Search results matching tag 'features'

AceProject 4.7 in the works

AceProject — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:44:00 GMT

We've started testing phase 1 of AceProject 4.7 last week. So far, we're really impressed with Pascal's work. Not only is the software working as expected, but there are very few bugs to fix.

Phase 1 was mostly focused on improving task dependencies. Most AceProject users will tell you task dependencies are very rigid in AceProject. We use only hard logic: the predecessor task must be completed before its successor can start. Dates are mandatory. It makes it difficult to use task dependencies efficiently in the current system.

In AceProject 4.7, we introduce non-mandatory task dependencies. For dependency chains that can accept flexibility and overlap between tasks, you'll be able to start a task even if its predecessor is not completed.

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Even better: if your task doesn't have dates or has incompatible dates with the predecessor, AceProject will propose some dates to you in a pop-up, so you don't need to remember when the previous task ended.

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We are getting ready to start working on phase 2 of AceProject 4.7. This phase will include improvements to the user workload report, and a new dashboard feature! I can't wait to show you what it looks like.

More AceProject 4.6 peeks!

AceProject — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:23:00 GMT

AceProject 4.6's development is going well! We are progressing much faster with the agile development method. Overall, this method makes AceProject 4.6 always ready to be released, because we test and document each iteration, instead of waiting at the end to find and fix the bugs. This turns out to be much more efficient.

Thanks our great development team, I can show you more of AceProject 4.6.

Task History

Many clients love our Task History feature, which logs all changes to a task automatically. Unfortunately, this option was not enabled by default in AceProject, we everyone had to remember to always check that little box. Well, not anymore. Task History will now be enabled by default when you create a project:

Google Chrome support

AceProject already supports Safari. Since Safari and Chrome use the same Webkit, it wasn't a big challenge for us to support Chrome. Plus, the ability to make application shortcuts is a nice way to have AceProject on your desktop!

Task comments in the user tab

It used to be that you would create the task, the move to the assignment tab to choose who will do the task, and then come back to the main task tab to put a comment. This was time consuming. With AceProject 4.6, you will be able to put comments in the Assignment tab as well.

Dates reports without math logic

This was one of my pet peeves. I can't think time with logical operators. For me, it was very difficult to think if a start date was smaller or bigger than another date. I always had to think about things like "Start Date > 25/03/2008," before I could say that it meant that the start date is later than March 25th. I am certain that I was not alone in this predicament. With AceProject 4.6, <, >, and = have been replaced with real words, which makes it much easier to understand.

A sneak peak at AceProject 4.6

AceProject — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:19:00 GMT

We are entering out third and last cycle of development for AceProject 4.6. So far, the agile method has been working well, and we think AceProject 4.6 will benefit greatly from shorter iterative development cycles.

Today, I want to show you three really nice improvements we've made to AceProject.

No need to close the task to save your changes

We were getting a lot of comments from our users about the inability to just Save a task in AceProject. Before 4.6, you need to navigate to another tab or close the task in order to save your changes. It was annoying and a waste of time.

Well, not anymore! We've added a new option to the Update button: Update + Keep Open.

Documents go public

Another request we had from our user was about documents, that it woul be nice to permit some documents to be seen by people outside their AceProject team. We thought that was a great idea!

Now, AceProject task and project documents can be public. When a document is public, anyone who has the link to that document can see it, without the need to log in to AceProject. This is a great feature if you want to show your client a screen mock-up, for example.

You'll know when you can start the work

With AceProject 4.6, when your tasks are controlled by a dependency link, AceProject will tell you when you can start working on them. You won't need to check if the predecessors are completed, AceProject will do it for you and send you an email like this:

Expect AceProject 4.6 for Christmas

We're starting out last development iteration today. Our goal is to make it available in December for online accounts, and early 2009 for the Source Code package.

Effort is not always proportional to value

AceProject — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:56:00 GMT

Sometimes, that new feature that took so much time and effort, that was so complicated to implement, is not important to the client. This can be heartbreaking for developers.

I've seen it often: my press release is sent for approval, and the project manager comes to me, asking why the new feature is not mentioned in the release. I see disapointment in his eyes. After all, they worked really hard to make it work. All that effort should translate into a killer feature that customers will flock to, right?

Not always. Sometimes the effort translates into something that is taken for granted by the client. Sometimes, the little-worked-on feature turns out to be the big selling point for a product.

The case of the one-client feature

There was this product launch where the development team had implemented a very complex algorithm in the product, at the express request of a client. The client himself was very pleased with the algorithm. However, he was the only one in the market to use it: this client was such a pionneer in his field, no one else was ready to implement that kind of reporting. And so our development team felt like they worked hard for nothing.

About this they were wrong. Their work was worth it. The client who adopted this feature was one of the biggest accounts in the company. Unfortunately, it did not have the right appeal for the market at the time. So it was left out of the press release.

The case of the feature taken for granted

It may be really complicated to develop something, but it has nothing to do with its perceived value by the client. Sometimes the work that goes behind a simple button goes unrecognized. Or sometimes, the market simply expects this feature to be in the basic system, and is not willing to buy a product solely based on that feature.

Case in point: Task dependencies. Task dependencies were a tough cookie to implement in AceProject. Our development team worked really hard, for a long time, to make it work. However, for our clients, it's only normal that we support task dependencies. How hard we worked on it had not effect on the value of that feature to our users.

The case of the widely popular feature

Sometimes, the opposite happens: this one feature, that was very easy to implement, turns out to be a key selling point for the software.

A few years back, a developer on the team had time left from his debugging schedule, so he decided to clean up the code for a file import feature. It made such a difference for the users! We were able to sell more copies because importing files from our competitor's system worked smoothly. This was amazing to the developer: to him, it was just a few hours of improving some code. For the users, it was a time-saver.

The lesson to be learned

As the title says, effort and value are not equal, simply because the effort involved in accomplishing something is not always perceivable to the client. However, internally, we should recognize the effort, even if it's not the star feature. After all, if the "taken for granted" features were not there, we would have no software to sell.