1, renderer=gvhierarchical)]]

== Hierarchical Network with start and end times

[[ProjectPlan(macroid=1, renderer=gvhierarchical, betickets)]]

== Filtered (milestone=milestone1)

[[ProjectPlan(macroid=filtered, renderer=gvhierarchical, filter_milestone=milestone1)]]

== non-hierarchical (full network)

[[ProjectPlan(renderer=gvrender, macroid=2, withbuffer)]]

== Network Legends

[[ProjectPlan(macroid=legend, renderer=gvrender, statuslegend, prioritylegend, notickets)]]

== Special Reports

[[ProjectPlan(macroid=report_buffer, renderer=report_buffer, limitlines=4)]]
[[ProjectPlan(macroid=report_closing_delay, renderer=report_closing_delay, limitlines=10)]]
[[ProjectPlan(macroid=report_assign_delay, renderer=report_assign_delay, limitlines=10)]]

Tested on Trac versions 0.11 and 0.12.

For more peer projects on project management within Trac and ticket dependencies, see ProjectManagementIdeas.

Bugs/Feature Requests

Existing bugs and feature requests for ProjectPlanPlugin are here.

If you have any issues, create a new ticket.

defect	23 / 33
enhancement	6 / 11

Download

Download the zipped source from here.

Source

You can check out ProjectPlanPlugin from here using Subversion, or browse the source​ with Trac.

Installation

Dependencies

• Python 2.5 or 2.6 with Python Standard Library.
• Recent GraphViz Package, for compatibility issues visit here.
• XML Template Engine Genshi 0.51 or compatible (part of Trac 0.11 and later).

Installation steps

• Check out the source code (you can also use export instead of checkout):

  svn checkout https://trac-hacks.org/svn/projectplanplugin/trunk
  

• Run on the shell:

  python setup.py bdist_egg
  

• Deploy the created egg either globally or locally; locally is recommended at this point.

This plugin can be installed globally via:

easy_install https://trac-hacks.org/svn/projectplanplugin/trunk

and then enabling on a per-project instance by editing trac.ini:

[components]
projectplan.* = enabled

Configuration

The configuration of this plugin can be done in your trac.ini file.

• For when you already have dependencies defined, assign/close date ticket-custom fields.
  • Add the field names (as long as the format is compatible) with:

    [pp_options]
    custom_dependency_field = <your dependency fieldname>
    custom_due_assign_field = <your assign Date fieldname>
    custom_due_close_field = <your close Date fieldname>
    

  • This lets ProjectPlanPlugin use these configured fields.
• If you don't have corresponding dependency and date fields, they need to be added as ticket-custom fields:

  [ticket-custom]
  dependencies = text
  dependencies.label = Dependencies
  due_assign = text
  due_assign.label = Due to assign
  due_assign.value = DD/MM/YYYY
  due_close = text
  due_close.label = Due to close
  due_close.value = DD/MM/YYYY
  

Note: If a standard Trac installation is used, the plugin should work at this point.

Basic GraphViz Configuration (needed for networks)

• Login with administrative rights, navigate to admin (WebAdmin).
  • Select the panel ProjectPlan -> General Settings (on the left).
  • Verify the settings for cachepath and dot_executable.
• or set the following options in your trac.ini file:

  [pp_options]
  cachepath = <full path to the cache directory>
  dot_executable = <path to graphviz binaries>\dot.exe
  

• Restart your web server for configuration reload.
• Verify access and execution rights for the web server User.
• Cachepath should be a separate directory for each project, this reduces possible cache collisions.

Color Setup

• Login with administrative rights, navigate to admin (WebAdmin).
• Select the panel ProjectPlan -> Color Settings (on the left).
• Set HTML color codes and apply settings.

Image Setup

• Login with administrative Rights, navigate to Admin (WebAdmin).
• Select the panel ProjectPlan -> Image Settings (on the left).
• Select the images, you'd like to use and apply settings.
  • The smaller images, for example icons, can reduce the size of the graphical network representation.

Macro Arguments

• The default settings [[ProjectPlan()]] produce a Hierarchical network with Version on toplevel, Milestone in Versions and Tickets as leafs in Milestones. All Tickets will be used for dependency, critical path and other calculations and visualisations.
• Several macro parameter control the visualization, calculation and ticket filters/queries.
• A list of macro parameters can be found here.

Daily Usage

The cache size can grow quite big, because changes in tickets and per user/macro produce a lot of files and images. It is recommended to either periodically clear the cache manually or set up a daily cronjob to clean the cache automatically.

Known Issues

The plugin (in particular macroid=1 and macroid=2) does not work with older version of graphviz/dot, eg dot version 2.6 (Fri Jun 16 16:00:18 UTC 2006). Please update to a newer version of graphviz, eg to dot - Graphviz version 2.20.2 (Wed Jan 27 16:49:48 UTC 2010). To check the version type graphviz -V. An overview of tested Graphviz versions is shown here.

Other issues:

• Possible unused imports in several modules.
• Code cleanup and documentation required.

Recent Changes

16448 by rjollos on 2017-04-04 07:09:32

Remove intermediate directory

16447 by rjollos on 2017-04-04 07:09:00

Fix indentation

13331 by anbo on 2013-07-07 18:32:10

v2.1.5, patch release

fixes a bug, where the depending tickets are not saved during ticket creation

(more)

Author/Contributors

Author: makadev, anbo
Maintainer: none (needsadoption)
Contributors: