Open Source Project Management Tools Assessment using QSOS

Methodology

Anabela Carreira

1

and Jorge Bernardino

1,2 a

1

Polytechnic of Coimbra – ISEC, Rua Pedro Nunes, Quinta da Nora, 3030-199 Coimbra, Portugal

2

CISUC - Centre of Informatics and Systems of University of Coimbra, Pinhal de Marrocos, 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal

Keywords: Open Source Software, Project Management, Methodologies for Evaluating Open Source Software, Software

Open Source, OSMM, QSOS, OpenBQR.

Abstract: With the increasing expansion of the open source tools in our daily life it is crucial to realize which are the

best tools of the immensity that exist. In order to compare open source management tools, it is recommended

to use a methodology such as QSOS that help to evaluate and choose which tool best suits our objectives.

This paper describes some of the most commonly used open source project management tools such as

GanttProject, OpenProject, and ProjectLibre and then compares them using QSOS methodology.

1 INTRODUCTION

Many of the projects nowadays continue to fail either

because they are not delivered within the set deadline,

or because they are not within the stipulated budget.

The main reason for these problems is that "best

practices" for project management continue to be

adopted, as the project management knowledge guide

PMBOK suggests (PMBOK, 2013).

The adoption of a project management tool can be

an alternative to help with the integration of the

model, thus allowing automation of the steps, thus

increasing the efficiency of the process.

Currently, open source tools are increasingly

present in our daily lives, whether they are free or

because they also have high quality software (Laila et

al., 2016).

The evolution of project management tools for

software applications has been accelerating at a rapid

pace and the number of open source project

management tools available on the market has grown

significantly.

Given this increasing expansion of open source

software one of the main concerns is to understand

the best methodologies to classify and evaluate this

software and to understand how to apply the

methodology and a project management tool.

This paper intends to perform a comparative ana-

a

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9660-2011

lysis between some of the most used open source

tools in project management such as the GanttProject,

OpenProject, and ProjectLibre tools. We use the

QSOS methodology that allows this comparison to be

made by assigning evaluations to each tool.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows.

Section 2 describes each one of the tools, explaining

what the functionalities, strengths and weaknesses of

each one. Section 3 explaining the QSOS

methodology, all its phases and how it should be

applied in the context of tools for project

management. Finally, section 4 presents the

conclusions of the best tool for carrying out project

management of the three tools used and the future

work.

2 DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT

MANAGEMENT TOOLS

In this section, we will perform a brief description of

three popular open source project management tools:

GanttProject, OpenProject, and ProjectLibre.

2.1 GanttProject

This software, which was developed by Alexandre

Thomas at the University of Marne-la-Vallée

420

Carreira, A. and Bernardino, J.

Open Source Project Management Tools Assessment using QSOS Methodology.

DOI: 10.5220/0008353704200426

In Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2019) - Volume 2: KEOD, pages 420-426

ISBN: 978-989-758-382-7

Copyright

c

(France), and is currently managed by Dmitry

Barashev. GanttProject has been developed in Java

and allows to run in different platforms, such as

Windows, Linux and MacOS (GanttProject,

GanttProject, 2019)).

The first version was launched on September 15,

2009. Its main features allow an access in order to

manage the organization of the tasks, time and

resources throughout the project. They also have a

hierarchy between the various tasks and their

dependencies, generate Gantt graphs, analysis and

import reports, and export projects (Oliveira, 2013).

The main advantages of this tool are the

following: allow we to send email directly to people

(resource) involved in the project, indicate the critical

path, allowing days off in the resources, indicate

when an asset is overloaded or otherwise and also

establish subtasks.

The negative aspects are not allowing naming

"material" resources, that is, the necessary raw

material, does not allow to enter costs to obtain the

project budget, does not allow to change the period of

the work, does not allow to define periodic tasks and

still does not allow to change the period of work

(Margea & Margea, 2011).

This tool has six tabs: one to control project,

another to edit the project, one for the management of

resources and another for the management of tasks,

finally still has a tab that enables analysis of PERT.

Figure 1: Interface of GanttProject (Source: (GanttProject,

GanttProject, 2019)).

2.2 OpenProject

OpenProject has been developed since 2010, its first

launch in October 2012 and credited by GNU

(General Public). This project management tool is

written in Ruby and Angular (OpenProject, 2019).

This tool is translated into French, Spanish, German,

Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Galician, Persian,

Russian, Korean and is used in more than 142

countries. Its main functionalities are tasks, time,

costs, the team and their frames.

Its main strengths are: schedules to follow the

project in one of the supported methodologies, allows

the Microsoft Project Native or Spring files without

lose the files of the other application, wecan have the

duration of tasks in days / weeks / years, subtasks,

allows carry out a project budget and get the critical.

The main weaknesses are only to allow delay

times to tasks that are in the calendar time, does not

allow we to define tasks does not allow us to have a

perception of the that is planned and the real one and

does not allow resources automatically to resolve the

problems of resource overload. This tool also has a

Cloud version Edition and another Enterprise

Edition (OpenProject, 2019).

This tool has several tabs: work packages,

backlogs, calendar, wiki, cost reports, members,

meetings, budgets and even project settings.

Figure 2: Interface of OpenProject (Source:

https://www.openproject.org/).

2.3 ProjectLibre

ProjectLibre was created in Silicon Valley (France)by

Marc O'Brien and Laurent Chretienneau, had the its

first launch in August 2012. This tool was written in

Java and is compatible with operating systems such

as: Linux, Mac OS, and Windows (ProjectlLibre,

2019) .

This project management tool has emerged as an

improvement latest released version of other

management software OpenProj projects. This

software allows we to perform the following

functions: import / export files for Microsoft Project

2010, multiple users, generate analysis reports,

perform a management of tasks, resources and costs.

The main points in favor of this tool are to be a

free tool, be similar to Microsoft Project for anyone

Open Source Project Management Tools Assessment using QSOS Methodology

421

who uses it and allow export / import files to

Microsoft Project feature important for anyone who

wants to migrate to this tool.

The less good points of this software are the fact

that in this version it only has some of the features, it

does not allow generating analytical reports or

graphs. This application is only available in English

language and has no translation in any language.

This tool has only four tabs: one to control the

files, another to perform a resource management and

another to manage the tasks, finally has a tab that

allows we to view the views.

Figure 3: Interface of ProjectLibre (Source:

www.projectlibre.com).

3 METHODOLOGY FOR

SOFTWARE OPEN SOURCE

EVALUATION

There are a variety of methods to evaluate open

source software, based essentially on how they

organize the project, their durability, maturity and

some still add the functional aspects of the process

(Pretinja, Sillitty & Succi, 2010).

The Open Source Quality Model (OSMM),

Open Source Qualification and Selection of Open

Source Software (QSOS) and the Open Business

Quality Rating (OpenBQR) are the most commonly

used methodologies (Laila et al., 2016).

Table 1: Comparison of methodologies.

Methodology

Evaluation

Model

Punctuation

Model

Year

OSMM

Scientific

(3 levels)

1 a 5

2008

QSOS

Practical

(3 or more

levels)

0 a 2

2004

OpenBQR

Practical

(3 levels)

1 a 5

2007

According to Table 1 it is possible to conclude

that the QSOS is the method with the highest

durability and with the highest levels of evaluation,

although it only contains three types of punctuation.

3.1 QSOS

The QSOS methodology was launched in February

2012 by Atos. This method is intended to process and

the evolution of open source software form to be

assigned a score in each tool. QSOS consists of 4

iterative steps: Define, Evaluate, Qualify and Select.

Figure 4: Steps of QSOS methodology (Source: (Roumi,

Spread your wings with free software, 2014)).

In the first step, the elements referring to the

software typology are defined. This step is subdivided

into 3 types: software type, license type and

community type.

The type of software corresponds to the

hierarchical classification of the software functional

coverage grouped by the analysis of the project's

maturity in relation to the changes occurred in the

project. The type of license is classified into three

categories:

Copyleft: are the most elaborate license when they are

on the same owner or the same conditions.

Virality: when the software derives from one or more

sources, and there is incompatibility with the licenses.

Inheritance: when it is possible for the license to be

inherent in the group. As for the type of community,

it can be classified as individual, group, commercial,

etc.

Table 2: Scoring for the coverage criterion of software

functionality.

Score

Criterion

0

Did not reach functionality

1

Functionality partially achieved

2

Fully achieved functionality

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The second stage of this method corresponds to

the evolution of the software, in this step a score is

attributed to the software found in previous step.

These scores are assigned according to Table 2.

In step 3 that corresponds to the qualification the

main objective is to define a set of requirements that

match the needs in the context in which the tool will

be used, thus generating a filter of the selection made.

The first step of this step corresponds to identifying

the filter that is intended for that specific tool.

Subsequently the requirements for its maturity are

classified, that is, if it is not relevant, relevant or

critical. Finally, the requirements are evaluated for

their functionality, therefore, they may be of the type

required functionally, not required or optional (Galo

Ramos, 2010).

The last step is to select the software that best suits

your needs and compare with similar software. There

are two approaches that can be used, one in which a

rigorous selection is made in the other and a flexible

selection is used (Souza, 2010).

Strict selection presupposes that when there is a

requirement that does not meet the specifications,

either the level of maturity, the desired functionalities

or the generated filter, it must be eliminated.

Loose selection is less demanding than the

previous selection because it does not eliminate the

requirements that do not meet the specifications,

classifies them, and measures their difference to the

previously defined filters (Atos, 2013).

This classification is made using the following

equation:

Relative to weights for each criterion, either

maturity or the functionality of the software.

Table 3: Weight for the maturity criterion of the software.

Weight

Description

0

Criterion not relevant (not included in

filter)

1

Relevant criterion

3

Critical criterion

Table 4: Weight for the function criterion of the software.

Weight

Description

0

No functionality required

1

Optional functionality

3

Funcionality required

The software of the same domain must be

compared to each other, using the weight of the scores

obtained in the previous steps.

This comparation is made according to QSOS that

provides tools that allow to apply the methodology in

a much faster and easier way (Nereu, 2017).

Figure 5: QSOS Method Tools and Formats. (Source:

(Tools Use!, 2018)).

3.2 Applying the QSOS Methodology

In this section the QSOS methodology will be applied

to the 3 project management tools.

Table 5: Information of each software.

Criterion

Gantt

Project

Open

Project

Libre

Company

The GanttProject

Team

OpenProject

Fundation

ProjectLibre

Company

Creation

2003

2012

Product

GanttProject

OpenProject

Project Libre

Lincense

GNU

GPL v3

GNU v3

Common

Public

Attribution

Licence

Version

2.8

8.0.0

1.7.1

Release

2016

2018

2017

Operating

Windows

Linux

Mac OS X

Cross-

plataform

Linux

Mac OS

Windows

Community

https://help.ganttp

roject.biz/

https://commu

nity.openproje

ct.com/

https://www.pr

ojectlibre.com/

user-groups

Wiki

https://pt.wikipedi

a.org/wiki/Gantt

Project

https://www.o

penproject.org/

help/wiki/

https://sourcef

orge.net/p/proj

ectlibresdk/

wiki/Home/

Forum

http://forum.gantt

project.biz/hot

https://www.o

penproject.org/

help/forum/

https://sourcef

orge.net/p/proj

ectlibre/

discussion/

Url

https://www.gantt

project.biz/

https://www.o

penproject.org/

http://www.pro

jectlibre.com/

Open Source Project Management Tools Assessment using QSOS Methodology

423

In the first stage the sites of these applications

were consulted in order to gather information

regarding licenses, date of first launch, type of

community, last version released, operating systems

supported community sites, wiki, forum and also the

download URL.

These results are presented in Table 5.

3.3 Results Obtained

In this section, we present the results obtained by

applying the method to the different criteria.

The second step corresponds to the qualification,

that is, grades between 0 and 2 are assigned based on

the research performed for each of the applications in

the previous step.

For each of the criteria a score of 0 to 2 was

assigned, being that:

• 0 points corresponded to a system that did not

support the criterion.

• 1 point, when the system supported much of the

criterion.

• 2 points, when the system fully supported the

criteria.

These notes are assigned according to the maturity

table that this methodology shows.

Table 6: Notes attributed to the various maturity criteria.

Criterion

Gantt

Project

Open

Project

Libre

Age

2

History

2

1

Core team

2

1

Popularity

1

2

1

Contributing community

1

Activity on bugs

1

2

Activity on features

1

Activity on realeases

1

Copyright owners

1

Roadmap

1

Project management

1

Distribution mode

2

1

Services

2

1

Documentation

2

1

Quality assurance

2

1

Source core modification

1

According to the research carried out and the

consultation of the official sites of the applications,

each one of the tools was classified according to the

functional criteria that this methodology proposes.

This classification is made between 0 and 2,

according to table 4 of the previous section.

Table 7: Notes attributed to the various functionality

criteria.

Criterion

Gantt

Project

Open

Project

Libre

Full Stack

2

Enterprise-ready

2

1

Real-time Analytics

2

1

Solid and fault-tolerant

2

Scalability

2

1

2

Paid Version

2

1

User-friendly

Management

2

1

2

In the 3 phase of this method a value between 0

and 3 is assigned according to the degree of relevance

of the criterion for the study that is being carried out.

These values are presented in Tables 8 and 9.

Table 8: Weight of maturity criteria.

Criterion

Weight

Age

3

History

3

Core team

0

Popularity

3

Contributing community

3

Activity on bugs

3

Activity on features

3

Activity on releases

2

Copyright owners

1

Roadmap

0

Project management

1

Distribution mode

1

Services

3

Documentation

3

Quality assurance

2

Source core modification

2

Total

33

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424

Table 9: Weight of functionality criteria.

Criterion

Weight

Full Stack

3

Enterprise-ready

3

Real-time Analytics

1

Solid and fault-tolerant

2

Scalability

1

Paid Version

2

User-friendly Management

3

Total

15

Table 10: Total comparison of functionality criteria.

Criterion

Gantt

Project

Open

Project

Libre

S

W

R

S

W

R

S

W

R

Full Stack

2

3

6

2

3

6

2

3

6

Enterprise-

ready

2

3

6

2

3

6

1

3

Real-time

Analytics

2

1

2

1

2

1

Solid and fault-

tolerant

2

4

2

4

2

4

Scalability

2

1

2

1

2

1

2

Paid Version

2

4

1

2

1

2

User-friendly

Management

2

3

6

1

3

2

3

6

Total

30/15=2

24/15=1.6

Table 11: Total comparison of maturity criteria.

Criterion

Gantt

Project

Open

Project

Libre

S

W

R

S

W

R

S

W

R

Age

2

3

6

2

3

6

2

3

6

History

2

3

6

2

3

6

1

3

Core team

2

0

2

0

1

0

Popularity

1

3

2

3

6

1

3

Contributing

community

1

3

1

3

1

3

Activity on

bugs

1

3

1

3

2

3

6

Activity on

features

1

3

1

3

1

3

Activity on

releases

1

2

1

2

1

2

Copyright

owners

1

Roadmap

1

0

1

0

1

0

Project

management

1

Distribution

mode

2

1

2

1

Services

2

3

6

1

3

1

3

Documentation

2

3

6

1

3

1

3

Quality

assurance

2

4

1

2

1

2

Source core

modification

1

2

1

2

1

2

Total

48/33=1.45

42/33=1.36

39/33=1.18

The selection phase corresponds to be selected with

the use of this methodology best tool, for this, after

being assigned weights for each criterion, the results

are then calculated for each criterion. It starts by

multiplying the score by the weight, thus obtaining a

result for each criterion. At the end is a sum of all the

criteria to calculate the average, it is only necessary to

divide by the sum of the weight.

In Table 9, the various scores and weights attributed to

the functional criteria can be consulted and the best

functional tool for project management is still

concluded, on the other hand, in Table 10 it is possible

to know the best tool in terms of maturity.

Table 12: QSOS Evaluation results.

Criterion

GanttProject

Open

Project

Libre

Maturity

1.45

1.36

1.18

Functionality

2

1.6

Total

3.45

2.96

2.78

It is verified by the analysis of Table 11 that the

application that obtained a better score in the several

criteria evaluated in the previous tables (Tables 10 and

9) was the tool GanttProject, being the one that has

better performance in terms of functionalities as well

as of maturity.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

The selection of an appropriate open source project

management tool is a challenge task. Based on our

assessment, the ´most advantageous tool was the

GanttProject having obtained the score of 1.45 points

in the criteria of maturity and 2 points in the functional

criteria obtained an overall score of 3.45 values. In this

way it was the one that presented better results in all

the groups of the chosen criteria.

What was ranked second according to this

methodology was OpenProject, with general average

of 2.96 points. Finally, ProjectLibre with a general

average of 2.78 points. It should be noted that

OpenProject and ProjectLibre achieved equal

performance in the functional criteria, but that

OpenProject stood out slightly in the maturity criteria.

As future work, we intend to compare these three

tools: GanttProject, ProjectLibre and OpenProject

using other methodologies of comparison of open

source tools to understand if the results concluded

with the use of this method are maintained with

another approach.

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425

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