Progress Tracking
Contents
Task Types - High, Medium, and Low-Level
Tracking the progress of hierarchical nested tasks need to address different problems on different task abstraction levels. A task on the root level can take a long time and has probably a high abstraction. E.g. “The Age of Water” task in this wiki. Tasks on the leaf level can be characterized by low abstraction and shorter duration. Therefor we decide to introduce three different task types Low-Level, Medium-Level and High-Level tasks. The type prefix describes the level of abstraction that means a Low-Level task has a low abstraction. Every type has a different color, on Low-Level task the degree of abstraction is low and the progress estimation is exact this is expressed with the dark green color. Light green represents the High-Level tasks with lower progress estimation accuracy. Low-Level tasks are tracked in percentage directly by asking the task leader. Medium-Level tasks are intermediate tasks in between high and low level tasks.
Task type rule
A parent task can have the same abstraction level or a higher abstraction level but not a lower abstraction level.
Typical task samples for certain task types
| Task Type | Characteristics | Sample Task |
|---|---|---|
| High-Level | Tasks on a project level you may know only the start and end date. | The Age of Water |
| Medium-Level | Tasks represent a work package within a project and it’s may split itself into several sub work packages. | Document PHIM model |
| Low-Level | Clear separated and manageable task. Can be accomplished a short time period. | Organize meeting on june |
Automatic Type Guessing
All task types initially guessed by the wiki system to ensure an easy usage for end-users. Guessing the type of a task considers the tasks context. Users are allowed to change all task types to improve the guessed type fitting. All guessed types or manually changed types need to consider the task type rule.
Automatic Estimation of Progress
The progress tracking is based on the structured properties described in the task representation and timeline tracking.
High-level tasks are estimated using the tasks start date and end date to ensure a preferably accurate measurement. Our assumption is that after half of the task duration, the expected task progress is 50 percent. If we use the medium-level tasks aggregation method for high-level tasks the estimation would be far inaccurate. The aggregation concept is optimal when most of the subtasks are known at the tasks start date. In reality especially high level tasks will emerge during the time. E.g. one subtask is known at the start of a high level task and more subtasks are added during the time. In an early task state the progress would be much too high due to the fact that the later added subtasks not considered by the progress calculation via aggregation. High level tasks are probably used most on root level tasks. Depending on the task abstraction degree within the tasks hierarchy high level task can be used also in lower hierarchy levels.
Failed to parse (Missing <code>texvc</code> executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \scriptscriptstyle{Start date: 04/16/2014}
Failed to parse (Missing <code>texvc</code> executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \scriptscriptstyle{Today's date: 06/16/2014}
Failed to parse (Missing <code>texvc</code> executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \scriptscriptstyle{Target date: 08/16/2014}
Failed to parse (Missing <code>texvc</code> executable. Please see math/README to configure.): \scriptscriptstyle{\frac{TodaysDate-StartDate}{TargetDate-StartDate} = \frac{06/16/2014-04/16/2014}{08/16/2014-04/16/2014}} = \frac{60}{120} = 50%
Medium-level tasks tracked by aggregating the progress of all related subtasks. Possible types of subtasks are low-level tasks and medium level tasks.
Low-level tasks are estimated directly by the task leader in percentage.
- I think the above needs to be explained better -- Yolanda
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