Projects
When you click on "Select" for a certain project, this brings you to the
project view, which has 6 main parts: Tasks, Timer, Invoices & Credits,
Statistics, and Documents. The Timer makes it easy to log spans of time as
you work an a certain project task (learn about the timer
here). You can upload relevant documents to this screen such as design
documents, proposals, quotes, and any customer related documents for easy
retreival down the road. The tool displays relevant statistics such as hours
worked, remaining hours to go, and an up-to-date beta and lauch date. No matter
where you are in the tool, as long as you are logged in, you can jump to any
project by clicked on the "Project(s)" link along to top navigation.
There's a lot here. Let's do a couple of things. Let's add some
tasks, track some time, and finally, send an invoice. First, you add a
task in the area that I surrounded with a purple box in the screen shot above.
The availability of task categories in the select box depend upon the status of the project. But,
generally they are as follows.
| Task Category | Description |
|---|
| In Scope | This is used primariy when you are scoping out a new project. |
| Out of Scope | This is used to mark tasks that are not in the scope of the original project. |
| Testing & Debugging | This is used, usually after you have rolled out a beta,
to log bugs. This is billable time then the customer relationship is hourly, but not on fixed price. |
| Research & Learning Curve | I created this category to try to help
developers start to get an idea of how much time we are spending on learving
curve stuff, in order to account for this when we quote projects. This is never
billable, yet it has way of destroying a project schedule, so we need to plan
for it. |
A task can have one of the following four completion statuses: Todo,
Ready To Invoice, Children To Invoice, and Invoiced. Internal projects
have only one of two completion statuses: Todo or Done. When a task is selected, a number of buttons appear at the bottom of the
tasks. To log time against a task, click "Start Timer." Then, when
you are done working on that item, just click the "Write To Timesheet" button
which is located in the "Timer" area on the right side of the screen.
There is a whole section describing the Timer in detail. When you click on the plus sign next to a task, you can see the actual time
which you are logging against the task. You can
learn all about the "Children" button in this section.
There are basically three types of projects you can keep track of with Primershee:
- Internal - These are your internal projects, perhaps managing a tool like
Primershee. You might want to keep track of your TODO list and note bugs as
you find them. An internal project is simplified from the other types of projects. There is no need to invoice yourself, obviously. So a task completion status will be either "Todo" or "Done."
More Information...
- Hourly - These are client projects where you have hourly
arrangements. With Primershee, you can
enter in tasks, assigning a time estimate for completion. You can also
log time against the estimated task. Primershee will generate your
invoices based upon the actual time taken on task.
More information.
- Fixed Price -These are also client projects, but you have qutoed a fixed
price for the whole thing. You can use Primershee to estimate these
projects and then you can track your time against them in order to assess
profitability and improve estimation of future projects. Primershee will
generat invoices according to the weights you assign to the various billing
phases. More information...
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