WINDOWS FOSS
-NOT MS FUD-
FOR IT PROJECT PLANS
Niku, the company behind the Open Workbench project scheduler, says its open source project is in the spirit of "old-fashioned capitalism."		    
 
by Nancy Cohen
October 17, 2004		    
     
  Niku Corporation, tasting success with its project-scheduling tool, Workbench, has opened its code. Project managers are delighted [see sidebar]. Not just because Open Workbench is free but because IT management is more under their control. Considering the tropical good-governance climate, this is how a tool becomes hot, too.  
         
 

In releasing the code in July of Open Workbench, the open-source successor to its signature Workbench, this Redwood City, CA-based company triggered a positive response, to say the least. The announcement has prompted over 17,000 downloads (still counting) at the time of this writing by people in over 80 countries. Not that closed-source Workbench had been languishing. As a desktop application for project scheduling and management, project managers used it to create "work breakdown structures" (WBS) with tasks and milestones, baselines, project plans with dependencies, resource assignments, and schedule-adjusting as actual work is recorded. According to Niku’s data, Workbench before being open-sourced had over 100,000 users making use of the software for generating project schedules. So why release it as open source? 

  
SNAPSHOT

What It Does:
Generates project schedules based on resource constraints. Imports MS Project schedules saved as XML

Downloads:
Open Workbench user community
SourceForge
License:
Mozilla
Operating System:
Windows
Development Languages:
C++, Java
 
     
 

First off, the large numbers of users flocking to Open Workbench as an open-source tool enables them to connect to Niku’s flagship solution called Clarity, which is Niku's comprehensive IT management and governance system that can scale from 100 to 30,000 users. Last but not least, an open-source tool such as this is competition for Microsoft Project, a dominating product for project scheduling.

Open Workbench 1.1 is scheduled to go GA in December. Users don't have to wait until December, however, to make the MS Project-Open Workbench transition.

 
         
 

David Hurwitz, Niku's vice president of marketing, confirms that users can already import a MS Project schedule that has been saved as XML. So how much is all this intended as a way to thrash Microsoft?  “Microsoft Project is a big, fat cash cow,” asserts Hurwitz. “The mere fact that a $700 million cash generator can exist under the radar of everyday Microsoft bashing is an interesting measure of the vastness of Bill and Steve’s empire. That said, we’re not ‘going after’ Microsoft. We’re just practicing good old-fashioned capitalism.”

The source code is now on SourceForge.

"Open Workbench is a desktop application for project scheduling in which you can define a work breakdown structure, set dependencies and resource constraints, assign resources to tasks, automatically generate the schedule and then monitor progress,” reads the description up on SourceForge.

To appreciate why project managers would find this to be good news, one can start with the increased scrutiny surrounding project management not to mention the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. AMR estimates that roughly $5.5 billion will be spent on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance this year. In the IT corner, management must have documentation that covers all the bases. As many a CFO as well as board members wonder aloud, “What good are your IT investment dollars if they are not being managed or held accountable in cost and returns?"

To help CIOs answer, Open Workbench is designed to help them, but also hopes to attract a lively community of developers. Hurwitz says the company has taken what he calls a “Field of Dreams” approach: “If we build a vibrant end user community, the developers will come. That is why we went to the trouble of creating an end user site  with forums for end-user issues and a separate home for developers at SourceForge targeted at code creators.”

 
CIO NOTEBOOK:
BROWN BROTHERS HARRIMAN

Rick Berk, CIO at Brown Brother Harriman, has an experienced respect for project scheduling and monitoring: When you're in the Wall Street world, you have no choice. In an environment like that of BBH, IT projects are often long and involve what he calls "moving parts," as in applications, interfaces, and communications protocols. Navigation tools for the moving-parts journey are welcomed.

"A detailed project plan helps ensure the correct folks are involved," says Berk, "and that all tasks and responsibilities are identified."

From a cost perspective, project scheduling and monitoring help from early budgeting through ROI analysis. It's the detailed project plan, he adds, that helps managers estimate, monitor, and re-evaluate costs associated with the project.

BBH in turn was no stranger to Workbench. The firm has used it for over nine years, says Berk, for budgeting, time-tracking, and monitoring how much time was being spent on maintenance vs. development.

When news came that Niku was to open-source the tool, Berk was quite pleased. Projects, after all, inelegantly morph, shrink, and expand. As efficient as Workbench was, Berk sees greater advantage in working with it as open source.

"As Open Workbench is integrated, an organization undoubtedly finds a need to perform a function, as in resource allocations where the algorithm does not quite fit its needs. By open-sourcing Workbench, the organization can tweak the algorithms."

But what's a prestigious financial institution like BBH doing without a tool like Microsoft Project?

Says Berk: "We haven't looked closely at Microsoft Project for some time. Open Workbench tends to provide advanced functionality such as resource-leveling and time-tracking. These and other functions allow organizations to manage not just products but resources and budgets at an enterprise level."
 
     
 

Open Workbench does not support Linux. Hurwitz says that could change. “We would love to see it ported to Linux. This is the sort of thing that the end-user community will or won’t strongly request, and the sort of thing the developer community will vote on with its time and work. Democracy and initiative in action."

Niku, he concedes, wants it all: Those who will use Open Workbench as a standalone tool and those who will want to use it as part of Clarity. Hurwitz presents typical scenarios for both: "Most project scheduling is done by lone project managers. These are the people in the facilities department, or the training department, or the marketing department. A large enterprise is spending thousands of dollars on Microsoft Project for these folks. They should stop throwing away that money and use Open Workbench as a standalone tool instead." As for those using it as a component of Clarity: “Project managers in larger, connected groups will see benefit by leveraging their project plans through a server-based enterprise application like Clarity.”