I started writing about dotProject on the 28th of October. I've set up a small demo project on my localhost to demonstrate how the tool can be used to manage a project.

Any given ticket can have any number of workers assigning time to it. Each of those logs can be assigned a different cost code. That means you can track different charge levels based on the person doing the work on a single ticket.

Project Management tools are often on my mind. I've used many different tools in development of Web systems from Bugzilla (don't use it for project management, great bug tracker, terrible planning tool), to Drupal Case Tracker, to Rally, to Unfuddle, to JIRA, to MS Project, PHProjekt. Some are open sourced and others are proprietary. They all have the same goal though - to allow you to manage and track projects from conception to deployment.

While some tools have been better than others and yet other tools have been more like trying to drive a square peg through a round hole. For example, using Bugzilla to try and manage a project start to finish proved challenging. PHProjekt lacked the feature set that was needed to effectively manage. Drupal Case Tracker was OK, but had its quirks. JIRA is really cool, but the tools that make it especially attractive are licensed.

I've been told that dotproject has a robust feature set and also includes tools that rival MS Project. So, in this blog post I'm going to run through my experiences setting dotproject up locally. Future posts will discuss the pros and cons of the package. I am a Mac user, so I'm focusing this tutorial in that direction, but the directions should work whether you use MAMP, LAMP, XAMP, or WAMP. If you are wondering what the heck these are, check out the Wikipedia Entry

Mingle approaches project management in a visual way creating cards for actions that can be pulled over “lanes” of activities within “card walls”.  For example you might have a Development card wall that has cards (tickets) that have three “lanes” – Ready for Development, Development in Progress, and Ready for QA.   As the ticket is ready for each phase, you can drag and drop it to the appropriate area for actions.  Each card can be expanded to a full window allowing you to edit and make changes. 

Each project will allow you to set basic settings, project variables, and set up a repository where the project will live.

The site describes Mingle as:

Mingle, the agile project management tool, helps software teams deliver quickly. It gets your team members on the same page. Give management real-time visibility into project status.

It goes on to describe the software as:

Mid to late January, Popular Science's site will re launch with a new look and feel running on Drupal. pingVision has been quietly working on the project over the last couple of months. Implementation of this site brought us to use a hybrid version of the agile method of development.