"as far as I see, they still don’t allow to have a situation, when I have upgraded progress for only a single activity on a project and then just to check what it did to the rest of the schedule and assuming that the rest activities are pretty much on progress I would press “reschedule button” without causing of all unupdated tasks to be moved to start after the date of the last performance data availablebe."
With the use of formulas applied to the Actual Data Input table you can take control of every single activity update you want to apply a unique rule for updating using the if statement. Some activities can be set to start/finish as per scheduled dates prior to schedule update and others to start/finish on a number of fixed dates, this is more powerful that what MSP can do therefore not as easy. You can use a UDF to identify these activities and latter on use this mark to make the adjustments as you get the information.
Because the above option is somewhat [very] complicated I would rather apply my what-if updates to schedule files under different file name, keeping intact the schedule used for contract reporting. With the use of reference books I would transfer selected update rows I want to keep on subsequent revised what if schedules and apply a clean update to activities with different updates than the assumed.
"Spider from other side, seem to force a strict discipline (at least when it comes to tracking) without leaving too much space for flexibility."
Definitively I am not against what you propose, I have issues applying it to contractual schedule updates instead to what-if schedules until getting to the final version.
Strict discipline is required on all contractual updates, otherwise the schedule becomes invalid as a claim tool. Keep the strict discipline for contract schedule updates and use what-if updated schedules for your analysis. You can use formulas, manual actual, reference books or any combination.
As a matter of fact my initial updates to contractual schedules very frequently require some revision before making it final. I prepare an initial update based on the data as supplied and send it to the client for their revision. Very frequently they find some activities were missing on the updates, perhaps because of out of sequence progress they started earlier but because of this the updating table missed them, others just an omission.
Thanks for the “tricks”, but as far as I see, they still don’t allow to have a situation, when I have upgraded progress for only a single activity on a project and then just to check what it did to the rest of the schedule and assuming that the rest activities are pretty much on progress I would press “reschedule button” without causing of all unupdated tasks to be moved to start after the date of the last performance data available
I agree, that Microsoft Project has that much flexibility, which makes it dangerous in hands of inexperienced user. This flexibility however can be mitigated by applying the scheduling discipline.
Spider from other side, seem to force a strict discipline (at least when it comes to tracking) without leaving too much space for flexibility.
I definitely do not have your experience in scheduling, but as a project manager I would like to have a flexibility to take a calculated risk to assume, that the progress of the tasks, for which I don’t have recent progress update, went pretty much on schedule, without having to trick tool with fake progress updates.
Another interesting subject, which it raises: Spider forces to have the same update frequency on every task in progress. However in real life, it is probably not required. In real life one would want to have frequent updates on activities which are on the critical path/chain and/or using shared/limited resources or which are likely to go wrong. However the tasks, which do not use critical resources, which have big float or the tasks, , which do not have a high risk of going wrong, or which you probably can’t do too much about if they get delayed, these tasks do not have to be updated frequently.
Just for illustration: when tracking schedule for Winter Olympics in Sochi (where Spider is used), one would probably want to update very often the progress of the tasks, which are related to preparing the object, which a Prime Minister wants to visit very soon. At the same time other tasks, related to the objects, which just need to be ready for Y2014, can be monitored less frequently for now.
So, with my still limited understanding of a scheduling, I would think that a tick box, called something like “for now just assume, that all none-updated tasks went on schedule” would be a good thing to have in a Scheduling dialogue box. To move it further, may be one can set a flag for every task individually “if progress information is not the latest, assume, that task progresses as scheduled, when applying scheduling algorithm”
Just wondering, what is the progress update strategy, which is implemented in other professional tools like Asta, Primavera etc? (for now I consider MSP just an office application)
Member for
21 years 8 months
Member for21 years8 months
Submitted by Rafael Davila on Wed, 2012-12-05 11:05
If on your update you missed an activity you will always have the option to add it to the performance archive with the option to advance or not the version number without changing the DD. You can also make corrections to past performance by deleting the activity performance line(s) and add it again without changing current DD, at times find it easier. What you cannot due is progress an activity past the DD.
You can add individual activities to the data input table by selecting the activity or activities, for multiple selection you can use CTLR or filters, then right click and select Add to Actual Data Input Table.
You will not need to define and post to financial periods as this method will allow you to get any period data correctly distributed. Good for reporting on different performance periods whose start/finish dates do not match, such as monthly versus weekly periods and the month start/finish in the middle of a week. But this is another topic by itself.
See following example on which Activity 2 performance was edited, note remaining duration was edited for Activities 2 and 3 but this was done directly on the Gantt view.
DD remained December 31/2012 and after revision the projected project finish date was advanced. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Best regards,
Rafael
Member for
24 years 9 months
Member for24 years9 months
Submitted by Vladimir Liberzon on Wed, 2012-12-05 06:34
you shall not reschedule the project if not all actual data was entered.
Spider Project sends table forms with the planned data to project participants that are authorised to enter actual information. They shall know that on certain time they shall enter actual data in this forms and save. Spider collects data from these forms automatically, you shall not call and ask people what was done. They shall know that entering actual data in this form at certain time is their duty.
Collecting actual information Spider will warn if somebody did not submit the form. You may suppose that everything was done in accordance with plan and create new project version but later you shall repeat this process and replace the version based on your assumption by the true version based on performance reports.
Project Management System shall include certain rules including project updates routine. People shall enter actual data for the certain moments and it does not depend on the software that is used.
MS Project does not suppose that when actual data are not entered then everything goes as planned. It just does not move activities that are behind or ahead of the schedule. Some managers like it because being behind of the schedule on certain activities does not cause expected project finish delay. Nice but totally wrong. It is a bad practice that shall not be encouraged.
Best Regards,
Vladimir
P.S. For entering actual information in Spider Project input forms it is sufficient to install free Spider Demo. Demo has restrictions on project size but does not have restrictions on the size of tables.
I simply want to have a possibility to assume, that all other activities are on schedule. This is probably philosophical question, but is it possible to know exactly with 100% certainly the status of all ongoing activities of a project at a given moment? The next second after you have collected this status it will change already any way. Schedule is just a model of a reality, which is far too complex to put in any tool. So in our life we do all sorts of assumptions, e.g. today I have assumed in the morning that the weather will not be very different from yesterday and from what it is supposed to be for this place for this time of the year. So, why can’t I do assumption, that all scheduled activities, for which I don’t know exact status at the moment, went pretty much on schedule or that at least the deviation was not that dramatic?
If I understand well the functionality of Spider (correct me if I am wrong) now when engineer calls me and raises exception by saying, that instead of completing 90% of work on this document by now he only completed 10%, I can’t check what it does to the schedule immediately, because need to collect statuses of all other activities.
Actually I still can do what I want in Spider: I can just go an update all activities in Spider up until now to show them, that they were progressing as per schedule. However having done this, I will lose information on what is the real update, received from actual input from the field and what is the “pretended” update, which I had to do to bypass the rules of a tool, hence later I will have problems to know for which activities I need to go and collect actual statuses and for which I have already collected ones.
Member for
21 years 8 months
Member for21 years8 months
Submitted by Rafael Davila on Tue, 2012-12-04 12:40
Such updating is wrong, if you do not know the status of your activities you shall not attempt execute a schedule run, it might display wrong progress and might lead others to do the wrong things. Good scheduling requires some discipline.
In Spider you can also do the wrong thing by using formulas to assign such guess for start and finish dates that will create all sort of problems. You can execute formulas at the Gantt view or at the Actual Data Input table, you can use the formulas to create constraints or to set other data. I doubt Spider will ever provide functionality specifically designed to break the rules of CPM.
It is well known in the industry that some [many] users of Microsoft Project do not use it for true CPM modeling and instead Draw the schedule braking very often the rules of CPM logic.
What is the purpose of displaying half activities with true updates and half "lie" updates? Do you identify your "lie" updates? How do you identify "lie" successor, successors driven by "lie" predecessors?
Member for
21 years 8 monthsEvjeny,"as far as I see, they
Evjeny,
"as far as I see, they still don’t allow to have a situation, when I have upgraded progress for only a single activity on a project and then just to check what it did to the rest of the schedule and assuming that the rest activities are pretty much on progress I would press “reschedule button” without causing of all unupdated tasks to be moved to start after the date of the last performance data availablebe."
With the use of formulas applied to the Actual Data Input table you can take control of every single activity update you want to apply a unique rule for updating using the if statement. Some activities can be set to start/finish as per scheduled dates prior to schedule update and others to start/finish on a number of fixed dates, this is more powerful that what MSP can do therefore not as easy. You can use a UDF to identify these activities and latter on use this mark to make the adjustments as you get the information.
Because the above option is somewhat [very] complicated I would rather apply my what-if updates to schedule files under different file name, keeping intact the schedule used for contract reporting. With the use of reference books I would transfer selected update rows I want to keep on subsequent revised what if schedules and apply a clean update to activities with different updates than the assumed.
"Spider from other side, seem to force a strict discipline (at least when it comes to tracking) without leaving too much space for flexibility."
Definitively I am not against what you propose, I have issues applying it to contractual schedule updates instead to what-if schedules until getting to the final version.
Strict discipline is required on all contractual updates, otherwise the schedule becomes invalid as a claim tool. Keep the strict discipline for contract schedule updates and use what-if updated schedules for your analysis. You can use formulas, manual actual, reference books or any combination.
As a matter of fact my initial updates to contractual schedules very frequently require some revision before making it final. I prepare an initial update based on the data as supplied and send it to the client for their revision. Very frequently they find some activities were missing on the updates, perhaps because of out of sequence progress they started earlier but because of this the updating table missed them, others just an omission.
Best regards,
Rafael
Member for
17 years 10 monthsRafail,Thanks for the
Rafail,
Thanks for the “tricks”, but as far as I see, they still don’t allow to have a situation, when I have upgraded progress for only a single activity on a project and then just to check what it did to the rest of the schedule and assuming that the rest activities are pretty much on progress I would press “reschedule button” without causing of all unupdated tasks to be moved to start after the date of the last performance data available
I agree, that Microsoft Project has that much flexibility, which makes it dangerous in hands of inexperienced user. This flexibility however can be mitigated by applying the scheduling discipline.
Spider from other side, seem to force a strict discipline (at least when it comes to tracking) without leaving too much space for flexibility.
I definitely do not have your experience in scheduling, but as a project manager I would like to have a flexibility to take a calculated risk to assume, that the progress of the tasks, for which I don’t have recent progress update, went pretty much on schedule, without having to trick tool with fake progress updates.
Another interesting subject, which it raises: Spider forces to have the same update frequency on every task in progress. However in real life, it is probably not required. In real life one would want to have frequent updates on activities which are on the critical path/chain and/or using shared/limited resources or which are likely to go wrong. However the tasks, which do not use critical resources, which have big float or the tasks, , which do not have a high risk of going wrong, or which you probably can’t do too much about if they get delayed, these tasks do not have to be updated frequently.
Just for illustration: when tracking schedule for Winter Olympics in Sochi (where Spider is used), one would probably want to update very often the progress of the tasks, which are related to preparing the object, which a Prime Minister wants to visit very soon. At the same time other tasks, related to the objects, which just need to be ready for Y2014, can be monitored less frequently for now.
So, with my still limited understanding of a scheduling, I would think that a tick box, called something like “for now just assume, that all none-updated tasks went on schedule” would be a good thing to have in a Scheduling dialogue box. To move it further, may be one can set a flag for every task individually “if progress information is not the latest, assume, that task progresses as scheduled, when applying scheduling algorithm”
Just wondering, what is the progress update strategy, which is implemented in other professional tools like Asta, Primavera etc? (for now I consider MSP just an office application)
Member for
21 years 8 monthsEvjeny,If on your update you
Evjeny,
If on your update you missed an activity you will always have the option to add it to the performance archive with the option to advance or not the version number without changing the DD. You can also make corrections to past performance by deleting the activity performance line(s) and add it again without changing current DD, at times find it easier. What you cannot due is progress an activity past the DD.
You can add individual activities to the data input table by selecting the activity or activities, for multiple selection you can use CTLR or filters, then right click and select Add to Actual Data Input Table.
You will not need to define and post to financial periods as this method will allow you to get any period data correctly distributed. Good for reporting on different performance periods whose start/finish dates do not match, such as monthly versus weekly periods and the month start/finish in the middle of a week. But this is another topic by itself.
See following example on which Activity 2 performance was edited, note remaining duration was edited for Activities 2 and 3 but this was done directly on the Gantt view.
DD remained December 31/2012 and after revision the projected project finish date was advanced. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Best regards,
Rafael
Member for
24 years 9 monthsEvgeny,you shall not
Evgeny,
you shall not reschedule the project if not all actual data was entered.
Spider Project sends table forms with the planned data to project participants that are authorised to enter actual information. They shall know that on certain time they shall enter actual data in this forms and save. Spider collects data from these forms automatically, you shall not call and ask people what was done. They shall know that entering actual data in this form at certain time is their duty.
Collecting actual information Spider will warn if somebody did not submit the form. You may suppose that everything was done in accordance with plan and create new project version but later you shall repeat this process and replace the version based on your assumption by the true version based on performance reports.
Project Management System shall include certain rules including project updates routine. People shall enter actual data for the certain moments and it does not depend on the software that is used.
MS Project does not suppose that when actual data are not entered then everything goes as planned. It just does not move activities that are behind or ahead of the schedule. Some managers like it because being behind of the schedule on certain activities does not cause expected project finish delay. Nice but totally wrong. It is a bad practice that shall not be encouraged.
Best Regards,
Vladimir
P.S. For entering actual information in Spider Project input forms it is sufficient to install free Spider Demo. Demo has restrictions on project size but does not have restrictions on the size of tables.
Member for
17 years 10 monthsRafael,I simply want to have
Rafael,
I simply want to have a possibility to assume, that all other activities are on schedule. This is probably philosophical question, but is it possible to know exactly with 100% certainly the status of all ongoing activities of a project at a given moment? The next second after you have collected this status it will change already any way. Schedule is just a model of a reality, which is far too complex to put in any tool. So in our life we do all sorts of assumptions, e.g. today I have assumed in the morning that the weather will not be very different from yesterday and from what it is supposed to be for this place for this time of the year. So, why can’t I do assumption, that all scheduled activities, for which I don’t know exact status at the moment, went pretty much on schedule or that at least the deviation was not that dramatic?
If I understand well the functionality of Spider (correct me if I am wrong) now when engineer calls me and raises exception by saying, that instead of completing 90% of work on this document by now he only completed 10%, I can’t check what it does to the schedule immediately, because need to collect statuses of all other activities.
Actually I still can do what I want in Spider: I can just go an update all activities in Spider up until now to show them, that they were progressing as per schedule. However having done this, I will lose information on what is the real update, received from actual input from the field and what is the “pretended” update, which I had to do to bypass the rules of a tool, hence later I will have problems to know for which activities I need to go and collect actual statuses and for which I have already collected ones.
Member for
21 years 8 monthsSuch updating is wrong, if
Such updating is wrong, if you do not know the status of your activities you shall not attempt execute a schedule run, it might display wrong progress and might lead others to do the wrong things. Good scheduling requires some discipline.
In Spider you can also do the wrong thing by using formulas to assign such guess for start and finish dates that will create all sort of problems. You can execute formulas at the Gantt view or at the Actual Data Input table, you can use the formulas to create constraints or to set other data. I doubt Spider will ever provide functionality specifically designed to break the rules of CPM.
It is well known in the industry that some [many] users of Microsoft Project do not use it for true CPM modeling and instead Draw the schedule braking very often the rules of CPM logic.
What is the purpose of displaying half activities with true updates and half "lie" updates? Do you identify your "lie" updates? How do you identify "lie" successor, successors driven by "lie" predecessors?