Task and Project Management

1. Definitions
2. The Tasklist
3. Overview of Tasklist Functions
4. Creating or Modifying a Tasks
5. Creating or Modifying a Project
6. Access Permissions on Tasks and Projects
7. FAQ
8. Plans for future versions

Definitions

The Task and Project Management is a simple tool manage Tasks (or todo's) and combine them into larger project. But start with the definitions of what is a task or project for Minkowsky:

Tasks

• A task might be either a single task (say a todo) or one step within a larger project.
• A task own a couple of state variables:
  • A status (e.g. New, Work In Progress, Done ,....)
  • A degree of completeness (in percent)
  • An urgency which goe from very low to maximum
• A task must be assigned to at least one person (the initiator), but might be assigned to other operators, as well. You can define how much of its work time each operator should use on this task
• A task might be subdivided into mile stones.
• To task might include Reminders which might sent before or after the estimates time of completion (only in the status is not done)
• Minkowsky can even manage the uregncy of a task dynamically. The Urgency of a task will be increased by up to two steps if the degree of completness is significantly smaller than the reletive portion of the elapsted time. On the other hand it will be decreased if the task it completed faster than the time is used up.

Projects

A project is basically a collection of tasks with dependencies between the tasks. Such dependencies might be, that a task became active only if another task is done or completet to some degree.

The state variables (status, completeness, urgency) are averaged from the tasks within a project.

• Mouse handling
  A Left Mouse Button Click on a task or a project opens it for modification or detailed inspection.
  A Right Mouse Button Click on a task or a project opens an overview about it.
  
• The orange Triangle on the left open and close a project. Tasks do not have them. The triangle at legend works similar.
• Sorting: By clicking on one of the elements in the title this column became the prime sort criteria. This symbolized by a red text in the title. If you click gain on the title the previous prime sort criteria became second criteria and the previous second became third. Second and third sort criteria are drawn a more greyish red.
  To have only one sort criteria click three times on the same title.
  You may switch between ascending and descending sorting by clicking on the arrow on right side of the titlebar. However this orientation applies to all three criteria.
• Urgencies and Status:
  See the included lengend for the colour coding of the urengency and the status symbols.
• Status of task or a project: There are eight different states a task or a project might have:

  1. Done	This Task is done, Greetings
  2. New	The Task has just been created.
  3. Open	On this noone is workin yet. At least noone has claimed that he/she started with. On the other the dependency as defined in a project are fullfilled. Hence someone should start workin in this task.
  4. Canceled	This task has been canceled. Its here only for documentatio or because its included in a project. You may define dependencies to a tasks which became only activ if other task are canceled (e.g. something that has to be done if one scenario has been withdrwan and you continue with another)
  5. Pending	This task is waiting that all it dependencies as defined in the project are fullfilled. Note: This state make no sense on single tasks.
  6. Stopped	This task has been stopped but not cancled. It might be reactivated later. This state might be used a trigger in dependencies, too.
  7. Work In Progress	People are working on it..
  8. Delayed	This task should been finished already, but noone told Minkowsky so. Hence hurry up to complete it.

  
  

  A projects status is the topmost in list above of all status of its tasks.

• Automatic Status Controll
  Under ceratin conditions the status is changed by Minkowsky automatically:
  • A new task is always created with status new.
  • If a task has status new or pending and its dependencies are fullfilled the status of the task is changed to open
  • If a task has status new or open and its dependencies are notfullfilled the status of the task is changed to pending.
  • If a task's status is not one of done, stopped or canceled the status is changed to delayed.

• Extended Printing
• Time Line View