Project management with EA for dummies

[realien]

I have some small (150 hour) to medium (3000 hour) project to manage and I hate microsoft project.

I noticed there are some project management tools in EA, but the documentation tells you "what to do" if you know "what you want", when what I want is a "how to do project management with EA"

I need :

1) estimate time to realize use cases
2) revised estimates after design
3) assign tasks to resources
4) adapt to changes in requirements or incorrect estimates.

So that I can see where my project is, how long it will take and if I'm behind.

I don't need gant charts all the junk in microsoft project, but right now I'm doing management with an excel spreadsheet and its just not cutting it

Thanks
Grant

[Bruno.Cossi]

Hi,

one of the things we do is teach project managers on how to efficiently use Enterprise Architect - as a source of information, but not as a project management tool. Personally, I do not believe that EA is suitable to be used as a project management tool, not any better than (and probably worse than, for example, the Task feature in MS Outlook.
If you really wanted to use it though, here are a few pointers:
- Setup all of your resources (see menus Settings > People > Resources and Model Authors)
- Use Model Tasks for any tasks not directly related to any modeling element (which also included the phase when you do not have a model yet). First problem here is that you can not assign multiple resources to a task, nor can you say what percentage of their time is assigned to the task. You can't also setup dependencies between tasks, or hierarchy.
- Use Element Tasks (once you have created the elements). Again, same issues as above.
- Project > Documentation contains features for reporting you might find useful
- Project > Use Case metrics will help with UC-based estimation - once you have your Use Cases of course.

All in all, EA is an excellent resource, but not a PM tool - nor should it be one. Project typically starts before one starts modeling, and project management requires functionality that a modeling tool won't provide. Combination of MS Project (or other PM tool of choice, if MS Project is not your cup of tea) with EA will do a respectable job.

Hope this helps!
Bruno

I have some small (150 hour) to medium (3000 hour) project to manage and I hate microsoft project.

I noticed there are some project management tools in EA, but the documentation tells you "what to do" if you know "what you want", when what I want is a "how to do project management with EA"

I need :

1) estimate time to realize use cases
2) revised estimates after design
3) assign tasks to resources
4) adapt to changes in requirements or incorrect estimates.

So that I can see where my project is, how long it will take and if I'm behind.

I don't need gant charts all the junk in microsoft project, but right now I'm doing management with an excel spreadsheet and its just not cutting it

Thanks
Grant

[thomaskilian]

Search sourceforge for "faces". This is a python based PM tool which is VERY impressing. You will need a bit of startup but it's much more powerful than MS Project (not too difficult ) and it's free! The funny thing is that each task is represented as a Python class which lets you write important things in merely "clear voice". If you don't know Python: don't be afraid. I made it in one day to learn enough for making my project plans.

[realien]

Thanks guys, that helps a lot.