Syntactic Sugar : Software application development, Outsourcing : Improving our own TRAC

Improving our own TRAC

TRAC is primarily a tool designed to divide tasks among team members. We have gone much further. By never-ending testing and creating our own plug-ins we have turned TRAC into a valuable assistant that directly and positively supports our internal business processes.

We made the first step in September 2007 when launching TRAC into the testing operation and using it also as a tool for counting hours we work off. Lots of other improvements were coming later on - for example project planning and it’s following checkup.

During few upcoming months we moved even further. We use TRAC to keep a record of all employees, applicants and also enquiries. TRAC has turned into a small CRM for us.

Recently, we have been working on sophisticated reports. Counting wages doesn't take 6 hours but only 30 minutes with their help. Other reports can be used by project managers, other will be used by our new colleague Sarka, who is responsible for HR. We certainly haven't forgotten other configurations, that allow us take an easy control over our worked off hours at all projects.

Launching an official program to support private projects of our employees can be considered as an important milestone. Roman and Swenia are the first who have their own fully modified TRAC environment including Subversion.

In April we had a lecture (not just) about our TRAC in the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.