Task scheduler with automatic resource leveling

The task scheduler reads one or more YAML or JSON configuration files, that includes:

• project general information
• list of resources
• list of tasks.

The output is a work plan, with the tasks automatically assigned to resources ("resource leveling"), as YAML format (or JSON).

The goal is to find the best possible end date (as soon as possible).

The internal algorithm follows these rules:

• efficient use of resources, if possible 100%, with no overload at all
• long tasks may be carried out in parallel by several people.

The work plan can be converted to text or HTML (see examples below).

Dependencies

Tasksched requires Python ≥ 3.7 and:

• jinja2
• python-holidays
• pyyaml

You can install dependencies in a virtual environment with:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Input

The input data is written in YAML or JSON format. One or more files are accepted, each one overwrites any file previously loaded.

The main keys in the input are:

• project: project description (object, required)
• resources: list of resources (list, required)
• tasks: list of tasks (list, required)

The project keys are:

• name: the project name (string, required)
• start: the start date, auto-adjusted to the next business day if needed (for a JSON file, it must be a string with format YYYY-MM-DD) (default: today)
• holidays: the country ISO code used to skip holidays in work plan (for the list of valid country ISO codes, see: python-holidays) (string)

For each resource, the keys are:

• id: the resource id (string, required)
• name: the resource name (string, default: same as id)

For each task, the keys are:

• id: the task id (string, required)
• title: the task title (string, default: same as id)
• duration: the task duration in days, rounded to the next largest integer (if ≤ 0, the task is ignored) (float, required)
• priority: the task priority: a higher priority uses the task first in the work plan, a negative number makes the task less urgent than the others (integer, default: 0)
• max_resources: the max number of resources to use for this task (integer, default: 2)

Content of files can be read from standard input or filenames are allowed as command line arguments. Both can be used at same time.

The command tasksched allows three main actions:

• workplan: build an optimized work plan using project/resources/tasks info in input; the output is YAML data (or JSON)
• text: convert output of workplan action to text for display in the terminal (colors and unicode chars are used by default but optional)
• html: convert output of workplan action to HTML for display in a web browser (template and CSS can be customized).

Two extra actions are available as shortcuts (build and convert work plan in a single action):

• workplan_text: build the work plan and convert it to text for display in the terminal (colors and unicode chars are used by default but optional)
• workplan_html: build the work plan and convert it to HTML for display in a web browser (template and CSS can be customized).

See examples of input files in the examples directory.

Examples

Standard input and multiple YAML files

You can pipe content of YAML/JSON files as tasksched input.

The following example uses:

• another program called extract-tasks to extract tasks from a ticketing tool
• a project configuration file (project.yaml)
• a resources configuration file (team.yaml)
• an extra-tasks configuration file, these tasks are added to the tasks received on standard input (extra_tasks.yaml)

So you can build the work plan and convert it to text for display with this command:

$ extract-tasks | tasksched workplan project.yaml team.yaml extra_tasks.yaml | tasksched text

Or using the shortcut workplan_text:

$ extract-tasks | tasksched workplan_text project.yaml team.yaml extra_tasks.yaml

Build of work plan

Example of YAML work plan:

$ tasksched workplan examples/project_small.yaml
workplan:
  project:
    name: The small project
    start: 2020-12-03
    end: 2020-12-09
    duration: 5
    holidays_iso: FRA
    holidays: []
    resources_use: 70.0
  resources:
  - id: dev1
    name: Developer 1
    assigned:
    - task: '1'
      duration: 5
    assigned_tasks:
    - id: '1'
      title: The first feature
    duration: 5
    end: 2020-12-09
    use: 100.0
  - id: dev2
    name: Developer 2
    assigned:
    - task: '2'
      duration: 2
    assigned_tasks:
    - id: '2'
      title: The second feature
    duration: 2
    end: 2020-12-04
    use: 40.0
  tasks:
  - id: '1'
    title: The first feature
    duration: 5
    priority: 0
    max_resources: 1
  - id: '2'
    title: The second feature
    duration: 2
    priority: 0
    max_resources: 2

Work plan as text

Example of work plan converted to text for display:

Work plan as HTML

The generated HTML and CSS can be customized.

Tasksched comes with one default template and two default CSS:

• template (using jinja2):
  • basic (source: basic.html)
• CSS:
  • dark (used by default, source: dark.css)
  • light (source: light.css).

Example of work plan converted to HTML with the default "dark" theme:

$ tasksched workplan_html examples/project_big.yaml > tasksched.html

With "light" theme (white background):

$ tasksched workplan_html --css light examples/project_big.yaml > tasksched.html

Copyright

Copyright © 2020-2024 Sébastien Helleu

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.