Introducting Projekto, our new PM tool

OpenConcept has used a number of solutions for time tracking and project management over the years; Basecamp, along with a couple of iterations of a Drupal 5-based system based on the Worktracker module. OpenConcept has grown considerably in the last couple of years, and with additional staff, bigger projects, and the historical accumulation of information each system began verging on unworkable as we transitioned to the next.

Each system had something in common: it was the fastest & cheapest solution that would solve our immediate problems. Naturally, as time went by, each solution faltered and we needed something new to patch the holes. This time, we finally resolved to do the process justice and really evaluate our needs.

Process

The first stage of the process was consultation with the OpenConcept team. It was important to examine the limitations of the currect solution, to investigate other project management solutions, and to conceive of an ideal solution to the ongoing problem. After all, we're not the first organization that needs to track projects, development time, budgets, or clients. However, it became clear after some digging that commercially and freely-available PM suites were simply not going to meet our needs. The big hangup: there was rarely a way to keep track of project budgets, and certainly not in a way that would remind developers to plan their efforts in accordance with that budget. After years of going over-budget on projects, this was a must.

In the end we reached a perhaps inevitable but ultimately sound conclusion for a Drupal development shop: we'd build it ourselves. We worked out an object-based model showing the relationships between all of the elements in our sphere of work: clients, sites, servers, support agreements, projects, budgets, tasks, issues and work units. Each of these objects became content types, and each of the relationships became node references fields. Once this was in place, an array of views provided useful summaries of each content type. We'll talk more about technical implementation at a later date.

Results

We named the new system Pröjektò - it means "Synergize" in Swahili. Just kidding. It is the Esperanto word for project, with some accents thrown in for good measure. In full, it's the Pröjektò Management System. We launched it September 1, 2009, and have been using it exclusively since then.

One of the most interesting things this project highlights is the ability of Drupal as a platform for developing custom web applications. Modules like CCK and Views increase Drupal's versatility hugely, so much so that I would strongly consider it for any web application. Combine this with the array of specialized modules, and the simplicity of adding custom functionality with Drupal's API, there's a lot to be said for "Do it with Drupal".