Hello there HN-ers...<p>I've been involved in high level marketing strategic planning for quite a while, and have finally gotten the point of being so annoyed with the tools available that I'm going to build my own.<p>Now, I'm planning to base the system on PRINCE2 (if you're unfamiliar, poke up Wikipedia). So far, my theory runs thus:<p>* User creates a project, and specifies a name and start date
* They then create stages for the project. Each stage has a start and intended completion date
* Next, they add tasks for each stage, which have to be completed before the next stage can begin. Each task has a start and intended completion date, data about what the task is, and users assigned to it
* Finally, they add decision points. These are tied to either tasks or dates, and serve to ensure that if a task is delayed, or finished early, or if a date is reached, the project process tree can be tweaked and adjusted based on what's happened/happening<p>The application will have three views:<p>* The first shows the project process chart, and will look somewhat like a flowchart. Clicking on a stage will show only the tasks for that stage, and clicking on a task will show all relevant data for that task, including people assigned, task details, time dates and dependencies
* The second will show a recent timeline of events, based on tasks. The pane will initially show active tasks, whilst scrolling to the left will show recently completed tasks, and to the right, upcoming ones
* The third will show people assigned to a project, and the tasks assigned to them. This will allow users to see who's current busy, who's free, and potential choke points where a project's progress will be entirely dependant on a few people on a single or small number of tasks. As such, the project managers can ensure that during those times there's greater oversight and resource made available, etc etc etc...<p>With the explanation over, I'd like to hear any thoughts, see if there's anything anyone can think of that would be useful to add, any problems that you can forsee and so on.<p>Cheers in advance!