Application Prototype for Tasks Management on Project Planning and Development

Application prototype for tasks management on project planning and development

Diego Hernando Torres Sarmiento

Catholic University of Colombia

Bogotá D.C., Colombia.

Abstract- Nowadays, the process of task management in organizations, has become an indispensable tool for monitoring and controlling the progress of the phases of planning and project implementation activities. Because of this, currently abound the technological tools that support this process, however, the most used, not perform functions that should fulfill to meet the current need to manage tasks.

Therefore, the following article presents an analysis of the weaknesses of the technological tools that support this process and an evaluation of different methods of management tasks performed, and based on these analyses, the development of an application that is performed with two modules, one module that operates under web architecture and module for mobile devices.

Key words- Enterprise, mobile application, projects, task management, web application.

1. INTRODUCTION

According PH.D Young HoonKwak [1], project management has been practiced since the beginning of civilization due to the need to plan and project activities to be undertaken, however, there was the term "task management", according to the recognized company Silversoft [2] until the time limited projects forced to implement activities for the development of a parallel.

Also, according to that company, this resulted in organizations around the world give solutions to such problems, creating and implementing different methods, techniques and methodologies to manage tasks such as Kanban board or GTD (Get Things Done), which are used in companies in order to meet the objectives of a project or meet the value chain of these organizations.

Given the above, this article analyzes most usedtechnological tools in the market according to PC Magazine, identifying the weaknesses of these tools, and later, based on this, makes an evaluation of different methods of management tasks to identify the method that best meets the identified weaknesses, and this will be taken as basis for the method of application development.

In this paper you will find six sections:

1. Small definition of tasks and its management within organizations.
2. Description about the art state of task management technological tools and their weaknesses.
3. Evaluation of three task management methods (Kanban board, GTD and Grocery List) according to different criteria.
4. Evaluation results analysis.
5. Proposed software architecture, built based on the needs and weaknesses identified.
6. Conclusions of research work.

1. TASKS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT

Robert Mcllre [3] defined in his article a task in project management, as an activity or a small job that needs to be made within a defined period of time.

The tasks have a life cycle and the states shown in Fig. 1:

• The initial state of a task, after its creation, always be inactive in this state can update the state or properties of the task. To take this task must be in ready state.
• When in prepared state, the task waits for someone in the team to take it and run.

Figure 1: Tasks lifecycle [4]

Then, considering its purpose in the projects of an organization and its life cycle, task management is defined by Silversoft [2] as the process of a task management throughout its life cycle, where tracked the progress of tasks and information about them is shared with all team members.

1. PROBLEM STATEMENT

According to the article by Stefan Link, Philip Hoyer, Thomas Schuster and Sebastian Abeck [4], in order to increase efficiency within organizations, these have invented various methods, techniques and methodologies of management tasks in the world when it comes to managing projects or activities they face daily.

Currently in the market there are various technological tools that support the management and due to the boom in project management as comparison of PC Magazine[6], are frequented by many users today. However, according to this magazine, all applications have their advantages and disadvantages, and the benefits that those tools can bring to us can change from one to another, and not all can be fully adapted to any organization or community.

a.Identifying weaknesses of most used task management software tools.

The author has analyzed the most used and most recognized task management softwarein the market according to PC Magazine[6]:

• Remember the milk.

• Toodledo

• Wunderlist

• Google Tasks

The evaluation criteria are taken from the table comparing collaborative task management applications, Web application Social Compare[7]. The following weaknesses were found:

• None of the four applications have the option of prioritizing tasks, making it impossible to set a time order and when performing tasks.

• Four applications allow to users interact only individually. It makes that the progress of another team members is unknown.

• None of the four applications supports the management of tasks in multi-team environment, which prevents communication between different areas, in organizations where the completion and execution of the tasks depends on each one of them.

• Only one of the four applications have updates or new modules that can contribute to the decisions taken in its latency.

• None of the four applications have a module that supports the activities carried out those who are responsible for managing and delegating tasks in a team.

• The applications do not have a platform that allows direct communication between those who perform the tasks and the person in charge, which generates the informal report incidents or problems that have to when performing a task.

• The observed applications running on web environment or on mobile devices, not the potential that can bring the two together is used.

• Do not allow the generation of reports and quality indicators which prevents monitor and control the flow of tasks performed in the project.

1. TASK MANAGEMENT METHODS EVALUATION

The author makes an evaluation of the state of the art about different management tasks methods by analyzing its operation and the main benefits that can bring them, evaluating them according to different criteria, in order to define which of these will be used as the basis for the application.

Considering the above, three task management methods will be evaluated that, according to the article by Andrew Kunesh [8], these are the methods with the highest degree of usability among other methods, and three characteristics that according toHiranabe[9] article, they should be taken into account when a task management method is analyzed (they are exposed on Table 1). They will be qualified considering a range of 1-10 where 1 is the lowest rating and 10 the highest.

Table 1: Features assessment task management methods

The methods evaluated are the following:

1. Kanban board. This method consists to write a brief description of each task on a card, and these attach them to a board that is divided into three sections cards, where each section represents a possible state of each task to be done, and done pretending.
2. GTD (Get Things Done). It is a method for managing work activities or everyday life based on stress relief, emotional baggage and personal overload to increase productivity and efficiency in executing activities.

This known method, according to the book David Allen [11], has the following principles:

• Under no circumstances should be stored activities to do in memory, you should make use of recorders, emails, calendars or any other storage method.
• Do not perform more than one task at a time.
• Do not return any task at storage method, if taken, must be completed.
• If there is a task that can be performed in less than two minutes should be performed over others.
• Assign a unique responsibility to each of the activities to be implemented.
• No one should take into account the tasks, it is essential to store stocks or small activities that lead to the implementation and completion of the macro task.
• Make use of the list of waiting tasks, tasks which are assigned to different people.

1. The “Grocery List”.According Kunesh [8], it is the easiest to manage tasks but turn method, is the busiest in the world, not only for project management but to the everyday life of any person.

1. EVALUATION RESULTS ANALYSIS

a.Kanban Board

According to the main advantages of this method by consulting firm Berriprocess [10] article, this method was scored as follows:

• Teamwork (9/10): It is called this way because this method offers the possibility to see the progress and status of jobs not only the user, but to all his team.
• Time management (2/10): By using this method as is described, it is impossible to carry out a prioritization and impact measurement tasks because they do not take into account the time which lasts a task in a certain state.
• WIP (10/10): The method provides this benefit in monitoring the flow of work through the possible states that may have tasks, which positively impacts to perform monitoring activities to run.

b.GTD (Get Things Done)

According to the main advantages of this method by David Allen [11], this method was scored as follows:

• Teamwork (3/10): Although it is an efficient method, it is a task management method used for individual and personal basis, team work is not reflected.

• Time management (8/10): It is useful that this method give priority to short tasks (two minutes) on the other to observe progress and results is an advantage that makes it stand out over others.

• WIP (7/10): With this method allows splitting large tasks into small groups, the progress made by running each of these small activities, allows good monitoring and controlling the flow of work.

c.Grocery List

According to the main advantages of this method by Kunesh [8], this method was scored as follows:

• Teamwork (3/10): Although it is an efficient method, it is a task management method used for individual and personal basis, team work is not reflected.
• Time management (8/10): It is useful that this method give priority to short tasks (two minutes) on the other to observe progress and results is an advantage that makes it stand out over others.
• WIP (7/10): With this method allows splitting large tasks into small groups, the progress that is made by running each of these small activities, allows good monitoring and controlling the flow of work.

According to the results of this evaluation, the threemethodsKanban Board,Grosery List and GTD, the Kanban Board method has the highest average score on the assessment, which identifies it as the most appropriate method for teamwork, time management and perform monitoring and control on the traceability of states of tasks.

1. PROPOSED SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE

Once the task management method was identified to use as the basis of the application, the author designed and developed a software solution that is composed as follows.

1. Software developmentarchitectural pattern

For web module that handles the task manager, it has used the development pattern of MVC architecture (Model View Controller) software, in order to separate the persistence, business logic and graphic user interface.

1. Used programming languages

• Administration module: To develop this module, the author has used PHP programming language, running in parallel with JavaScript programming language and using HTML for the presentation of the graphical interface through any web browser ago

• Responsible module: To develop this module, the author has used Java programming language for androidmobile application development, but through the POST method of sending data via a web service developed in PHP, hosted on the same server, it receives and send information to the same database that use the administration module

1. Database engine

For the operation of the database engine it was used MySQL database, and the relation / entity diagram shown on Fig. 2 is implemented.

Figure 2: Database entity/relation diagram

1. General software architecture

• Administration module:This module allows the user to create, prioritizing and assigning tasks to those responsible, also like user management and rights management for the execution of the application; in turn, will allow the generation of reports that allows you to view the progress of the project.

• Responsible module: This module will be managed by the persons responsible for performing the tasks; will allow you to view all the information of the tasks assigned by the administrator, and allows the user to change the status of the tasks defined by the Board Kanban method.

The process to follow for interaction between these two modules is presented in Figure 2 and is as follows:

1. The administrator creates a user with their respective credentials for each official who has charge.

2. The administrator creates, prioritizes and assigns the task to the charge that creates more convenient.

3. The task manager receives a notification on your mobile device, and according to the conditions, the user changes the status of tasks, defined according to the Kanban Board method.

4. The administrator can observe the behavior and progress that have the team through reports generated by the software.

1. CONCLUSIONS

• The evaluation of management methods performed tasks; the method appropriate for the implementation of this process in small, medium and large enterprises is the Kanban board.
• You can tap the potential of an application under web architecture (PHP programming language) and a mobile application (Java programming language) for users to use them as transactional systems on the same database.
• With the software developed, 70% of the weaknesses identified in the technological tools most used today to manage tasks were completed.

1. REFERENCES

[1] ¿How does Kanban impact communication and collaboration in software engineering teams? Oza, Nilay, Fagerholm, Fabian y Münch, Jürgen. 2013. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2013.

[2] Silversoft. 2010.Task management and the small bussiness. Londres: Silversoft Solutions, 2010.

[3] How ‘Percent-Complete’ Is That Task Again? Mcllre, Robert. 2007. Montereal: PM Hut, 2007

[4] IBM. 2009. Life cycle of human tasks. IBM WebSphere Process Server documentation. Retrieved: s.n., 2009.

[5] Model-Driven Development of Human Tasks for Workflows. Stefan Link, Philip Hoyer, Thomas Schuster, Sebastian Abeck. 2010. Karlsruhe : Universität Karlsruhe, 2010.

[6] Top Free Picks: Task Lists and To-Do Managers. PC Magazine. 2013. New York: PC Magazine, 2013.

[7] Social Compare. 2015. Social Compare. [En línea] 10 de 02 de 2015. [Citado el: 23 de 02 de 2015.]

[8]Beyond the List: 8 Powerful Ways to Manage Your Tasks. Kunesh, Andrew. 2015. Schaumburg: Zapier, 2015.

[9] Visualizing Agile Projects with Kanban Boards . HIRANABE, Kenji. 2007. Tokio: Change Vision, 2007.

[10] Berriprocess. 2012.Lean Kanban, ¿por qué me importa? Sofia: s.n., 2012.

[11] Allen, David. 2003.Getting thigs done: the art of stress-free productivity. Nueva York: Penguin books, 2003.