Project Portfolio Management and Macros for Google Spreadsheets
Hello.
Sometimes it happens that a common task leads to unusual finds. So it all started with a trivial task - it was necessary to deploy a project portfolio management system in a few hours. Resources for this task were not allocated due to some time pressure on current projects.
Features of the background of the task - the system should be very dynamic and visual. The specifics and lifestyle of our small team I briefly described in a recent post . The business case of the task is this: we have a lot of projects in our work. Suggestions are written, evaluation Gantts are drawn, questions are discussed, support for the Development Process is being conducted ... Up to 15 projects can go through a discussion in a team a day. Projects may change status, phase, owner. A lot of information , shechanging rapidly , and it is important . The time has come to introduce a tool for managing a portfolio of projects.
For an informal gathering of Requests, a general Skype rally was organized. Everyone liked one idea. There was a proposal to use an analogue board with magnets or Velcro (sticky notes). The board itself should be divided into sections corresponding to the phase of the project, its activity. Projects should be indicated by Velcro or magnets with small text tags to indicate the name of the project, its category and owner (Product Owner), and the classic three-color code to indicate the health of the project - (red: problematic, urgently need management; yellow: attention and constant tracking are necessary; green: everything is going well).
In this approach, most of the necessary operations with the project came down to dragging the Velcro on the board and changing its color. Of course, the system should be information-safe but accessible on the Web.
Next went the analysis of what is already there. To begin with, we looked at the services of online boards, then the services of Velcro. Unfortunately, it did not work out to find anything satisfying all the requirements (secure separation within a user group, reliability of service, free of charge).
A working solution was found using Google Docs. More specifically, Google Spreadsheets. The board was implemented as multi-colored areas of the table. 3 columns of the table indicate the project activity zones: Active (Held), Held (Suspended) and Dead (Project has died). 8 lines indicate the phases of the project: Analysis, Proposal sent, Assigned to start, Elaboration Phase, Development Phase, Short Support, Long Support, Successfully finished:
Velcro projects are easy to drag and drop. But to add a project you need to go through several steps:
As you can see, this operation is rather routine. At the moment, there is only one way to wrap this routine in code - this is Google SpreadSheet Gadgets . The idea of implementing such a gadget is quite straightforward - we enter the name of the project, the color of the Velcro and text tags in the parameters of the gadget and then draw it all. As regards this task, we did not go this way since the time required to write and test the gadget is much greater than the amount of operations for making 30-40 stickies that we need in the next 4 weeks.
At this stage, the template of the table with Velcro was shared with all interested, and in general, approved, went to work. If he is interested in you, you can also use it by making a copy. Here is his address.
Now some notes ...
Actually, there was one more step in this micro-project. In the old days, I had to record and encode macros for MS Excell. So when I was looking for an opportunity to wrap some steps in the code to create Velcro, I luckyly typed something like “macros for Google Spreadsheets” into Google Search. To my surprise, Google showed serious activity in this direction ( see, for example, here ).
This may mean that soon we will see a new platform for the rapid development of applications in scale and ideology comparable to the Facebook API.
Already, gadgets allow you to integrate tables with external services. Macros will be analogous to JavaScript for client-side operations - tables. The possibilities for handling data on such a platform are very wide. On the other hand, the user interface will be significantly limited in design. If you try to describe this platform succinctly, it will be a system for ultrafast development of systems with a tabular interface. Calculators, converters, field data collection forms, stock screens, university tests are examples of such systems. The audience for these programs is all users with a Google account - and there are many :)
Good luck!
Sometimes it happens that a common task leads to unusual finds. So it all started with a trivial task - it was necessary to deploy a project portfolio management system in a few hours. Resources for this task were not allocated due to some time pressure on current projects.
Features of the background of the task - the system should be very dynamic and visual. The specifics and lifestyle of our small team I briefly described in a recent post . The business case of the task is this: we have a lot of projects in our work. Suggestions are written, evaluation Gantts are drawn, questions are discussed, support for the Development Process is being conducted ... Up to 15 projects can go through a discussion in a team a day. Projects may change status, phase, owner. A lot of information , shechanging rapidly , and it is important . The time has come to introduce a tool for managing a portfolio of projects.
For an informal gathering of Requests, a general Skype rally was organized. Everyone liked one idea. There was a proposal to use an analogue board with magnets or Velcro (sticky notes). The board itself should be divided into sections corresponding to the phase of the project, its activity. Projects should be indicated by Velcro or magnets with small text tags to indicate the name of the project, its category and owner (Product Owner), and the classic three-color code to indicate the health of the project - (red: problematic, urgently need management; yellow: attention and constant tracking are necessary; green: everything is going well).
In this approach, most of the necessary operations with the project came down to dragging the Velcro on the board and changing its color. Of course, the system should be information-safe but accessible on the Web.
Next went the analysis of what is already there. To begin with, we looked at the services of online boards, then the services of Velcro. Unfortunately, it did not work out to find anything satisfying all the requirements (secure separation within a user group, reliability of service, free of charge).
A working solution was found using Google Docs. More specifically, Google Spreadsheets. The board was implemented as multi-colored areas of the table. 3 columns of the table indicate the project activity zones: Active (Held), Held (Suspended) and Dead (Project has died). 8 lines indicate the phases of the project: Analysis, Proposal sent, Assigned to start, Elaboration Phase, Development Phase, Short Support, Long Support, Successfully finished:
Velcro projects are easy to drag and drop. But to add a project you need to go through several steps:
- Menu \ Insert \ Drawing ...
- in the pop-up window, select the shape for Velcro from the Shape list (I used a sheet with a bent corner)
- click on the figure and in the editor that appears, enter the name of the project, center it at the top left
- click on the text icon, stretch it by Velcro, center, reduce the font, enter text tags - the platform of the project, owner, field for the task (ToDo:).
- click the button [Save & Close]
As you can see, this operation is rather routine. At the moment, there is only one way to wrap this routine in code - this is Google SpreadSheet Gadgets . The idea of implementing such a gadget is quite straightforward - we enter the name of the project, the color of the Velcro and text tags in the parameters of the gadget and then draw it all. As regards this task, we did not go this way since the time required to write and test the gadget is much greater than the amount of operations for making 30-40 stickies that we need in the next 4 weeks.
At this stage, the template of the table with Velcro was shared with all interested, and in general, approved, went to work. If he is interested in you, you can also use it by making a copy. Here is his address.
Now some notes ...
Actually, there was one more step in this micro-project. In the old days, I had to record and encode macros for MS Excell. So when I was looking for an opportunity to wrap some steps in the code to create Velcro, I luckyly typed something like “macros for Google Spreadsheets” into Google Search. To my surprise, Google showed serious activity in this direction ( see, for example, here ).
This may mean that soon we will see a new platform for the rapid development of applications in scale and ideology comparable to the Facebook API.
Already, gadgets allow you to integrate tables with external services. Macros will be analogous to JavaScript for client-side operations - tables. The possibilities for handling data on such a platform are very wide. On the other hand, the user interface will be significantly limited in design. If you try to describe this platform succinctly, it will be a system for ultrafast development of systems with a tabular interface. Calculators, converters, field data collection forms, stock screens, university tests are examples of such systems. The audience for these programs is all users with a Google account - and there are many :)
Good luck!