Rafaela

I would have that a "Lead" would have been better for a dog

:-)

don’t forget that Micro Planner not only does lags,

it does Leads too

Well it is the silly season :-)

Raf

Rafaela

I just tried it using PDM - one task with a hamock linked by a start and end event

X-Pert calculated the hammock OK

Raf

Vladimir,

Your handling of the calendar along with the hammock activity is sheer genius.

Your creation of the hammock is cheating.
a) You cannot create a hammock linked to a single activity with no other software I know of.
b) You cannot use lag in hammock activities with no other software I know of, it is simply disregarded.



My next dog is to be named LAG.

Best regards,
Rafael

P.S. Yes it works well for me.

Yes it makes sense.

The ball is on my side of the court, remember is holiday season, 73deg F/ 22.77 C and the sun is shining so today I will take some spare time, we have some US relatives escaping from their frigid winter.

Best regards,
Rafael

Vladimir,

Not only will pay a few per completed jobs/task/activities but others will be paid on a regular basis say next week for payroll, next 30 days for invoices and receive BOQ payments 60 days after invoicing prior month during first week of the following month.

Of course I do not pretend exact granularity but an approximation good enough to make a computation for NPV that is close enough, a computation that will tell me months in green and months in red, I don’t think I need to model exact payment day. Anyway it is never going to be exactly on target especially the further away from today.

I am starting to get hooked not only into BOQ, but I am also thinking ahead when I might start using NPV available in Spider Project. As far as I remember you also mentioned IIR, internal rate of return, a computation that at times yields two values, one is the solution and the other is not, and even “modified” IRR so it is more than that. But "that", modeling of BOQ is going to be a common issue.

Hope you understand if others at home are to follow me it cannot be that complicated, otherwise they will do their cash flow analysis using Excel, even when is kind of static, not as dynamic when modeling into Spider Project.

Here on average, the Water Authority pays 3 to 6 months after invoicing, meanwhile you have to pay US equipment suppliers in advance to manufacturing. Banks and Sureties know and expect your cash flow shows this. Spider Project table reports can show the required details, just give me ease of use with regard to the offset between the resources (and activities) to cash flow.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Vladimir,

To answer your question "Did you manage organization resources and costs in your corporate system? Did you create plans for the organization departments? "

Absolutely we did using Micro Planner X-Pert.

Resources from Marketing, Sales, Development, Operations, Customer Services were all included in our projects.

And through using Micro Planner X-Pert we practiced baselining dated and agreed plans in the Master Archive, which included estimated costs to complete. Then we would use the Current analysis for week-on-week progress reporting and variance reporting using the baselined plans.

When changes were identified, we placed the current plan into the "Intermediate Archive" to then alter the plans to see the impact on both the "current plans and then the Archived plans.

With major customers in the global Defense, Semiconductor, and telecommunications industries, we had to be in a position to inform our Senior Management of progress and change as new customer orders were received.

We had a "mind-set" that the whole organisation knew what work was to priority so that the whole organisation were supportive. And that meant that resources in all the departments were a part of the plan and new what needed to be delivered by whom and by when.

Hope that offers a complete answer to the question you posed.

Thanks

Replying to Vladimir,

In 2009 my previous company closed its European operations and moved all R&D work back to San Jose, California.

Customer focused projects were based on taking a commercially developed product and customising it for specific applications for the various customers. This included the R&D for new electronic instrumentation, hardware and software development.

The projects that were not directly customer focused were more to do with process improvement, HSE, Environmental Impact Reductions, etc.

We did manage all engineering resources and costs within the PSO - which managed all "customer focused" projects.

I hope that answers your questions.

Vladimir,

Under Suretrak, for my non leveling resources it is not uncommon for me to assign a resource lag and resource duration different from activity duration. This I use when I want to model cash flow (costs and income).

How you model this within Spider Project and how it works under resource leveling?

By the way I don’t know how it would work under SureTrak resource leveling.

Best regards,
Rafael

Vladimir,

The Project support Office at my previous employers used Micro Planner X-Pert and non other. I was a part of that team.

There were renegades that operated outside of the PSO who used MS Project. But rest assured all projects that were customer focused ran through the PSO using Micro Planner X-Pert.

John,

Yes now I am clear. I was confused when you referred to “we”, I interpreted it as to be your actual coworkers at MPI, I could not understand why another software option if working at MPI.

Best regards,
Rafael

John,

I could not find your info under PP directory search but found it at MPI site.

In your posting 251 you wrote, “In my industrial experience we used Micro Planner X-Pert as the selected planning software for over twenty years.... The Micro Planner X-Pert software tool we used was excellent, ...”

Do you have the option to select other vendors scheduling software at Micro Planning to develop your own scheduling software, if so which?

Best regards,
Rafael

Carlos,

What can Spider Do that your Tool can’t?

Isn’t it a valid question, remember we are confined to this posting? Does it means we will be forced to a single question, a single thread forever?

I have no other place to go and ask questions about Spider. Please be patient maybe, eventually Spider will have its place and this monstruous topic will be thing of the past, and issues will be easier to follow. Mike gave us hope as well as other PP moderators, is just that it takes time. For the moment we were asked to keep here and limit our reference to Spider on other topics.

About your question on not being able to edit a single relationship by clicking on my current graphic view I am not experiencing this issue, if you refer to clicking on the bars. Or do you refer to clicking on a bar and moving the cursor to another bar to create a new link? This you can also do.

Some fields are locked in your activity pane, I suspect to protect the traceability of updates and integrity of the data, same at other screens, is this your issue?

Mike,

Can we create other topics specific on Spider Project? Under which category?

Best regards,
Rafael

John,

“You said: "Other software, I don’t know Micro Planner X-Pert, do not level resources based on the quantity because such data doesn’t exist.”

This was Vladimir, this is a kind of argument of a software developer that know better than I do. I am an end user who is starting to appreciate good resource leveling as my prior experience with Primavera SureTrak was no good at all. As a matter of fact most of these years I was using soft relationships to force the software to solve in this way resource constraining issues and then verified resource loading vs. availability without running resource leveling at all.

My projects rarely go over 600 activities, 30% procurement, they rarely go over 30$M US but they need all the functionality of advanced CPM software.

I believe there is a high possibility MP-X has a superb engine. If so this will confirm my argument, not all resource leveling algorithms are equal and this is a relevant functionality that differentiates the software. By the way Spider keeps several algorithms for your choice as these yields different results, one of them looks for a solution set that yields minimum job duration within your constraints but it might happen you prefer other solution, or that under certain circumstances one yields better results than the other.

Thanks for your contribution, many of your suggestions can be adapted to other software if need be, also I am sure many MP-X users appreciate it also. I hope you continue posting in PP about MP-X here and even in threads of your own, these will be enlightening.

Best regards,
Rafael

To Rafeal,

You said: "Other software, I don’t know Micro Planner X-Pert, do not level resources based on the quantity because such data doesn’t exist.

I just wanted to say that Micro Planner X-Pert has a superb engine for computing schedules with resource leveling, or recognition of imposed deadlines that may cause resource overloads.

The other two ways to analyze is a) Early Start, meaning that if a task can be started (logically)it will be started once the resource is available. Or, b) Latest start, meaning a "just in time" approach providing its a low risk project.

Happy analyzing.

John

Hi Rafael,

You can work with the default options at the Resource Assignment level, but if you have information and want to model better the way project will be run, than you can use a specific workload and productivity. The productivity together with the resource quantity and Volume of Activity will allow calculating the activity duration during scheduling.

The estimation we made for activity duration based usually on the same info will be avoid. But using productivity means to have some recorded history. In the Eastern part of Europe we have work norms (or corporate norms) with this kind of information. It helps you not only to easily estimate the project cost for tender purpose (it is a huge database), but also to plan and schedule construction and to monitor and control it.

The priority will be used to fine tune the schedule, or to define some important resources over others.
But, what is in my opinion an important option, is “Variable quantity and workload”. It will allow to model multi-tasking phenomena which is the reality.

Any person involved in a project may perform in a certain day (or time interval) several activities. Other software, I don’t know Micro Planner X-Pert, do not level resources based on the quantity because such data doesn’t exist. Even Critical Chain suggests to avoid multi-tasking. But this is in the nature of how we work.

Using this option will give you a shorter duration of the project after resource constrained scheduling. Try it with two or three resources and activities and compare the results with what will give you SureTrak or MSP.

Best regards,
Augustin

Hi Rafael,

Let me answer your question, which was:
"If you have available one C++ expert software engineer( called Fred) that can code 1.5 times as fast as 2 rookies (called Bill and Ben), how you take this into consideration within MP-X?"

Using Micro Planner X-Pert, first create a group called C++ Expert. Then add Fred as 100% available.

Another group needs to be created called C++ Engineer and add Bill and Ben at whatever percentage availability you choose from 1% to 100%.

If you know you will use the C++ Expert then the duration will be based on their expertise and efficiencies.

If you know you will use the C++ Engineers and the will need more time then extend the task duration to allow for their "learning and personal development" which may cause you to factor the duration by 1.5 times or 2 times.

This approach to using Micro Planner X-Pert puts you in charge of making resourcing decisions, rather than letting a software package make an arbitrary selection of a resource, which may cause loss of time, else where in the project’s schedules.

Thanks for the question and I hope I have given a practical solution that reflects project management in practice.

Excellent.

john

Raphael

Calling somebody a "dingo" in Australia is actually an insult, sorry I did not know I just meant "you must be though" as if a lion in the wild but used a reference from the Australian fauna, it was meant to be praise in the context of the whole sentence. I was trying to be nice, not being mean.

About your name Raphael it was without even noticing, here Ralph is so common that instead of Raph it just came to my mind. We are not so sensitive to name misspelling especially when dealing with other nationalities, we are more tolerant, don’t even pay attention to such issue.

"Microsoft has happily soldiered on for over thirty years not allowing SS and FF between two tasks and they have over 90% of the market. What does that tell you?"

This tells me that it satisfies most people needs for Gantt chart software and not the more sophisticated Precedence Scheduling software. Some of us have more sophisticated needs, I do not need a fancy Gantt chart software I do need the more sophisticated precedence scheduling software. For Gantt Charts I prefer Excel spreadsheets.

"Microsoft in the form of their top guru in Project tells me that according to their research about 80 to 90 % of projects are run simply using Excel spreadsheets."

This tells me a lot about why Microsoft has no interest at all in what serious precedence scheduling is about, judging from how slow (over thirty years ! ) they have been at adopting many missing PDM functionality in their product and this comment from one of their so called Gurus. Seems like they are more interested in that 90% than in the rest 10%, the rest of us.

"It is great pity that none of you are actually reading what I am saying about Total Float and the fact that as a Planner and Scheduler you should be working hard to provide the best solution to deliver your clients needs."

I read what you said about total float is just I completely disagree with you, about the fact that as a Planner and Scheduler you should be working hard to provide the best solution to deliver your clients needs I completely agree, so I have no comment in this regard.

Goodbye,

Rafael

Vladimir,

I already synchronized my first updating of two versions, in order to do so I had to define the second version twice but it worked at a click of a mouse.

I still got to do some exploring into this functionality to get used to it and understand how update version numbers are kept into sync.

Up to now a piece of cake, is a matter of getting used to it in order to fly with it.


In a couple of days I should be exploring Risk Analysis and Success Probability, at first glance does not seems like a piece of cake and wonder if my clients will be interested on getting into this.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Anoon,

If I may, I will give you an answer to your question. I see Vladimir already did it.

I’ll quote Earl Glenwright (he was quoted before by Raf) from a presentation made in June 2005 at AACEi, “Issues & Controversies”:

“NO RESOURCES = NO VALID SCHEDULE ! “

There is a very interesting interview gave by Jim O’Brian in the PMI COS website (http://www.pmicos.org/jointerview.asp) about the history of CPM.

The questions put firstly were: how to organize the project activities ? in what sequence ? how much time will take them ? which activities are more important than the other ? … and so on. And the result was the Critical Path: critical and non-critical activities, free float and total float. But the focus was only on activities without taking into account if there are or not enough resources. Do not forget what the social, political and economical context was when CPM was developed.

So, in this approach, the activities are those who consumes (need) resources, no matter if the resources are available to do them.

This kind of project model worked for a while, but mainly in very organized, based on a chain of command environment similar to the army.

Later on they asked what will happen if there are not enough resources. It is interesting that Dan Trietsch from University of Auckland revealed in a paper published in 2003 - “Why a Critical Path by Any Other Name Would Smell Less Sweet? Towards a Holistic Approach to PERT/CPM” that Russian mathematicians had made deep researches during ’60 years in what we call the scientific work organization. I have a great admiration on Russian mathematicians as time as I learned from their work.

Coming back to the subject. In the lets’ call new approach, the resources are those who made possible the activities deliverables. If you don’t have the available qualified resources, you will not get the deliverables from a certain activity. In this approach the focus is on resources. The real life shows us this. So, if resources does not have float (because of their calendar and availability), than the activity to whom they are assigned are called “resource critical activity”. The sequence of such activities it is called “resource critical path”.

Why is more realistic such a schedule ? Because … What happen if you don’t have the right people and equipment in the right time ? What happen if you don’t have a certain material at the right moment to be used in an activity ? But most of all, what happen if you don’t have enough money at the right moment to pay for people, equipment and materials ? And the answer is not: I have float.

The usual feeling a Project Manager has is the frustration. He is responsible to do something with almost nothing. I suppose Raf will confirm this feeling.

So, planning is about future. And the future can have different faces, or you can think that there are many possible futures. From all of them, you are interested in only one. And try to bring that future into current reality. Spider just help you to foresee different aspects might affect your commitment.

And come back to Earl: No resources = No valid schedule !

Best regards,

Augustin

Start floats and Finish floats may be different especially under activity splitting and/or resource constraining. The other occasion I can think of is when updating changes the original duration of activities that originally had same Start floats and Finish floats.

Float might be tricky but very useful to the extent Contracts in USA make reference to it. Unfortunately some (shall I say many) CPM software fall short of updating their computation of float in agreement with the functionalities available after “old” CPM which in its beginning did not included resource leveling and not to mention other real life constraints.

Hi "elder Raf",

Yes, I believe when you said that Total Float is a chain, and it seems decreasing from a higher value or units (in the early activities), and maybe it can become zero when it reaches the end or the last part of the activities.

What really drives the movements of floats? Is it plainly from the relationships as defined? So that only FS relationship will show the real value of float?

Best regards

Oh Dear Anoon

I did not say to ignore Floats, you misquote me

If you had read my posting properly you would have noted that there was a quote at the top of the article and unquote at the end of the article, which was the work of a third person, Glen with whom I in the main in agreement

The example is rather savage and not helpful in this utter waste of time re Float.
There are two free floats, one is called Early Free Float and the Other is Late Free Float
These were originally derrived from arrow diagrams, you cannot correctly calculate them in Precedence

If a task has as you say 100 units of TF but Zero Free Float, then you cannot delay the task because if you do you will delay tasks futher down the float chain, as there is a link coming from this task which is critical

All of you seem to think that float or what ever is tasked based.

Total Float is a value shared along a chain of tasks with that same value. So if the first task with TF of 20 is not delayed then the second and or successive tasks may be delayed by 20, If the second task is delayed by 10, then the rest of the chain now only has 10 units of float to share.

If you used Arrow Diagrams none of you would have this bother as the Arrow diagram is fundementally clear.
Read Patrick Weaver’s paper on Float in Octobers PM World today e-magazine, which caused Glen to make his statement.

It would appear that all of you have nothing better to do than argue over a very trivial matter.

You are not serving your clients very well as you should be Planning and Scheduling the project in hand.

Obviously the folk in other countries appear to be able to estimate 100% accurately task durations ever time all the time. Which might make the float value meaningful

You obviously do not understand ’Statistical Deviation, which is generally accepted as being plus or minus three percent of the answer.

So Total Float really is quite meaningless, especially after resource scheduling.

Once the algortithm has allocated the resource for the task to use between the start and finish dates, there can NEVER be a time when you as the individual can come along unilaterally as say "OH, thers’s two days Total Float left I think I will delay the task for that time.

Because now, you have completely STUFFED up the resource allocation.

Frankly I do not care what one bit or another software package does, my job is to ensure I deliver my clients the project ON TIME and ON budget.

Nothing more, nothing less.

If you think carrying on about about float does that then you are quite mistaken.

By the way I manage a fair number of my under $1 million projects by hand, don’t need a computer,..... oh woe is me, what has happened to my Total Float :-)

By the way,again, Hot of the press, If you want to understand about AOA or AON read Dennis Lock’s new book on "Aviation Project Management" By Triant G. Flouris, Dennis Lock

You most definitely will learn something from the even older master than me.

Raf

OOPs
That should say ’The rest" shines ...

Raf

Ralph,

As you know I always liked Micro Planner, and agree with you about the need for better resource allocation algorithms, believe you are a pioneer in the practical application of these.

I also agree with your hands down approach to project management. We never disclose float to our subcontractors and not even to our crews, the problem is with the Project Manager that have access to float values as shown by the software. Therefore I have some need for it to be better than what most software shows.

Yes we understand it varies with time, varies with the specific resource leveling algorithm, I have no problem with this. Well for some reason someone called it Phantom Float. I still believe Spider is correct, is better than showing no float computation but those who cannot compute float as limited by the driving constraints, other than precedence logic should not show it at all, they are misleading the client while Spider alerts the client on the interpretation of float.

About the elder one, I have 80% grey hair, 10% white hair and 10% no hair, my moustache makes up the missing 10%.

Keep debating; it is always good to hear from you.

Best regards,
Rafael

Micro Planner’s Resource Algorithm will when a resource runs out select from a specified group of resource where each has a (what I call a weighting) and select the most approriate resource to do the task. so if I am short of a Senior Computer Programmer who does their work at a 100% and I have available a senior Systems person who is very experienced and say twice as good, Micro Planner will the halve the time or quantity required.
You are to hung up on Float
According to Earl Glenright who is well known in the states
Who responded to an article on Float he says
Quote
In Response to the article in the November 2009 PM World Today by Pat Weaver explaining the various types of activity ‘float’
20 November 2009

Dear Editor,

Float ??? Who cares ?

Here’s another point of view - mine !

I don’t think this treatise on calculating float enlightens anyone and may compromise their understanding and add to their confusion.

What does it matter what kind or how much ’float’ there is?

Once the scheduling phase is complete, there should not be any references to ’float’. Telling anyone on the project, including owners, that they have ’float’ is opening Pandora’s Box for chaos.

A baseline schedule is THE schedule of the work plan. It can not ’float’ !
If the performers of the work think they can ’float’ their work, soon all activities are ’critical’!

And instead of sharing ’float’ the managers of the earliest activities will use all they can get.

We all know that ’float’ is a mathematical result of the unrestrained analysis of the activity network. We also know that it is used in the scheduling process to schedule peak resource demands into lower periods of demand by ’floating’ the less critical activities.
Once the schedule is set, ’float’ has no intrinsic value. In fact, incorrectly declaring that there is ’float’ is misleading and subjects the planned work schedule to disruption during execution.

A simple example:

3 subcontractors are told they have ’float’ or ’Total Float’ days for their work. Now suppose each of them applies this ’float’ to scheduling their work. When their work plan is integrated with the parent work plan, a hiatus results. But you told me I had ’float’ and here it is shown on the printout of the schedule.

The restriction of links to only F-S is becoming more frequent in scheduling specifications.

Why? Because bad experience leads to good judgment.

Actually the S-S and F-F links are attempts to schedule the work even before resources are considered. I do acknowledge that correcting logic-links is easier in PDM than ADM. (note that I said ’correcting’)

In conclusion, messing around with ’float’ in any of its variations is diverting management from the real world. ’Float’ is in a fantasy world.

Speaking of diverting attention, there is an Eastern Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania Dutch)
saying that is very applicable to the misunderstanding and use of ‘float’

"As you travel on thru life brother
Whatever be your goal,
Keep your eye upon the donut
And not upon the hole"

And so it is with ‘float’. Keep your eye on the work plan and schedule, not the ‘float’

Earl Glenwright, PE, PSP
Colorado, USA

UNquote

There you have it, now it must be time for Rafael and Vladimir to go back to work and find something else to talk about

Raf (the elder one :-) )

Hi Rafael,
I am working with Spider Project for 5 years after I worked more than 10 years with MS Project and Primavera on all versions. I found extremely useful the use of resource skills. It is one of the major features (among many other) who allow you to organize better the resources and to get a feasible plan after resource constrained scheduling. Because other PM software does not use such an approach, Spider will give a project duration shorter than the duration computed with the other software. And if you combine this feature with the variable resource quantity or workload, you will get surprising results. However, this is not enough. You still need to perform the project risk analysis.
Best regards,
Augustin

Hi Rafael,

I supposed this "Skills Functionality" refers to the "Unsual Efforts" that you may use if you find that your Contract time or duration is not reasonable.

i’m sorry my monitor is blinking...