The health report: A project manager's best friend

We just launched a new feature in DoneDone. It's called the Health Report, and we think it will be a project manager's best friend.One of the biggest problems we find with issue tracking systems today is how easy it is for issues to get stale. They’re logged, some initial conversations happen, and then suddenly….nothing. They sit for weeks at a time. They’re lost in the mysterious ether.The problem with most issue trackers is that, while they present an issue with a bunch of useful information (Who’s assigned? What’s the priority? What’s the current status?), they don’t offer an opinion on what should happen next. DoneDone does things differently.In DoneDone, users can select the “Issues waiting on you” filter which shows a list of issues that they are responsible for acting upon next. Has someone asked you to provide more information on reproducing the issue? Are you responsible for testing an issue that is now ready for retest? Are you responsible for fixing an issue that’s now in progress? DoneDone gives you a filter that will show you all the issues waiting on you, in one simple list.

The opposite is also true. You might be blocked from progressing on an issue because of someone else. Perhaps you’re waiting for an answer from your client about their browser settings, so you can do some more focused debugging. Or, you’re waiting for someone to confirm you fixed the issue. Users can select the “Issues you're waiting on” filter to see what’s blocking them from getting an issue to resolution.These two filters have been a cornerstone of why people that use DoneDone get more issues completed, faster.If this works well for the individual, then, what if we could give project managers a way to see this same information for all the team members working on a specific project?

Welcome to the Health Report

With the Health Report, PMs get a quick glance of where the bottlenecks are in a project they’re managing. Perhaps 75% of the open issues in the website redesign project are waiting for Jeremy’s input. Maybe Chris has no issues waiting on him for that big client project, but he’s waiting on responses from them on 6 other issues. The Health Report gives PMs a quick diagnosis of how things are going on a given project.

The health report quickly assesses who's got the busiest plate and who's waiting on the most issuesYou can then click on any person listed in the Health Report to view a list of the issues waiting on them, or the issues they're waiting on others for. This will give you further insight into where issues are being held up.The Health Report also shows you the “stale” issues that haven’t been tended to in more than a week. These issues may need to be revisited, or they’re better off being put on-hold or closed.

Stale issues help you consider whether they need to be removedWe think the Health Report will be an invaluable tool for project managers to assess where the bottlenecks are in their project. It's available to all administrators within a specific project. When your on a project, just click on the project settings icon to the right and select "Health Report" from the menu.

As always, let us know what you think. Your feedback is invaluable to us.