RSE Time Tracking System

The Aalto RSE team tracks their time and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a Gitlab repository. Gitlab provides some tracking support (time estimate and time spent), but we need more than just that. In addition, when using lots of labels to classify projects, some extra structure in parsing these is very helpful.

This package downloads issues and issue metadata from a Gitlab repository and assists in making reports. Many of the actual reports are in Jupyter Notebooks, which are currently not included here (right now they are unfortunately tied up with internal data - we need to fix this).

This package contains the command line utility rse_timetracking with various subcommands. The general process is first run a scrape subcommand to download data and store it in a csv/pickle file, and then other commands will process this into reports. normal people don't need to do this, just use Gitlab and someone else generates the reports.

This project is probably specific to Aalto RSE right now, but we would be happy to make it more general (if we can find a way to make it general enough).

General procedures of tracking time (quickstart)

We don't want to waste time with tracking projects too detailed (that also means we optimize for the report and not our users), but this data is very useful for reports. Please do take this seriously (enough).

The actual work is done in the rse-projects repository (private repo under AaltoRSE on Aalto Gitlab.

Project starting

If a project is more than a day, definitely do the below. If it's less than an hour, usually don't. Otherwise, do it if you think it's useful.

Create a new issue using the new_project template. This is often done during some "introductory meeting" where there is a live chat about what is going on. The issue template will help guide you in the discussion with the customers.

Add any relevant labels (at least one funding, size, status, unit). Common statuses: Lead: there isn't work yet, but someone suggests there might be someday. Waiting: The customer isn't ready for us to start yet. Queued: Ready to be worked on when someone has time.

Set an initial time estimate with the /estimate (it will be really inaccurate, that's OK. think one hour, one day, week, month, etc).

Assign the issue to yourself if you will be the one working on it. If not, leave it un-assigned and we will discuss who can take it during the next meeting.

Doing work

Each time you work on the project, record your time using /spend. Example: /spend 6h. What counts as time spent on a project?: working for it, meetings about it, planning what to do about it, learning things you wouldn't be learning if it wasn't for this project.

Update the Status as needed. Common statuses: InProgress: being worked on. Consulting: I work on it whenever the customer asks, but not routinely thinking about it.

Add comments as needed to let others know about what's going on (doesn't need to be detailed for most projects).

Finished

When a project is done, have a follow-up meeting and use the reportable commands to make a note of what kind of projects were supported.

Update the status. Common statuses: Review: waiting for customer to review. Reporting: waiting to get the reports before closing. Done: is done and doesn't need to be looked at anymore. Maintenance: is done, but we expect to keep maintaining in the future.

Close the issue if it's in the Status::Done on Status::Cancelled status.

Report deliverables: Make a comment with /timesaved TIME-RECORD to record how much time the customer reports saving (this can be done incrementally as you ask them how the project is going). This is our single most important reportable. Also report anything else from the deliverables list below (/projects, etc.).

Issue syntax / GitLab Commands

Commands

The following Gitlab commands are natively processed by GitLab:

• Use these within the issue as a comment, to control the time allocation.

• /estimate TIME-RECORD [YYYY-MM-DD] - estimate total time a project make take. Used as soon as possible at beginning of a project, can always be updated

• /spend TIME-RECORD [YYYY-MM-DD] - announce that you have spent a certain amount of time on the project

• TIME-RECORD has the form XXmoYYwZZdUUhVVm for XX month, YY weeks ZZ days UU hours and VV minutes.

• Time units: Months (mo), Weeks (w), Days (d), Hours (h), Minutes (m). Default conversion rates are 1mo = 4w, 1w = 5d, and 1d = 8h.

The following commands are not GitLab commands (they can't auto-complete), but are entered as regular text and are processed by the scripts in this repository. Commands must start after a \n.

The following commands are used for basic metadata, and asked at the start of a project:

• /contacts EMAIL[, EMAIL [...]] - who we usually communicate with. Each project should have a contact, and these should be people who are not surprised to get email about it at some time in the future.

• /supervisor EMAIL[, EMAIL [...]] - PI(s) responsible for research (not usually contacted).

• /summary TEXT - a free-form summary of the project, used for reports. Normally a sentence or two in the imperative form (a lot like a git commit message). It should focus on the high-level impact, not the low-level technical details. Example: "A researcher needed to acquire data from a web API. We created a tool to do this and set up an automatic workflow to keep data coming in during the two-year project."

The following are used for reportables, and normally are asked and entered only at the end of a project in some sort of wrap-up discussion:

• /timesaved TIME-RECORD [YYYY-MM-DD] - estimate total researcher time saved.

  • TIME-RECORD is like 5h. Time units: Months (mo), Weeks (w), Days (d), Hours (h), Minutes (m). Default conversion rates are 1mo = 4w, 1w = 5d, and 1d = 8h.

• /projects INT - number of research projects supported by this RSE work

• /publications INT - number of publications supported by this RSE work

• /software INT - number of software packages supported by this RSE work

• /datasets INT - datasets supported by this RSE work

• /outputs INT - number of open science outputs produced other than the categories above

Labels

There are various labels which we can add. All labels should have a good description in Gitlab, but this is another summary:

Status:

• Status::0-Lead - someone had an idea that this project might be available. Maybe the final customer hasn't even been talked to yet
• Status::0-WaitingForGrant - RSE services needed if grant is funded (usually includes funding via the grant)
• Status::1-Consulting - Not actively worked on, but the customers drop by occassionally and ask us questions. Does not require ongoing attention from us
• Status::1-Waiting - We are waiting for the customer to become ready for us to start. Maybe the customer will contact us when they are ready. Maybe we have a "follow-up date" at which time we should contact them again.
• Status::2-Queued - We are waiting for time, then we will start this project.
• Status::3-InProgress - We are working on it
• Status::3-NeedsReview - Needs to be checked internally
• Status::4-Review - Being checked by the customer
• Status::5-Reporting - Project is done, but all of the stats (timesaved, outputs, etc). are not there yet.
• Status::6-Done - Done, don't need to think about it anymore.
• Status::7-Cancelled - We decided (along with the customer) to not do this project
• Status::8-Maintenance - Project is "done" but the customer will keep coming back to us for support or updates as needed.

Importance (different ways to say what is important):

• Imp:1-Strategic: strategic benefit to the university or RSE team
• Imp:1-Urgent: the customers need it done soon
• Imp:1-Paying: They are funding us, so we need to keep it in our minds.
• Imp:2-PayingInFuture: Might be large enough to pay in future so pay attention now.
• Imp:2-Deadline: has some real deadline we need to consider.

Funding:

• Funding::Unit - Funding from basic RSE service funding, coming from the different member units.
• Funding::Project - The project is paying for this service itself
• Funding::ProjectOffers - The project would be willing to pay for the service, but isn't doing so for practical reasons (for example, the project is too small for finance to want to deal with it)
• Funding::ASC - similar to Unit but it's more of a ASC-internal project, so you could say that ASC is the customer itself.

Task:

• Task labels indicate the type of work in the project. Multi-select, every project should have every one of these relevant labels attached to it. Examples include Task:SwDev, Task:Workflow, Task:WebDev.

Unit (should only have one of these since it has ::):

• From what department are the customers? Select one, Unit::NAME. Some special cases:
• Unit::AaltoGeneral - stuff that helps everyone
• Unit::AaltoSciComp - stuff that helps Science-IT
• Unit::RSE - stuff that helps the RSE service itself

Customers (major customers that sponsor many projects. Use in addition to the unit labels):

• Customer:FCAI
• Customer:HouseOfAI

Special use:

• a_Discuss - should be discussed at the next meeting
• a_NoReport - Don't include this project in reports.

Installation

Install with: python setup.py install

(if you are just using a system that someone else has set up, no need to install it yourself).

Usage

Use the rse_timetracking command to scrape the Gitlab repo:

$ rse_timetracking scrape [--v2]

This produces a file called report.csv (this can be changed with the -o option, and --v2 saves it in a pickle format). Then, an HTML report can be build with:

$ rse_timetracking report

This reads in the report.csv file (this can be changed with the -i option) and produces a file called report.html (this can be changed with the -o option).

Or, the scrape2.dataframes and scrape2.combine_dataframes functions can be used to get Pandas dataframes out of the pickle file.

Development

To develop on this package, it's recommended to install it as: python setup.py develop. This will install the scripts in your path, but link them to the repo dir and not copy everything into your site-packages dir.