Project Management Component - for Flygprestanda AB's web system

Abstract: Flygprestanda AB make software and databases for hundreds of airline companies all over the world. Their services include both software development and technical-engineering calculations with focus on delivering all information needed to perform a commercial flight from one place to another. The company is currently developing a web system with Google Web Toolkit which will be used within the company. There is also a possibility that the system will be sold to other companies in the future. An important part of the system is a component which allows the user to plan, schedule and review tasks contained in Flygprestanda AB’s daily operations. During the thesis describe in this report the best way to realise this component has been researched. An initial investigation has concentrated on finding a suitable project management technique on which to base the component, and how to practically implement it. The project management techniques have been compared based on what information they can present and the possibility to realise them with software. Flyprestanda AB’s current way of managing projects has also been taken into account. The chosen technique is the Gantt chart, which satisfies the demands. The investigation has also compared the advantages and disadvantages of developing the project management component from the ground up or using an existing solution. For the purpose of finding a programming language to use if the component was to be developed from scratch, a variety of web programming languages such as Adobe Flash and JavaScript have been compared. Different existing solutions, such as FusionWidgets and EJS TreeGrid, have been investigated with focus on their presentation- and interaction capabilities, their ways to communicate with a database, and to some extent their available licenses and offered support. The decision made during the investigation was not to develop the component from the ground up, but to integrate an existing component, namely the JavaScript solution EJS TreeGrid. The integration of EJS TreeGrid was realised by adapting the component and placing it in the web system's interface trough JSNI, and writing code that made it able to communicate with the system’s MySQL database. A component intended to provide a way of managing milestones in a project, the GWT-YUI-Carousel, was added later during the work. This component was also adapted to the system and its database.