Project Portfolio Management and Macros for Google Spreadsheets
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Sometimes it happens that the usual task leads to unusual finds. So it all started with a trivial task - it was necessary to deploy a project portfolio management system in a few hours. Resources for this task were not allocated due to some time pressure on current projects.
Features of the background task - the system must be very dynamic and intuitive. I briefly described the specifics and way of life of our small team in a recent post . The business case of the task is this: we have many projects in our work. Proposals are written, appraisal Gantts are drawn, issues are discussed, the Development Process is supported ... On the day, up to 15 projects can be held as a team discussion. Projects may change status, phase, owner. There is a lot of information, it is changing rapidly , and it is important . The time has come to introduce a tool for managing a portfolio of projects.
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For informal gathering of Requirements organized a general Skype rally. One idea everyone liked. A proposal was received to use an analog board with magnets or stickies (sticky notes). The board itself should be divided into sections corresponding to the project phase, its activity. Projects should be marked with velcro or magnets with small text tags to indicate the name of the project, its category and owner (Product Owner), and the classic three-color code to indicate the health of the project - (red: problem, urgently needed management; yellow: attention and constant tracking needed; green: everything goes well).
In this approach, most of the necessary operations with the project were reduced to dragging the sticky tape on the board and changing its color. Of course, the system should be information-secure but accessible via Web.
Next went the analysis of what is already there. For a start, online board services were viewed, then sticky services. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find anything that satisfies all the requests (safe separation within the user group, reliability of the service, free of charge).
A working solution was found using Google Docs. Or rather Google Spreadsheets. The board was implemented as a multi-colored table area. The 3 columns of the table indicate the project activity areas: Active (Active), Held (Suspended) and Dead (Project dead). 8 lines indicate the project phases: Analysis, Proposal sent, Assigned to start, Elaboration Phase, Development Phase, Short Support, Long Support, Successfully finished:
Sticky designs are easy to drag and drop. But to add a project you need to go through several steps:
As you can see, this operation is quite routine. At the moment there is only one way to wrap this routine into code - this is Google SpreadSheet Gadgets . The idea of ​​implementing such a gadget is quite straightforward - we enter the name of the project, the color of the sticky and text tags in the parameters of the gadget and then draw all this. As for this task, we did not go this way since the time required to write and test the gadget is much more than the sum of 30-40 sticky operations that we need in the next 4 weeks.
At this stage, the template of the table with flypapers was shared with all interested, and in general, approved, went to work. If you are interested in it, you can also use it by making a copy. Here is his address.
Now some comments ...
In fact, this micro-project was another step. In the old days, I had to write and code macros for MS Excell. So when I was looking for an opportunity to wrap a few steps into the code to create a sticky tape, I scored something like “macros for Google Spreadsheets” in Google Search. To my surprise, Google has shown serious activity in this direction ( see, for example, here ).
This may mean that soon we will see a new platform for rapid application development in scale and ideology comparable to the Facebook API.
Already, gadgets allow you to integrate tables with external services. Macros are equivalent to JavaScript for client-side operations — tables. The possibilities for operating data on such a platform are very wide. On the other hand, the user interface will be significantly limited in design. If you try to describe this platform concisely - then it will be a system for ultrafast development of systems with a tabular interface. Calculators, converters, field data collection forms, stock screens, university tests are examples of such systems. The audience for these programs is all users with a Google account - and there are a lot of them :)
Good luck!
Sometimes it happens that the usual task leads to unusual finds. So it all started with a trivial task - it was necessary to deploy a project portfolio management system in a few hours. Resources for this task were not allocated due to some time pressure on current projects.
Features of the background task - the system must be very dynamic and intuitive. I briefly described the specifics and way of life of our small team in a recent post . The business case of the task is this: we have many projects in our work. Proposals are written, appraisal Gantts are drawn, issues are discussed, the Development Process is supported ... On the day, up to 15 projects can be held as a team discussion. Projects may change status, phase, owner. There is a lot of information, it is changing rapidly , and it is important . The time has come to introduce a tool for managing a portfolio of projects.
')
For informal gathering of Requirements organized a general Skype rally. One idea everyone liked. A proposal was received to use an analog board with magnets or stickies (sticky notes). The board itself should be divided into sections corresponding to the project phase, its activity. Projects should be marked with velcro or magnets with small text tags to indicate the name of the project, its category and owner (Product Owner), and the classic three-color code to indicate the health of the project - (red: problem, urgently needed management; yellow: attention and constant tracking needed; green: everything goes well).
In this approach, most of the necessary operations with the project were reduced to dragging the sticky tape on the board and changing its color. Of course, the system should be information-secure but accessible via Web.
Next went the analysis of what is already there. For a start, online board services were viewed, then sticky services. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find anything that satisfies all the requests (safe separation within the user group, reliability of the service, free of charge).
A working solution was found using Google Docs. Or rather Google Spreadsheets. The board was implemented as a multi-colored table area. The 3 columns of the table indicate the project activity areas: Active (Active), Held (Suspended) and Dead (Project dead). 8 lines indicate the project phases: Analysis, Proposal sent, Assigned to start, Elaboration Phase, Development Phase, Short Support, Long Support, Successfully finished:
Sticky designs are easy to drag and drop. But to add a project you need to go through several steps:
- Menu \ Insert \ Drawing ...
- In the pop-up window, select the shape for the Velcro from the Shape list (I used a sheet with a curved corner)
- click on the shape and in the appeared editor enter the name of the project, center it on the left top
- click on the icon of the text, stretch it on the velcro, center, reduce the font, enter text tags - the project platform, the owner, the field for the task (ToDo:).
- click the [Save & Close] button
As you can see, this operation is quite routine. At the moment there is only one way to wrap this routine into code - this is Google SpreadSheet Gadgets . The idea of ​​implementing such a gadget is quite straightforward - we enter the name of the project, the color of the sticky and text tags in the parameters of the gadget and then draw all this. As for this task, we did not go this way since the time required to write and test the gadget is much more than the sum of 30-40 sticky operations that we need in the next 4 weeks.
At this stage, the template of the table with flypapers was shared with all interested, and in general, approved, went to work. If you are interested in it, you can also use it by making a copy. Here is his address.
Now some comments ...
In fact, this micro-project was another step. In the old days, I had to write and code macros for MS Excell. So when I was looking for an opportunity to wrap a few steps into the code to create a sticky tape, I scored something like “macros for Google Spreadsheets” in Google Search. To my surprise, Google has shown serious activity in this direction ( see, for example, here ).
This may mean that soon we will see a new platform for rapid application development in scale and ideology comparable to the Facebook API.
Already, gadgets allow you to integrate tables with external services. Macros are equivalent to JavaScript for client-side operations — tables. The possibilities for operating data on such a platform are very wide. On the other hand, the user interface will be significantly limited in design. If you try to describe this platform concisely - then it will be a system for ultrafast development of systems with a tabular interface. Calculators, converters, field data collection forms, stock screens, university tests are examples of such systems. The audience for these programs is all users with a Google account - and there are a lot of them :)
Good luck!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/81391/
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