tasksched 0.2.0

Task scheduler with automatic resource leveling.

Task scheduler with automatic resource leveling

The task scheduler reads one or more JSON configuration files, that includes:

• project general information
• list of resources
• list of tasks.

The output is a work plan, with the tasks automatically assigned to resources ("resource leveling"), as JSON format.

The goal is to find the best possible end date (as soon as possible).

The internal algorithm follows these rules:

• efficient use of resources, if possible 100%, with no overload at all
• long tasks may be carried out in parallel by several people.

Dependencies

Taskshed requires Python ≥ 3.7 and:

• python-holidays

You can install dependencies in a virtual environment with:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

The input data is written in JSON format. One or more files are accepted, each one overwrites any file previously loaded.

Content of files can be read from standard input or filenames are allowed as command line arguments. Both can be used at same time.

The command tasksched allows two actions:

• workplan: build an optimized work plan using project/resources/tasks info in input; the output is JSON data
• text: convert output of workplan action (JSON data) to text for display in the terminal (colors and unicode chars are used by default but optional).

Examples

Standard input and multiple JSON files

You can pipe content of JSON files as tasksched input.

The following example uses:

• another program called extract-tasks to extract tasks from a ticketing tool
• a project configuration file (project.json)
• a resources configuration file (team.json)
• an extra-tasks configuration file, these tasks are added to the tasks received on standard input (extra_tasks.json)

So you can build the work plan and convert it to text for display with this command:

$ extract-tasks | tasksched workplan project.json team.json extra_tasks.json | tasksched text

Build of work plan

Example of JSON work plan:

$ tasksched workplan examples/project_small.json | jq
{
  "workplan": {
    "project": {
      "name": "The big project",
      "start": "2020-12-01",
      "end": "2020-12-07",
      "duration": 4,
      "holidays": "FRA",
      "resources_usage": 87.5
    },
    "resources": [
      {
        "id": "dev1",
        "name": "Developer 1",
        "assigned": [
          "1",
          "1",
          "1"
        ],
        "assigned_tasks": [
          "1"
        ],
        "duration": 3,
        "end": "2020-12-04",
        "usage": 75
      },
      {
        "id": "dev2",
        "name": "Developer 2",
        "assigned": [
          "1",
          "1",
          "2",
          "2"
        ],
        "assigned_tasks": [
          "1",
          "2"
        ],
        "duration": 4,
        "end": "2020-12-07",
        "usage": 100
      }
    ],
    "tasks": [
      {
        "id": "1",
        "title": "The first feature (1/2)",
        "duration": 3
      },
      {
        "id": "1",
        "title": "The first feature (2/2)",
        "duration": 2
      },
      {
        "id": "2",
        "title": "The second feature",
        "duration": 2
      }
    ]
  }
}

Work plan as text

Example of work plan converted to text for display:

$ tasksched workplan examples/project_big.json | tasksched text
Legend:
  Task 1: Mega feature (1/2) (16d)
  Task 1: Mega feature (2/2) (16d)
  Task 2: Very nice feature (3d)
  Task 3: Another feature (1/2) (16d)
  Task 3: Another feature (2/2) (16d)
  Task 4: The most important feature (1/2) (7d)
  Task 4: The most important feature (2/2) (7d)
  Task 5: Small feature (5d)
  Task 6: POC for next version (2d)
  Task 7: Something completely new (5d)
  Task 8: Internal code refactoring (1/2) (9d)
  Task 8: Internal code refactoring (2/2) (8d)

Work plan: 2020-12-21 to 2021-02-01 (28d), 98.21% resources used

  Developer 1 > 2021-01-29  27d  96% ███████████████▊████████▊██   1, 8, 6
  Developer 2 > 2021-01-29  27d  96% ███████████████▊███████▊███   1, 8, 2
  Developer 3 > 2021-02-01  28d 100% ███████████████▊██████▊█████  3, 4, 5
  Developer 4 > 2021-02-01  28d 100% ███████████████▊██████▊█████  3, 4, 7

Note: if you run it in a terminal you'll see colored tasks and bars.

Copyright

Copyright © 2020 Sébastien Helleu

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.