Rails - May 2005 - eXPlain Project Management Tool v1.2 Released

Hello,

eXPlain Project Management Tool version 1.2 was just uploaded to
RubyForge (http://rubyforge.org/projects/explainpmt) and is available
for download. As this is a minor release, no changes to your database
schema are necessary for an upgrade—you should be able to simply
replace the files in your application directory with those from the
release archive.

I had originally been hoping to push forward with release 2.0 and
introduce some new functionality this month, but there simply wasn't
enough time. Not many stories were completed this month, because I
undertook a major refactoring of the code base. I've switched all of
the templates that used Builder::XmlMarkup (.rxml) to ERb (.rhtml)
templates. The reason for the change was twofold. First, there is a
slight performance increase. More importantly, it is easier to spot
the areas where logic that belongs in either a controller or model is
being implimented in a view template. This move helped out with the
second part of the major refactoring—componentizing some of the
elements that appear on more than one view and consolidating actions
pertaining to specific model objects within the associated
controllers.

As for the new "features" that were added for this release:

* Overlapping iterations can no longer be created within a project. If
an iteration is created or updated with a start date and length such
that it overlaps another iteration, the create/edit form will be
redisplayed with an error message indicating the conflict.

* Fixed a bug where an iteration's summary would be displayed as
though the iteration were still in progress on the day immediately
after the iteration ended.

* The login page automaticly sets the focus to the username field when
the page loads.

* When an admin creates a new project, he has the option of being
added to the project team. He no longer has to explicitely view the
project team and add his account.


-- 
Regards,
John Wilger

-----------
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

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Hey John,

It looks really impressive. How would you compare this to Xplanner [
http://www.xplanner.org/ ]? I mean, at work we've started using
Xplanner but I am not really happy with all this Java stuff (and to be
completely honest, it took 1/2 a day to install and configure, WAY TOO
LONG!!!). I have been using RoR for several months on small projects
on my own and doing a larger one now ... all internal stuff
unfortunately but still :)

Have you used Xplanner? If so, do you think that functionality-wise
eXPlain is on a better path?

Thank you in advance for your answers and congratulations on v1.2! The
demo looks really good.

/B

On 5/29/05, John Wilger <johnwilger@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> eXPlain Project Management Tool version 1.2 was just uploaded to
> RubyForge (http://rubyforge.org/projects/explainpmt) and is available
> for download. As this is a minor release, no changes to your database
> schema are necessary for an upgrade—you should be able to simply
> replace the files in your application directory with those from the
> release archive.
[...]

-- 
Bruno Mattarollo <bruno.mattarollo@gmail.com>
Currently in: Sydney, Australia

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Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
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Interesting.

Unfortunately, the links to pages and categories on the project home  
page at http://explainpmt.com seem to be dead.

Cheers,
-Ralph.

On 29.05.2005, at 07:45, John Wilger wrote:
> Hello,
>
> eXPlain Project Management Tool version 1.2 was just uploaded to
> RubyForge (http://rubyforge.org/projects/explainpmt) and is available
> for download. As this is a minor release, no changes to your database
> schema are necessary for an upgrade—you should be able to simply
> replace the files in your application directory with those from the
> release archive.
>
> I had originally been hoping to push forward with release 2.0 and
> introduce some new functionality this month, but there simply
wasn''t
> enough time. Not many stories were completed this month, because I
> undertook a major refactoring of the code base. I''ve switched all
of
> the templates that used Builder::XmlMarkup (.rxml) to ERb (.rhtml)
> templates. The reason for the change was twofold. First, there is a
> slight performance increase. More importantly, it is easier to spot
> the areas where logic that belongs in either a controller or model is
> being implimented in a view template. This move helped out with the
> second part of the major refactoring—componentizing some of the
> elements that appear on more than one view and consolidating actions
> pertaining to specific model objects within the associated
> controllers.
>
> As for the new "features" that were added for this release:
>
> * Overlapping iterations can no longer be created within a project. If
> an iteration is created or updated with a start date and length such
> that it overlaps another iteration, the create/edit form will be
> redisplayed with an error message indicating the conflict.
>
> * Fixed a bug where an iteration''s summary would be displayed as
> though the iteration were still in progress on the day immediately
> after the iteration ended.
>
> * The login page automaticly sets the focus to the username field when
> the page loads.
>
> * When an admin creates a new project, he has the option of being
> added to the project team. He no longer has to explicitely view the
> project team and add his account.
>
>
> -- 
> Regards,
> John Wilger

On 5/29/05, Ralph Pöllath <lists-cxGDZMwwbrdg9hUCZPvPmw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Unfortunately, the links to pages and categories on the project home
> page at http://explainpmt.com seem to be dead.
Doh! Thanks for the heads up. It''s fixed now. (The .htaccess file
didn''t get copied over when I recently switched web hosts.)

-- 
Regards,
John Wilger

-----------
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don''t know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn''t matter."
- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

On 5/29/05, Bruno Mattarollo
<bruno.mattarollo-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hey John,
> 
> It looks really impressive.
Thanks!
> How would you compare this to Xplanner [
> http://www.xplanner.org/ ]?
At this point, Xplanner is more mature, but eXPlainPMT is easier
(IMHO) to get up and running.
> Have you used Xplanner? If so, do you think that functionality-wise
> eXPlain is on a better path?
I tried it out briefly some time ago, but I haven''t looked at it
recently. From what I recall, my impression was that it was a bit too
"restrictive" when it came to the process. eXPlaintPMT aims to be a
useful tool for recording story cards (and eventually some other
project documentation in the form of non-functional requirements,
discussion archives, etc.), but its "prime directive" is to remain as
flexible as possible and to encourage "real" communication among team
members.

Being developed in Rails also means that it should be a _lot_ easier
for an individual team to adapt the tool to their specific needs.

The focus right now is on perfecting the story cards and iterations
functionality. The goal is to make managing those as intuitive and
informative as possible before adding any other major features. Better
to do one thing _really_ well than to do an "OK" job at a lot of
things.

I do take user-feedback very seriously, so feel free to forward any
suggestions, feature requests and bug-reports my way.

-- 
Regards,
John Wilger

-----------
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don''t know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn''t matter."
- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland