Milestones and Project Scheduling with a Calendar view

Michael,

Is there any update as to when we can expect to see milestones in Intervals?

I think as you've described it sounds great - I can't think of anything else to add to that. It's simple, but would be a powerful addition.

Milestones are really a showstopper when planning projects. The modules work as sort of a work around but you can't put dates on them so they aren't really "milestones"....I agree with the previous poster, gantt charts and calendars are pretty useless to me as a project manager if I can't put tasks into meaningful groups (milestones) with due dates.

Hi guys,

Great to see this moving along - I noticed on the calendar views that there still is not an 'actual real time' attached to the tasks - this would be really important to me - please see my comments under 'Calendars and actual time entry' in the Feature Request area.
Looking forward to the growth in this great system!
Craig.

Will there be a way to assign a task to a resource based on a milestone and get a warning of some kind if the resource is over-booked. For example, if I'm tasking a resource with 8 hours of work in a specific day and they already have 8 hours of work for that day, it would be great to have some sort of warning on that.

After an exhaustive search and analysis of about 25 different tools on the market, we have determined that Intervals is almost perfect for our needs as a small creative studio. The big missing piece seems to be a team calendar as discussed above. This discussion thread appears to have been going on since at least November 2007. When exactly is this new functionality scheduled to rollout? This will have a significant impact on our decision so we'd appreciate a speedy response from the Intervals team if possible. Thank you!

nice to hear this is moving along - I agree with a lot of the comments above and think your tool is one of the best on the market and it is definitely one of the easiest to use from a interface stand point. Wanted to see, now that you will be collecting all this type of information for milestones and calendars etc... if your team has thought about expanding that in a gantt chart type of report. This would help us to see all the projects/tasks/milestones as a whole and would help with scheduling new ones.

on another note - have you all thought about having the ability to assign tasks to multiple people or being able to create a group where you can assign members to that group, then assign a task to that group which would then assign that task to every in that group. Sorry for the wordiness. Hope that make sense.

thanks

I've used just about every other web PM system out there, and I'm impressed by the phenomenal product Intervals has become.
I want to share some functional/design insight with you lot that I feel would help you make the Milestones function consistent with the high quality of your product. Some of these ideas were originally discussed with Iljia over at activeCollab, and he appreciated them enough to implement them (partially).

First, let's look how others implement rescheduling Milestones:

Basecamp gives you the option of rescheduling Milestones. "Would you like to move all subsequent milestones: Y/N?"
Worthless.

In activeCollab, we decided instead to give the option of choosing dependent Milestones. "Would you like to move subsequent Milestones: select from a list of future 'stones that should all be shifted along with this one."
Better. Matter of fact, waaaaay better. Also saved Iljia a huge headache of creating a massive interdependency framework.

Heres another from wrike video of dependencies.
Err.. a bit of overkill, dontcha think?

Let's not get into the Tufte-esque discussion about why Gantts suck for projects. I've lived it and so have you all.

Milestone dependencies are a serious issue though. When deadlines are part of your work, having interdependent deadlines slip or move creates challenges to project continuity.

At some level we can agree that seeing which component parts of the milestone (tasks) are completed, and where the future deadlines rely on this one, help with everything from resource allocation to um... *cough* personal motivation.

In that vein I would recommend a few points to the Milestones approach.

First: As a department manager, it helps to have one view, a place where all the nuts and bolts can be accessed quickly. Not a bird's eye exec level view that tells me which way is up, but a single page where I can assess the health of the project and tweak it on the fly.

How many milestones are left?
How many tasks per deadline?
Who's working/assigned on these tasks?
What's the status of these tasks?
Can I add or resolve the tasks shown, here... not clicking away?
As an example, here is the first change I made to activeCollab once we opened the box: I slammed the ticket page into the milestone page to see which work needed to be done before the milestone was due.
activeCollab remix
This one change alone kept us more in sync with what changes were being made and needed to be made than any other.

Poorly hacked together then... and now as a mock up. Compare: Current Milestone List page
to: Milestone List with visible associated Tasks

Admittedly rough, but if that was expanded for each of the milestones, I could scroll one page and know precisely the status of all of the tasks, per milestone, in a project.
Adjusting the status, severity, or assignee (via AJAX) would make this one page 'Master Control' for any PM.
Think about it.


Next: Milestones do need rescheduling. How do we reschedule a list of milestones selectively? Also, how can we capture the most useful portion of the Gantt chart-- the Start-to-Start and Start-to-Finish relationships--when rescheduling?

For reference: Sample Gantt Chart (in case you aren't PMI'd out)

Sure the chart doesn't reflect workloads, etc., but if Activity A's start date moves, how do we visualize and push activity C's due date?

Creating an ordered outline that can be drag & drop reordered/indented would be the easiest way to capture these dependencies visually. check out : https://amarsagoo.info/deepnotes/ for a great free example of hierarchical drag and drop.

*Milestone 1
     *Milestone 2
*Milestone 3
     *Milestone 4
          *Milestone 6
*Milestone 5
     *Milestone 9


     *Milestone 10
*Milestone 7
*Milestone 8

Change the date on Milestone 1 and the date on Milestone 2 adjusts. Change 'stone 3, then 4 and 6 move accordingly. 5 changes 9 and 10. Being able to ajax drag and drop these would create something better than a Gantt chart-- it'd be useful, albeit challenging to program :)

Wow! Thanks for the suggestions, and especially for the mockups. Your rendering of the calendar page with extra shading makes a big difference. I agree that the extra shading goes a long way in grouping items better. We'll add that to our development notes.

Meanwhile, we'll process the suggestions on milestone dependencies and list views. It's great to have our audience thinking this through alongside us, as we consider your ideas to be important.

Your welcome... and thanks for listening.

Only other suggestion I could make is to make your naming conventions customizable, the way Timefox does, in Settings.

That way I can call worktypes Employees and modules Phases, or whatever i was inclined to call them in my own bizarre applicaton of the tool.

This would also allow users to adapt the tool to their metaphor, as opposed to adapting their workforce to your metaphor.

Less disconnect, faster learning and uptake.

Cheers!

Q4 is the target for launch. Here is a forum post on the near-term roadmap and the timing of a few items if you are interested.

Thanks for checking in. We are cranking away on the code and will have something soon. Stay tuned!

This is a top priority and is currently at an internal alpha. We did a power round of testing and tuning this afternoon. We are at the stage where we play devils advocate and challenge our thinking and rationale and try to plot out where the feature is now versus where it will end up. This process typically slows down development a little, but is a valuable exercise in why something is being built. We also talk through how to make it easy to use when you have a little bit of data versus a lot of data. We are gunning for beta in the next few weeks and going live sometime in November. Also, just an FYI that the initial launch will be very Milestone centric with the ability to drag and drop tasks and milestones in a calendar view and shuffle around deliverables. Upcoming launches will layer in more group calendar functionality. This feature touches lots of aspects of Intervals and we want to be sure to make it powerful but as easy to use as possible.

The milestones piece will not include Gantt charts. Since tasks do not have relationships with other tasks like they do in traditional project management (finish to start, start to start, etc.) there is no critical path or subtasks. You will be able to create a milestone and attach tasks to the milestone. If you move the milestone subsequent milestones can be moved as well as the tasks attached to the milestones. It addresses a similar problem/need but is more free form in execution.

We were working on what we called a "Periscope Report" which attempted to address how much work was on the books and how much was done. It could be filtered by person, client, etc. It is kind of like a hi level Gantt chart, but we pushed back its development for higher priority items. The periscope report will probably be revisited the first quarter next year.

Thanks again for all of the feedback on this feature and a special thank you to all of the beta testers that volunteered their time to help round out the features. This weekend we will be launching the updated home page and milestones. Updated screenshots can be viewed here.