We are, and always have been, big fans of open source software. In our daily workflow at Pelago we use various open source technologies; PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Linux, Apache, Subversion, and many others. We primarily use these open source technologies in developing Intervals, our online time, task and project management software, and in designing and developing web sites and web-based applications for our clients.

When selecting online project management software for your company, not everyone wants to use a hosted pay-per-month app. Some would rather download the app and install it on their own server, taking responsibility for the IT aspects of maintaining and serving up the application. This blog post is for those people. We’ve put together this review of open source project management apps based on our experience building Intervals, along with ten years of designing and building web sites and web-based applications.

Trac

trac.edgewall.org

Trac is a powerful open source Python app for managing projects. We’ve used it several times in the past when working with clients who used it as their primary ticketing system. Trac’s strong points are its Wiki and Source integration. And Trac is similar to Intervals in that it treats tasks more like tickets, assigning them fields such as priority, owner, component, and milestone. Overall, web developers will find Trac a great tool to work with, as it lets them manage projects and tickets on a very granular level. Web designers and others who like their interfaces clean and less cluttered my find Trac a bit cumbersome. Trac has been around longer than most open source project management apps and has the benefit of being more established and battle tested.

Open Atrium

www.openatrium.com

Open Atrium is relatively new on the open source project management scene. However, they’ve used their status as the new app on the block to their advantage, offering a refreshing interface and more intuitive features. And by building it on top of Apache, PHP, MySQL and Drupal, they’ve given the open source community an easy and familiar code base, guaranteeing a lot of help with development. Although Open Atrium is still in beta it looks very promising. This project management software emphasizes communication and collaboration, while including a full ticketing system. Open Atrium offers a nice blend of collaboration and project management features and is a great option for those looking to replace Basecamp.

Collabtive

collabtive.o-dyn.de

Collabtive looks like another open source project management app aiming to be a viable alternative to Basecamp (one of the key features is a Basecamp import). Collabtive is one of the more full featured open source options for project management, offering the ability to track projects, milestones, tasks and time, and rounding itself out with reporting. Just the fact that it includes so many key features for managing projects is a good reason to give it a try. The interface is nice and clean but relies too heavily on icons for navigation. Overall, it is a promising app that still has some development needing to be completed.

Redmine

www.redmine.org

Redmine reminded me a lot of Trac except that Redmine is written in Ruby using the Rails framework. Redmine contains a lot of functionality geared heavily towards developers. It’s powerful but may take some getting used to. This open source project management application is ideal for developers who are familiar with Ruby and need self-hosted software written in their favorite language. The default interface is not as clean as Open Atrium or Collabtive, but the whole point of open source is that it is free and you can contribute your enhancements back to the development community.

Retrospectiva

www.retrospectiva.org

Retrospectiva is another open source software offering that includes ticketing along with project management. It is similar to Trac in that it offers Subversion integration. What makes Retrospectiva unique is that it targets itself to the agile software development cycle. Not only does it provide the tools to carry out agile software development effectively, it also enhances the process with collaborative tools such as a Wiki and a Blog. Retrospectiva also has one of the cleaner interfaces among the project management apps built by and for web developers. Also written in Ruby, this application looks promising.

In Summary

Which one of these open source project management apps is the best? That’s up to you. They are each unique in their own way and require a test run to see if they will be a good fit for your company. These open source software offerings do seem to have one thing in common. They all have some type of comprehensive ticketing system. Whether it’s under the guise of issue tracking or task management or ticketing, it’s there. That’s probably because these apps are written by web developers who understand the importance of a comprehensive task management system. If there is one thing the open source world can offer to proprietary online project management software, it’s detailed task management. And if there is one thing the open source developers can gleam from the proprietary apps, it’s the attention to detail in the user interface.

There will always be pros and cons to choosing between open source and online proprietary project management software. Should you decide to go the open source route, we hope this review will be helpful in making that decision.

As always, please feel free to comment on other open source project management apps you’ve found useful. We’d love to hear about more.

I recently brought home a new laptop. After getting all of my favorite apps installed and customizing my desktop, it was time to get to work. As a web designer and developer most of the work I do has an online component, making working remotely from home, or the local coffee shop, ideal. That isn’t to say it’s easy to work remotely, because it is not. There are several challenges, even some technical ones, to telecommuting effectively. Most of these challenges can be overcome with the right tools, the right attitude and a little creativity.

Ground Control to Major Tom

Solitude is a good thing when working remotely. But it can also become a distraction. The couch can suddenly swallow you whole while you procrastinate in reading the latest issue of Wired magazine. The remote office presents an entirely new set of distractions to overcome. Learning to focus on the task at hand, getting your work done, requires time, patience and discipline. And just because you are online doesn’t mean you are on the grid. Be sure to have a phone nearby where coworkers can reach you, and check your messaging client and email at random intervals. If something important should come up at the office, you don’t want to be left unreachable, floating around in a tin can.

When I work remotely from home I have the opposite problem of being alone. I have to contend with the incredible din generated by a toddler and his little brother, little wrecking balls disconnected from the chain. If you are going to work remotely you will need a quiet place, preferably separated from common areas of the house. A private office is ideal, but I’ve discovered the kitchen works quite nicely, too.

There are other challenges that you’ll face when telecommuting. Video chats are nice but they can’t replace the culture and ambiance of the office environment. There is something about being in the same room with coworkers that makes us feel like we belong, like we are still in the loop. The cure for this is simple, get together with coworkers on a regular basis. I happen to only work from home one or two days a week, giving me plenty of time to catch up with my colleagues. Employees who work remotely every day of the week do not have this luxury. At Pelago we have regular events outside of the office where everyone can get reconnected. Something as simple as going out to the movies together and getting some dinner afterwards can do wonders for morale and productivity.

Tools of the Trade

Once you’ve decided to work remotely, it’s time to configure your computer for communicating and collaborating with other people on your team. Here are some of the essential apps and utilities we use at Pelago.

VPN

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is indispensable when working remotely. Most offices are completely firewalled off to the outside world. A VPN connection gives you the same access to the office you would have if you were physically sitting inside it. Most routers come with VPN servers installed. For example, our SonicWall Router uses IPSEC for establishing VPN connections. Using any VPN client that supports IPSEC, we can get access to our office at anytime from anywhere.

Skype

We use Skype exclusively for group chat and video conferencing. The ongoing chatter of our group conversation is not always work-related, which is helpful for making remote employees feel like they are a part of the office when they aren’t physically present. The video chat makes it easy to start a conversation when chat won’t cut it. Skype has been an essential tool for us as it enables community and collaboration unrestricted by physical barriers.

Email

Most email providers offer IMAP, POP, or at the very least, a web-based client for accessing email. I personally use Thunderbird and IMAP to check my email when working remotely. This way my email is kept in sync whether I am checking it from my desktop at work, the laptop at home, or on my iPhone. Email may seem like an obvious requirement when telecommuting, but it’s important to remember to take your email with you wherever you go. Despite other communications tools like chat and Twitter, email is still a staple for communications.

Online Time, Task and Project Management

One of the most difficult challenges of working remotely is simply knowing what to do with your time. What should you be working on? When is your next project due? How much time have you worked today? It is unrealistic for a project manager to verbally communicate this information to each individual remote employee. Instead, project managers should be using online project management software to keep everyone up-to-date. Coupled with time tracking and task management, remote employees can log into one application for managing their daily tasks and keeping track of their time. Meanwhile, project managers can keep tabs on remote employee productivity and effectively manage agency workflow. Which online application you decide to use is up to you. The important thing is to pick one and stick with it. The more data you track, the more useful these tools will be to your agency.

A week later and everything is running smoothly on the laptop at home. I’ve got all of the aforementioned apps up and running. And I look forward to each day I work remotely. I put on my headphones in the morning to drown out the noises around me and get to work. Some days I’m even more productive than when I am in the office, and other days motivation eludes me. But in the end it all balances out. Work gets done and I get to take the occasional nap on the sofa.

The landscape of online offerings in the time tracking, task management and project management realm of productivity tools has changed considerably in just the last year. Not only have the number of online applications increased, but the versatility and uniqueness of web-based software has also grown to meet the needs of every niche imaginable.

The suite of available web-based applications for web designers, web developers and creatives has grown considerably, most likely because the ones churning out these online apps are themselves designers and developers with experience in creative agencies.

Once your agency has decided it needs to adopt an online application for project management and related productivity needs, how do you choose which one? Naturally, we at Pelago would steer you towards our own time, task and project management app, Intervals. Ultimately, we want you to choose the online app that fits your needs best, even if it isn’t ours.

To help whittle down your shortlist of online project management apps to choose from, below are some insights based on our experiences the last ten years at Pelago. When it comes to time tracking, task management and project management, we’ve had enough mistakes and successes while running our small web design and development agency to know what we’re talking about.

Time Tracking

Every web designer, developer, creative, IT professional, PR person, freelancer — any person or agency who provides a professional service needs to track their time. This is especially critical if you bill hourly for that time. You would be surprised at the number of small businesses who still track their time on paper or using Microsoft Xcel. And I can tell you, based on our own experience and from hearing stories from our own customers, that if you aren’t tracking your time with time tracking software you are losing up to 30% of your billable time. That is a lot of time slipping through the cracks, money you will never recuperate.

Even if you don’t bill hourly for your creative services, online time tracking is crucial for internal feedback. If you know how much time you are spending on projects you will become more and more precise when you flat-bid a project. The nature of flat-bidding projects is that on some you lose money and and some you make money. You just hope it evens out in the end. With more precise flat-bids it’s more likely there will be less surprises at the end of the year. Time tracking, when practiced diligently, provides invaluable feedback crucial to project management.

Task Management

Task management software comes in all shapes and sizes, from the simplest to-do list to complex bug and issue tracking. What type of task management you adopt depends on what is coupled with the online project management software you choose and on your specific needs. For example, some web designers, especially freelancers, may be able to get by with a simple to-do app. In fact, many of them do and use Basecamp for their project management needs.

Web developers tend to be a more advanced lot and will rely on more feature-rich task management. Web developers with a background in software development will find bug and issue tracking features to be more fitting to their needs. Managing tasks from a bug and issue tracking perspective is useful because it allows developers to prioritize tasks based on factors other than the due date and provides a more collaborative approach to resolving tasks.

Look for task management features that fit your current needs and allow you room to grow. In the context of project management, task lists are useful for gauging the status of a project at any given moment by knowing what percentage of tasks are complete. Task lists are also useful for running reports on completed projects as they provide a detailed analysis of efforts put into the project.

Project Management

What small business doesn’t need project management? Regardless of whether it’s a full time project manager, an employee wearing the PM hat a few hours a week, or everyone making a collaborative effort to use online software, project management is critical if you are going to regularly complete projects on time and under budget.

As the number of projects you take on grows so will the need for more project management features. Some designers, developers and creatives will get by with basic project management features, for example, task and time tracking. Creative agencies who begin taking on a greater size and number of projects will find themselves requiring more features in their online project management software.

At Pelago we have found additional project management features to be very useful, which is why we built them into our online project management software (Intervals). We’ve rounded out the application with numerous productivity tools — milestones, document sharing, payment and expense tracking, invoicing, granular reporting — and we plan on adding more to the mix. Two in particular, project estimation and Gantt-ish reports are worming their way into our collective definition of online project management workflow.

It’s not just the number and quality of features that determine the type of project management software to adopt. Consider also the context in which you are able to access your data. The online software you choose will use a web browser as it’s primary method for accessing your data. The web browser is getting better at providing a desktop-like experience, but you won’t always be sitting in front of your computer. Consider what desktop widgets and mobile interfaces are available, especially if you find yourself out in the field quite often. Developers who want to break away from the features of the web-based version of their app will want to consider the availability of an API, a useful way to import and export your data and build additional interfaces for accessing your data.

Overall, look for software that provides the best fit. No single online project management application is going to provide every feature you need. It is likely that you will have to make some compromises when selecting web-based software for your design and development needs. Otherwise, you will get stuck in an infinite loop, dismissing likely candidates while repeating to yourself, “If only this app had that one absolutely necessary feature, then I’d use it in a second.” Let’s be honest, you don’t need that “one feature” as much as you think.

Happy hunting!

The DesignInformer has posted an excellent article calling web designers to slow down a little and give more thought and time to exploring the roots of our craft and our origins as artisans. Principles of Great Design: Craftsmanship outlines five essential points every designer should address in the course of their careers:

1. Practice
2. Education
3. Accept Criticism
4. Attention to detail
5. Design for the future

Definitely read this one. It’s a well-thought and well-written blog post on why web designers need to get back to their artisan roots, and expands on a blog post I wrote last week about web designers getting back to using pencil and paper when designing web sites.

The idea of a web designer being first an artisan reminds me of something Walter Gropius, a famous architect and founder of the Bauhaus design movement in 1919, once said in regards to design, art and craftsmanship:

Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as “professional art”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies.

When asked about what goes into a web site design most of us web designers will automatically start talking about color palettes, image formats, UI effects, and of course, Photoshop and its endless array of filters, plugins and effects. What about the design? Where do the ideas and the creativity come from? How does a visual concept floating around in our brain make its way onto the computer screen?

The web medium is a digital one, but all good ideas usually come from analog instruments that have been around for a very long time… pencil and paper. Any good web designer should be a practitioner of sketching page after page of thumbnails while they hash out their creative ideas. Simply put, nothing is faster at capturing and visualizing our creative thought patterns than the trusty old pencil and paper. And it makes the process of rendering a comp in Photoshop much easier if you already know what it is you are designing.

To illustrate the process of how a visual web site design goes from an idea to a comp, I’ve scanned a sampling of sketches from a web design project. Scroll down to see how ideas begin as loose sketches, get tighter as they begin to congeal, and ultimately make their way onto the computer screen.

All of these sketches were completed on my paper of choice: Clearprint Fade-out design and sketch vellum. I prefer gridded paper, as it maintains some sense of order while I’m sketching.

On this first page you can see that I am just exploring some rough layout ideas. In addition, I’m writing down information I want to remember later.

I’ve found some visual elements I like and I’m sketching studies of them to see if they’ll work. It helps to focus on one area of the web site when exploring new ideas, for example, how icons might look in the navigation.

Sketching some ideas on how the web site might look in the context of the web browser using different background treatments. Also taking down notes for what labels and content will appear in each section.

The layout is getting tighter. These sketches are an exercise in how different shades and textures might look. More notes on different ideas to explore.

Trying out some unconventional ideas for the site navigation. They were not used but it was still a good exercise to sketch them out. This sketch shows why thumbnails are so powerful. They enable you to explore almost every idea so only the good ones make it to the computer screen.

This final sketch shows a layout that will be rendered in Photoshop. The subtle asymmetry of the design could not have been achieved without evolving to this point through previous thumbnails. The notes are more ideas for colors and textures to explore once I’ve started rendering the design.

The design comp! This is the first draft of the comp that will be presented to the client. Looking back you can see how different elements from the thumbnail sketches made their way into the final design.

That’s it. The more you practice sketching designs on paper the faster and better you will become. In addition, you’ll build up a library of sketches that can be referenced on future design projects. Just because one idea didn’t work on this web site design project doesn’t mean it won’t work on another.

Happy sketching!