ZenTao: Open Source Project Management DMS

Software-Scrum
zentao123.blogspot.com/2020/02/zentao-best-dms-tool-and-more.html

As a big fan of ZenTao , I have understand in my practice that ZenTao is appropriate to

manage Scrum development but not limited to it.

Then I realize immediately that ZenTao is appropriate for webmasters, bloggers and
publishers who maintain a
website. ZenTao is not necessary only for development. In this case that the QA module
is not used, neither are plan, builds, releases, etc... But stories, tasks, projects and
products are quite usable. And the Doc module too.

ZenTao VS other management tools

In my work in mainframe industry, developing in COBOL, we are trying to do Scrum and

we have worked with:

- Jira Software
- Confluence (Atlassians)
- Quality Center
Confluence is complex and the interface looks bad and not very intuitive. It is for IT
developers who know a lot about html and wiki. Business Analysts prefer writing in
Microsoft Word and use Excel, Powerpoint, etc...
ZenTao offer a DMS Tool (Documents Management System) similar to the Windows
explorer of your hard disk., which is very intuitive. ZenTao is the best DMS Tool I have
seen forever !!

Jira Software is expensive and very complex and the roles are not clearly identified. You
can set parameters for everything and then it becomes very complex. Sometimes,
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people prefer Trello because it is simple and you don't have to set "a million"
parameters. However, Trello has cons, because it is too simple and you can not use it for
project management. ZenTao is quite right. It has just the right number of parameters
necessary to do a specific work. So you understand it immediately if it's your work. If you
know a little of AGILE method you understand product, project, sprint, story, task and
you understand immediately the help ZenTao can bring to you.

Quality Center is complex and it takes a lot of time to use it properly. Teams have no
time to use it properly so Quality Center is often used to transmit testing documents
from one team to another and is not really used for test requests. It become a giant tool
to do very simple things. Some company use it like a DMS Tool.

It seems that ZenTao is simple to be used for testing. It doesn't offer features you don't
need because the roles are clearly defined in ZenTao, as well as what a tester have to
test.

More than a tool just for development projects

And now I realize ZenTao can be adapted for every kind of projects with just minimum
changes.

If you imagine a V-Model Project a Scrum Project with only 1 iteration and a sprint
duration of 1 or 2 years, you can use ZenTao to manage it. There is just a lack in the
analyze phase. But to be scrum, it must be simple and reactive, short and quick.

For all projects, you have requirements and constraints. But sometime you have new
requirements and constraints that appear during the implementation of the project.
Then, you have just to analyze and give new rules to integrate in new stories, link to a
sprint, and made new single tasks to respect these new requirements and new
constraints, which is not a problem, really.
For webmasters and publishers, there are not such need. You can use ZenTao without
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the QA module. But when you get a new customer to develop a new website, you have to
take notes of what your customer tells you, his needs, his requirements, etc. After that
you can analyze the data and comment them. You finally write a document with all the
requirements and mock-up of the project (like screen shot, etc...). The document must be
validated by the customer and you can put it in the ZenTao Doc module. You can start
creating stories, tasks, sprints... The before-project stage is a part of the job.

Manage projects using ZenTao

With some simple changes, you can easily transform ZenTao.

- for V Cycle Project with hours->day, days ->weeks, etc

- to « Zentao for publishers » with hiding QA, Plan, Build, Release, on a simple parameter.
Publishers don't need that. They just publish articles on a blog.
- to « Zentao for webmaster » with hiding QA, Plan, Build, Release, on a simple
parameter, but choose a level of hiding, because a webmaster has development to do
but it's not like developing a software. Some data is not useful for webmaster, so just
hide them and ZenTao will be very adapted to this job. I am now working with the help of
the ZenTao Dev Team to develop a ZenTao Extension to manage before-project stage
(expression of needs to rules books supporting requirements and constraints). With my
future extension, it will be a complete management tool for webmasters and for
traditional methods (V-Model projects and others).

You have a parameter like this when choosing the concept:

- Product / Project
- Product / Sprint
- Project / Sprint

It can be a parameter like this for:

- V Cycle Projects and maintenance

- ZenTao for web publishing
- ZenTao for webmasters

Note: a V Cycle Project can be waterfall or not.

Maintain a project

Maintenance is a never-ended project. It affect software patrimony (fixing bugs and do

evolution of what is exist). Maintenance is not really a project with a begin and an end.
It's a product and you can create stories in it. Stories are integrate in 2 or 3 annual

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releases. So you have to link them to a Project. Maintenance become a project, but it's a
special project. It's an evolution project and not a new project beginning from nothing.
When you have an evolution in an application, it affects often the same components. You
can start the project from an ancient project and clone an old story and its tasks.

Conclusion

With little adaptations, ZenTao can be used to manage all these kind of projects because
I think ZenTao now is mature to do it. A few years ago I think it can't unless a lot of
evolution. Now I think ZenTao is ready to be extended to all kind of projects.

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Tags ：free dms tool, scrum and agile tool, best document management tool

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