Redmine

In my experience of using redmine, some of your reqs can be solved by plugins, some may be solved by work flow design in your company.
for example, status tracking, I guess you are saying developers, can be done by at least two plugins.

Najib Mestaoui wrote:

Hello everyone,

I know that my question here may not have direct relation with redmine, but I will ask it however. I hope this does not bother anyone.
My boss requested me to search for a project management solution that has features that are beyond project management compared to what is now being handled by redmine. Actually in our company we are using redmine as main project management system, but after months of use, we have got a new needs which are as follow:

Due to the flexible nature of Redmine, I think you'd be able to achieve this with nothing more than some clever environment configuration and a small handful of plugins. Let me equate your stated requirements to my experience with the system and see where it goes..

• Dedicated functionality (forms, etc) for submitting ideas that will later become proposals that will later become opportunities that will later become projects
• Dedicated functionality to manage the investigation of the idea or proposal (two themes are needed: a> Financial impact; b> indicators data)
• Dedicated functionality for approval cycle management (basic idea judgment; proposal acceptance; opportunity approval; etc)

This basic workflow can be achieved with the standard system, but could be augmented easily with a few plugins. If you've been using the system for a while, you might already be familiar with these terms, but it helps to look at them from a different angle. I'd suggest something like the following:

• Create a container (a "Project") to track the progress of the ideas. For example "Potential Projects" or "Project Proposals".
• Create a new category (a "Tracker") with custom fields for key elements of the idea. Depending on what information you need to associate with each of the potential project ideas, you can use predefined drop-down selections, checkboxes, radio buttons, text input fields, etc..
• Configure a series of states (multiple "Issue Status" entries) for the tracker that takes it through the stages of "New Idea", "Project Proposal", "Business Opportunity", etc.. (configured by the "Workflow"). Once it's accepted and a new project is started, you can complete the proposal (close the issue).

• Uploading of supporting docs.

Redmine includes a "Documentation" and a "Files" module by default with projects, either of these will cater for this.

• Reporting about a global impact of a group of projects and the details of each project or item or idea

There aren't any built-in reporting options.. A quick Google search revealed a project on Codeplex called Redmine Reports, perhaps this would allow you to build the reports you need?

• Status tracking & control of implementation.

This would be done with it's own Tracker, either in the same project used for the project ideas or in a new project. Either way, the entries can still be linked to each other. Your custom issue statuses and workflows will handle the "tracking and control" side of the implementation.

If it helps at all you could even go as far as to rename the labels displayed in the interface, as described here (I've renamed "Issues" to "Tickets" in my system).. But keep in mind this will affect all of them, not only specific projects.