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Tips on using this forum..

(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?

(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.

Big projects

14 replies [Last post]
Mon, 2004-12-06 07:53
Oleg S
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Hello.
How mach tasks may be in projects?
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Replies

Tue, 2004-12-07 09:00
#1
Philip Jonker
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Thanks Vladimir,

I will try and download Spider over the weekend, as I am not at home at the moment, it sounds interesting. The work you are involved sounds interesting as well.

I will let you know how it goes.

Regards

Philip
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Tue, 2004-12-07 04:51
#2
Vladimir Liberzon
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Groups: Accreditation Editors, Board of Advisors, Civil Engineering, GPCCAR Editors, Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas, Regional Representatives, Spider Project Team, TURNAROUND & SHUTDOWN (T/A & S/D)
Hi Philip,
I am working in consulting and am involved in management of projects of different size. These projects include oil and gas (Caspian Pipeline construction as an example), telecommunications, construction, ship building, software development, etc. The size of CPC project - more than 9000 activities, 1145 resource types. The size of ship building multiproject (several ships) - 92000 activities. Recently we scheduled 270000 activity project for one of our customers who wanted to see if it is possible (leveling took 4 minutes 39 seconds). The speed of leveling depends very much on the complexity of resource assignments - skill scheduling, financial and supply leveling make it slower, though reasonable.
Usually project size is between 3000 and 20000 activities. Multiproject (portfolio) size is much larger.
If you asked about the size of Spider Project Demo for download - it is not large, less than 6 Mb.
Regards,
Vladimir
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Tue, 2004-12-07 01:45
#3
Philip Jonker
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Hi Vladimir,

Unfortunately I do not have a copy of the 9 000 act program with me, as I am away from home, and further I have no experience of Spider either. However, I have extensive experience with databases. An interesting fact was that during the time we were running the 35 000 act project ie 1990-4, we were running foxbase with open plan v4 for dos, in that time foxpro was released. We switched to foxpro towards the end of the project, and this step reduced res levelling times to about a third.

As a matter of interest what is the size of your project? When I have a chance I will look up spider on the net, and find out more.

Regards

Philip
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Mon, 2004-12-06 13:39
#4
Vladimir Liberzon
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Hi Philip,
I tried copy/paste on the computer with 2 Gb of memory. If it is not enough then the program is too demanding. I know that it is a problem of the standard databases. That is why Spider Project uses its own specially developed database that is much faster. But what I wrote about the speed of leveling is also true. Just try to do what I suggested and you will see that the time of leveling will be much more than you expected.

Best Regards,
Vladimir
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Mon, 2004-12-06 12:13
#5
Philip Jonker
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Hi Vladimir,

I think the problem with copy paste/scheduling time can be resolved by increasing your memory (RAM) as this is a problem in databases, and not a calculation problem. A lot of database handbooks point out this problem, a further improvement can be gotten by using a faster hard drive, as much of the time spent in the scheduling process is taken up by information being written to the drive. On the project with 9000 acts I got to a stage where I had increase my computor’s memory to run certain reports, and the result was faster resource levelling and scheduling as an added bonus. The speed of copy/paste operations, which I used to update, certain of-site activities, had also sped up.

Regards


Philip
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Mon, 2004-12-06 11:55
#6
Vladimir Liberzon
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Thank you for reply.
Unfortunately the dependency is not linear especially with resource leveling. If you will copy and paste your project 3 times you will find that the time of resource leveling is much longer than 8 minutes. And you will wait for quite a long time waiting for the paste operation to be completed.
Best Regards,
Vladimir
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Mon, 2004-12-06 11:23
#7
Philip Jonker
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Hi Vladimir,

What I was saying, it used to take an hour and 40 mins in open plan in 1993, based on my experience in the last project where I had 9000 activities using P3, I could run a resource scheduling in just under three minutes, so I assume it would take approx 8 min to schedule 35 000 acts. This is of course dependant on the computing speed etc, you have available. The actual point was about the limitations of planning software.


Regards

Philip
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Mon, 2004-12-06 11:14
#8
Vladimir Liberzon
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Dear Philip,
did you use Open Plan leveling 35000 activities project in 8 minutes? Is it your practical experience or an assumption?
Best Regards,
Vladimir
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Mon, 2004-12-06 10:24
#9
Philip Jonker
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Hi Jaco,

I was on a project in 1991-4, where we ended up with a project with 35 000 activities in the end, we were using Open Plan V4 dos at the time, and hit a limit when we went past 15 000 activities, and then found out we needed an extended scheduler attachment which allowed us to go up to 40 000 acts. The problem then came in the sense that we had to wait about 16 minutes, for the program to schedule, then somebody decided that we needed resource levelling:-) This process took an hour and forty minutes. Fortunately everything has sped up so much today, that the same process would take about 8mins, time enough for a cup of coffee:-) As for MSP, no comments! The feeling is mutual.

Regards

Philip Jonker
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Mon, 2004-12-06 09:11
#10
Jaco Stadler
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I remeber running about 5 Years ago in MS a project with 1200 activity’s with resources etc. I have found that when I calculate I had to go for a 20 Minute Walk then come back and then I might have some answers. I know time’s has changed but this memory will always be with me when I think MS Projects.
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Mon, 2004-12-06 09:06
#11
Philip Jonker
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Hi Oleg,


If you are using MSP have a look at MS Project specifications in the help file. The no of activities is limited according to the memory available. The exact number for the amount of memory available is not spefified. However, I suggest you try MS Project help desk, to find out the exact amount. I hope this helps.

Regards,

Philip Jonker
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Mon, 2004-12-06 08:56
#12
Andrew Podolny
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It depends on what kind of version do you use. For MS Project 2003 Server the number of tasks is almost infinitely i.e. is limited by MS SQL Server or Oracle specification.
By the way, where do you work in Ukraine?
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Mon, 2004-12-06 08:47
#13
Oleg S
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At me the server variant is established. The size of the project of 10000 tasks. There is a problem at publication of assignments. MSProject suggests to send the report.
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Mon, 2004-12-06 08:16
#14
Raj Maurya
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Can you define the type of project? There is no hard and fast number of activity, it all depends on the purpose of a plan and the level which need to be monitored.
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