A small WPF project management application

AsifHamza — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:52:23 +0000

They say the best way to learn something new is to jump in head first and just do it. Don’t ask me who “they” are but apparently, that’s what they say. One of my goals last year was to teach myself the WPF framework. I’ve been playing around with it on off for most of 2009 and it’s a truly impressive framework. This year, I’ve decided to expand that knowledge by creating something useful to me using WPF and C#.

These are my high level requirements for the the first version:

Keep track of all risks on project
Keep track of all issues on a project
Upload a Microsoft project mpp file and create timesheets for resources to fill out
Keep track of all resources on a project
Calculate all reporting metrics that required by my company
Keep track of all to-do lists
Keep track of project milestones
Have a beautiful interface.

Some of these requirements will be a challenge for me. Especially 3 and 8. I’m not sure whether you can interface to a mpp file and beautiful design is not my forte. I’m very much a child of the “6-six shades of gray windows GUI” age.

The primary aim is to have a small project management aid on projects which are too small to justify the use of Microsoft Project Server or tools such as Clearcase, Clearquest and Sharepoint. Usually, on small projects, Microsoft project and excel would be the tools of the trade. But tracking history on an excel sheet is hard and capturing time on Microsoft Project when you have a small to medium size team is time consuming.

I could have web apps such as basecamp but its not easy to get the necessary permission if you work for a large corporation. Besides, where is the fun in that?

This will be a personal project so I’m not bounding myself to any time constraints. If this year is anything like last year, I will have very little free time available so committing to a date is pointless.

An Engineering Diary » Insight

A small WPF project management application

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