Step 8. Tasks tracking in software development company solution

Notification Panel
The project notifications show what tasks were changed and which resources were responsible for the tasks. For example, the senior developer can receive notifications to track statuses of the tasks in the task group "Fixing bugs in alpha version". As far as the developers fix revealed bugs, they change statuses of appropriate tasks in this group. The senior developer can track their performance and receive task status notification messages.

He may not watch the tasks directly in the task group, but just get status messages to track the bugs fixing process. This efficient way of task status tracking can be applied to software development projects by using VIP Task Manager . In VIP Task Manager the notifications can be received in Notification Panel or as e-mail messages. The system sends notification messages in real time to all assigned resources, supervisors and owners of the tasks.

Using Filter Bar as a tracking tool

The projects of the software development company usually contain a big large number of tasks, and it may be difficult for the project manager to track the tasks without flexible filter tool. For example, to track the progress of product testing, the manager have to look through at least several dozens of tasks and find which task is delayed, who is assigned to this task, which the tasks are with highest priority and so on. Such a routine work will be boring and take to much time. The way to avoid it is to use task filters.

In the solution for the software development company VIP Task Manager allows to use Filter Bar to get convenient task view for tracking. The project manager can filter the tasks by such columns as "Priority", "Assignment", "Status", "Complete", "Due Date" and other. To find out what tasks are changed today, the manager can use filter by Date Range. For example, the test manager can use filter by Date Range to track daily activities of the testers in order to find out how many bugs have been detected and what product features have been tested.

Tracking tasks by Priority and Status
The status and priority are important characteristics of the tasks that can show overall project progress as well as status of separate tasks. In software development company solution the column "Status" allows managers to track tasks by progress to find out if the tasks are just created, in progress, cancelled, or put on hold for some reasons. For example, to track tasks of the testers, test manager groups all tasks of the testers by statuses "In progress", "Tested", "Created", and "Put On Hold" in Task List view of VIP Task Manager. The grouped task list view is easy to track, and if the test manager needs to use such a task list view often (for example, to track daily activities of the testers), he can save such column layout and then bring it back in seconds.
The way to track progress of task completion (percent of completion) is to use the column "Complete" in VIP Task Manager. This column is status-concerned and shows each percent of task completion in line with specific task status.

This dependency can be managed in Workflow customization option of VIP Task Manager. For instance, the task "Test and remove bug in main menu" is assigned to both the tester and the developer. The tester checks the bug. When it is tested, the tester sets status "Tested", and the program automatically fills value Complete "90%" to Completion field. This is a signal for the developer to proceed further with the task and complete the task.

• Step 1. Using software development company application
• Step 2. Organizing software development company staff
• Step 3. Setting software development company workflow
• Step 4. Customizing software development company tasks
• Step 5. Planning software development company tasks
• Step 6. Sharing tasks in software development company solution
• Step 7. Task documents in software development company solution
• >> Step 8. Tasks tracking in software development company solution
• Step 9. Task reporting software development company solution
• Step 10. KPI management in software development company solution