Open Source Project Management

Open Source Software developers not only need a good source control system, they also need online tools to manage the project tasks and responsibilities. In the commercial world Microsoft Project is traditionally used. However sharing a Microsoft Project project file between multiple group or teamleaders is not easy. The product generally assumes that only one person has access to the projects administration. In the real world this is seldom the case.

Several companies have tried to solve this problem with online tools like Trac SCM and project management, but most are far from complete. Another open source community project management tool is dotProject. It is far more complete then Trac on the project management side, but lacks the feature to browse a source code repository online.

dotProject is an online project management, customer relation management and project administration tool. It allows multiple people simultanous access, just like Trac. Many additions have been written that can be used within the dotProject framework. A helpdesk and invoice module can be installed to aid development, support and maintenance trajectories.

One thing it lacks though is a module that gives an easy overview of which developer worked on which project in a given timeperiod. M2X has filled this void by developing a timesheet module that gives you that overview.

M2X choose dotProject for managing it many development projects and keeping track on the financial side. Since 1ste of Januari 2007 M2X hired its first employee and found dotProject lacking in producing an overview that would give the amount of hours worked by its employee. The solution was sought in extending dotProject with a timesheet module.

The first version has just been released and the source code is released under the GPLv2 license. It can be downloaded directly through the GIT repository on this site or the relaease tarball here.