Web based

1
Web based Project Managementusing
Peter Wieland peter.wieland_at_dnv.com
2
What is PW_Tools?

• Number of scripts to support
• Project management via the WWW
• Automated creation and maintenance of project web
  sites
• Support for
• Keeping address lists (profiles) up to date
• Maintaining action lists in various
  granularities
• Sending to-do lists via email to specific
  project members
• Archiving and extracting documents

• Sharing bookmarks (links)
• Publishing Web site
• Publishing exploitations information(conferences
  and publications)
• Web statistics
• Use all functionality or parts of it.

3
Contents

• Motivation Background
• Basic objectives
• Overview Concepts
• PWA (Action lists Profiles)
• PWD (Document archive)
• PWU (Update sites (mirror))
• PWB (Bookmarks)
• PWE (Exploitation)
• PWL (Log of access)
• PWR (Root generator)
• PWC (Clean up links)
• PWS (Send emails automatically)

• Benefits and problems
• Current state availability
• Directory structure

4
Motivation and Background

• Committed to the coordination of a global project
  
• One part of this role was web site maintenance
  for
• Internal information
• Public information
• Web information used for reporting

• Available recommended tools failed (e.g.
  Frontpage)

5
Project constellation

• 10 partners with various background
• About 30 project members
• 4 countries
• Portugal (3)
• Germany (2)
• Greece (2)
• Norway (3)

• 8 work entities
• 5 Work packages
• Project Steering Group (PSG)
• Technical Committee (TC)
• Telephone Conferences
• Challenge
• Provide 30 updated detailed and dynamic
  information views on
• Project members (30)
• Work entities (8)
• Partners (10)
• Provide mailing lists for those views

6
PWA Web pages to visualise profiles

• Single csv-file as information source for members
  with fields for
• Personal abbreviation key (PWi)
• Name, Address, Phone, Fax, Email, etc.
• Personal partner key
• Work entity membership text files
• Free definable
• Individual members
• All members of a partner
• Partner list text file
• Partner key
• Partner information

• Script generates
• Profiles (html)
• One per project member (28)
• One per project partner (10)
• One per work entity (8)
• Table of contents for those 46 pages
• Overall partner page
• Gallery

7
PWA Profile view examples
8
PWA Profile related views
9
PWA Work entity memberships
10
Project work load

• 8 work entities
• 5 Work packages
• Project Steering Group (PSG)
• Technical Committee (TC)
• Meeting with various frequencies
• WP quarterly (total ca. 12)
• PSG yearly (total 3)
• TC twice a year (total 6)
• Phone twice a month (total ca. 50)
• In total 70 meetings

• Challenge
• Collect actions during various meetings
• Make actions visible to individuals
• Make actions visible to responsible managers (WP,
  Site, PM, etc.)
• Support project managers action follow-up

11
PWA Web pages to visualise actions

• Single ASCII text file with a specific format
• Act-CodeActive-FlagDateResp.-ListTextComment
• Active-Flag Closed or Active
• Resp.List Pairs of ID,State
• ID references a project memeber
• State done or not done
• Same format as in the Minutes of Meeting
• Information identical to MoM (documentation and
  reference)

• Script generates
• Action information pages
• One per action (currently 251 after 12 month
  project duration)
• Action lists
• One per project member (28)
• One per project partner (10)
• Overview table
• All open actions
• All closed actions
• All overdue actions
• All to-do actions

12
PWA Action information overview
13
PWA Member and Partner Lists
14
PWD Document archive

• Challenge
• Quality Assurance Programme
• PM has responsibility for filing documentation
• Document reference
• Various document types
• Deliverables
• Minutes
• Progress reports
• Cost statements, etc.
• Various document formats
• Word-files
• Zip-files
• PDF-files
• Presentations (PPT)
• others
• Project members need approved versions with easy
  access

• Solution Web based archive
• Directory name Document reference
• Directory contains all available formats
• Different views
• Sorted by Reference No
• Sorted by Author, Type, Title, Date
• Sorted by Meetings, etc.
• New views definable
• Integrated fetch mechanism (ftp)
• Search engine

15
PWD Document archive views
16
PWB Bookmark information

• Microsoft Favorites input format
• Generates single bookmark file (share
  Favorites)

17
PWE Exploitation information

• Conferences
• Location date
• Different options
• Paper
• Presentation
• Exhibition
• Different states and responsibles for each option
• Input single text file with information
• Generates short- and long-format html-page
• Links to profiles and document archive (no
  redundancy)

18
PWE Exploitation information

• Publications
• Different items
• books
• papers
• proceedings
• etc
• Input Standard reference database format
• Bibtex (ASCII based, free)
• Usable as reference database for input in papers
  etc.
• Output Publication html-page

19
Directory structure

• One root directory (e.g. Web)
• PW_Tools as subdir of the root
• Bin, Input (global)
• One subdir for each script (PWA, PWB, etc.)
• All overview html-pages under this subdir
• One Input subdir under each script-subdir
• Non-overview information located in subdirs under
  script-subdir (for PWA PWD)

20
PWR Root generator

• Few pages are not generated automatically
• Same header at each level
• Solution
• Put all hand-made pages in a directory
• Consistent header to all of those pages is
  attached automatically
• Each other page generating script uses same
  header information
• All generated files are stored under root
  directory.

21
PWU Site mirror (update site)

• One master web
• Generated locally (e.g. project directory)
• Usable as master
• Usable for back-up
• Different information required on different
  mirror web sites
• All information on internal internet site
  (password protected)
• All reviewers specific info on reviewers internet
  site (password protected)
• All public information on public accessible
  internet site

• Solution
• Text files with mirror information on
• Where to publish to (copy)
• Single files (optional rename)
• Directories (recursive with subdirectories)
• Check timestamp information before copying

22
PWUSite mirror (example)
Destination http//research.dnv.com/marvin_int (
after mapping wwwroot on research.dnv.com to i)

• i/marvin_int
• FILES
• PWD_search.html
• actions.htm
• archive.html
• default.htm
• deliverables.html
• dissemination.html
• docref.html
• links.html
• news.html
• summary.html
• partners.html
• meeting_gallery.html
• DIRS
• PW_Tools/PWA
• PW_Tools/PWB
• PW_Tools/PWD
• PW_Tools/PWE

Other destinations
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Benefits and Problems

• Project related
• Save time
• MoM (action) follow-up easy
• No paper archive required (pure Web)
• Information source for reporting to CEC
• Automatically send to-do lists to members
• Increase quality by providing reliable
  information
• Good state overview for responsible persons
• People can view others states (recognise locks)
• All members have updated and identical archives
• Helps avoiding Didnt know situations
• People have to use the information
• Not COTS
• Some html-knowledge (for root pages)recommended

• Technical
• Single (non-redundant) data source
• Automated generation of html-pages using Perl
  (free and platform independent)
• Only relative links (transferable, pick-and-go
  e.g. for meetings)
• Project independent (except PWD which depends on
  the reference system)
• Not (!) mouse-oriented (drag-and-drop)
• Generates standard W3C HTML (4.0)
• Different web sites share consistent source

24
Current state Availability

• State (April 2001)
• Published with copyleft
• PW_Tools is free software you can redistribute
  it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
  General Public License as published by the Free
  Software Foundation either version 2 of the
  License, or (at your option) any later version.
• PW_Tools is distributed in the hope that it will
  be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY without even
  the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
  FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
  General Public License for more details.
• under the terms ofGNU GENERAL PUBLIC
  LICENSE(http//www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.htm
  l)

• Available at
• http//research.dnv.com/pwtools
• Documentation How-to-get-started
• Other requirements
• Any machine running Perl
• Perl, which is free (http//www.perl.org)(Use
  ActivePerl on NT)
• Any ASCII text editor