Web based “Project Management” using

1. Web based “Project Management”using Peter Wieland peter.wieland@dnv.com

2. Number of scripts to support Project management via the WWW Automated creation and maintenance of project web sites Support for: Keeping address lists (profiles) up to date Maintaining action lists in various granularities Sending to-do lists via email to specific project members Archiving and extracting documents Sharing bookmarks (links) Publishing Web site Publishing exploitations information(conferences and publications) Web statistics Use all functionality or parts of it. What is PW_Tools?

3. Motivation & Background Basic objectives Overview & Concepts PWA (Action lists & Profiles) PWD (Document archive) PWU (Update sites (mirror)) PWB (Bookmarks) PWE (Exploitation) PWL (Log of access) PWR (Root generator) PWC (Clean up links) PWS (Send emails automatically) Benefits and problems Current state & availability Directory structure Contents

4. Motivation and Background • Committed to the coordination of a global project • One part of this role was web site maintenance for • Internal information • Public information • Web information used for reporting • Available recommended tools failed (e.g. Frontpage)

5. 10 partners with various background About 30 project members 4 countries Portugal (3) Germany (2) Greece (2) Norway (3) 8 work entities 5 Work packages Project Steering Group (PSG) Technical Committee (TC) Telephone Conferences Challenge: Provide 30+ updated detailed and dynamic information views on Project members (30) Work entities (8+) Partners (10) Provide mailing lists for those views Project constellation

6. Single csv-file as information source for members with fields for: Personal abbreviation key (PWi) Name, Address, Phone, Fax, Email, etc. Personal partner key Work entity membership text files Free definable Individual members All members of a partner Partner list text file Partner key Partner information PWA: Web pages to visualise profiles • Script generates • Profiles (html) • One per project member (28) • One per project partner (10) • One per work entity (8) • Table of contents for those 46 pages • Overall partner page • Gallery

7. PWA: Profile view examples

8. PWA: Profile related views

9. PWA: Work entity memberships

10. 8 work entities 5 Work packages Project Steering Group (PSG) Technical Committee (TC) Meeting with various frequencies WP: quarterly (total: ca. 12) PSG: yearly (total: 3) TC: twice a year (total: 6) Phone: twice a month (total: ca. 50) In total: ~ 70 meetings Challenge: Collect actions during various meetings Make actions visible to individuals Make actions visible to responsible managers (WP, Site, PM, etc.) Support project managers action follow-up Project work load

11. Single ASCII text file with a specific format Act-Code:Active-Flag:Date:Resp.-List:Text:Comment Active-Flag: “Closed” or “Active” Resp.List: Pairs of ID,State ID references a project memeber State: “done” or “not done” Same format as in the Minutes of Meeting Information identical to MoM (documentation and reference) Script generates Action information pages One per action (currently 251 after 12 month project duration) Action lists One per project member (28) One per project partner (10) Overview table All open actions All closed actions All overdue actions All to-do actions PWA: Web pages to visualise actions

12. PWA: Action information overview

13. PWA: Member and Partner Lists

14. Challenge: Quality Assurance Programme PM has responsibility for filing documentation Document reference Various document types Deliverables Minutes Progress reports Cost statements, etc. Various document formats Word-files Zip-files PDF-files Presentations (PPT) others Project members need approved versions with easy access Solution: Web based archive Directory name = Document reference Directory contains all available formats Different views Sorted by Reference No Sorted by Author, Type, Title, Date Sorted by Meetings, etc. New views definable Integrated fetch mechanism (ftp) Search engine PWD: Document archive

15. PWD: Document archive views

16. PWB: Bookmark information • Microsoft “Favorites” input format • Generates single bookmark file (share “Favorites”)

17. Conferences Location & date Different options Paper Presentation Exhibition Different states and responsibles for each option Input: single text file with information Generates short- and long-format html-page Links to profiles and document archive (no redundancy) PWE: Exploitation information

18. Publications Different items books papers proceedings etc Input: “Standard” reference database format Bibtex (ASCII based, free) Usable as reference database for input in papers etc. Output: Publication html-page PWE: Exploitation information

19. Directory structure • One root directory (e.g. Web) • PW_Tools as subdir of the root • Bin, Input (global) • One subdir for each script (PWA, PWB, etc.) • All overview html-pages under this subdir • One “Input” subdir under each script-subdir • Non-overview information located in subdirs under script-subdir (for PWA & PWD)

20. Few pages are not generated automatically Same header at each level Solution: Put all hand-made pages in a directory Consistent header to all of those pages is attached automatically Each other page generating script uses same header information All generated files are stored under root directory. PWR: Root generator

21. One “master web” Generated locally (e.g. project directory) Usable as master Usable for back-up Different information required on different mirror web sites All information on internal internet site (password protected) All reviewers specific info on reviewers internet site (password protected) All public information on public accessible internet site Solution: Text files with mirror information on Where to publish to (copy) Single files (optional rename) Directories (recursive with subdirectories) Check timestamp information before copying PWU: Site mirror (update site)

22. i:/marvin_int ############################### FILES PWD_search.html; actions.htm; archive.html; default.htm; deliverables.html; dissemination.html; docref.html; links.html; news.html; summary.html; partners.html; meeting_gallery.html; ################################# DIRS PW_Tools/PWA PW_Tools/PWB PW_Tools/PWD PW_Tools/PWE PW_Tools/PWR PW_Tools/PWU PW_Tools/BIN PW_Tools/Input PW_Tools/Doc Pictures Destination: http://research.dnv.com/marvin_int (after mapping wwwroot on research.dnv.com to i:) PWU:Site mirror (example) Other destinations

23. Technical: Single (non-redundant) data source Automated generation of html-pages using Perl (free and platform independent) Only relative links (transferable, pick-and-go e.g. for meetings) Project independent (except PWD which depends on the reference system) Not (!) mouse-oriented (drag-and-drop) Generates standard W3C HTML (4.0) Different web sites share consistent source Project related: Save time MoM (action) follow-up easy No paper archive required (pure Web) Information source for reporting to CEC Automatically send to-do lists to members Increase quality by providing reliable information Good state overview for responsible persons People can view others states (recognise locks) All members have updated and identical archives Helps avoiding “Didn’t know” situations People have to use the information Not COTS Some html-knowledge (for root pages)recommended Benefits and Problems

24. State (April 2001): Published with copyleft: PW_Tools is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. PW_Tools is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. under the terms ofGNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) Available at: http://research.dnv.com/pwtools Documentation & “How-to-get-started” Other requirements: Any machine running Perl Perl, which is free (http://www.perl.org)(Use ActivePerl on NT) Any ASCII text editor Current state & Availability