Functionality

The Process Dashboard is an existing PSP(SM) support tool. It was originally developed in 1998 by the United States Air Force, and has continued to evolve under the open-source model. It is freely available for download under the conditions of the GNU Public License. The Process Dashboard supports:

      • Data Collection – Time, defects, size; plan vs. actual data
      • Planning – Integrated scripts, templates, forms, and summaries, PROBE, earned value
      • Tracking – Powerful earned value support
      • Data Analysis – Charts and reports aid in the analysis of historical data trends.
      • Data Export – Export data into Excel, or export data to text format for use with external tools.

For screen shots of the Process Dashboard, click here. For a quick start tour, click here. To view the Process Dashboard Users Manual, click here.

The major strengths of the Process Dashboard are:

    • Ease of use
      • Optimizes ease of collecting the most commonly performed metrics (time and defects)
      • Other process aids (scripts, forms, templates, and summaries) are just a mouse-click away
      • Its small onscreen footprint allows the tool to coexist with integrated development environments
      • Tasks are arranged hierarchically, mirroring project work-breakdown structure
    • Flexibility / extensibility
      • New processes and new types of data can be added without programming
      • Process scripts, templates, forms and summaries are HTML, and can therefore be created with any HTML editor
    • Platform independence
      • 100% Java implementation runs on Windows, Unix, Linux, Macintosh, etc.
    • Price
      • Since the tool is open-source, it is distributed at no cost. Furthermore, it does not rely upon any commercially licensed software, so you don’t need to purchase any software to use the dashboard.