Wish list for MS Project

I posted this to the microsoft.public.Project2003 newsgroup today in response to a Microsoft flack that wanted to insist that Project could be used on any kind of project.



This is my real wish for a scheduling engine.



In a perfect world, the scheduling engine would allow me to input not only the calendar for a resource, but also allow me to have varying levels of resource available at different times of the day as well as during different date ranges.



So for example, if I have 60 mechanics, during the day, but only 30 at night, I would be able to enter a generic resource called mechanics with 60 units between 6PM and 6AM and 30 units between 6PM and 6AM and it would help me identify when a task should be scheduled based on resource availability.



It would let me identify "Equipment" resources that have a 24 hour schedule, but should be allowed to "split" time when the Work resource has a break in working hours. (to address lunch hours, breaks, etc.) I thought about using Material resource in this way, but I couldn’t find a way to enter maximum units available for material resources.



It would recognize that the resource with the lower quantity of available units on a global scale is most likely the driving resource and other resources on a task need to be scheduled around its availability.



It would default to multiple resources working on a task doing the task at the same time, and prompt me or allow me to say "you don’t have to work this job simultaneously."



This is what I wish Project would do, but doesn’t. Therefore, I stand my statement that Project is the wrong tool for projects where multiple resources need to work simultaneously on the same task.

Thanks, Bernard. I actually utilized some ideas you had put forth on the site for your product to make this work. For that, I am quite grateful.



This is actually quite a large turnaround, but the majority of the resources are on two or three projects, and are dedicated to those projects, so I wasn’t worried about them as much as I was about all the little critical mass projects that shared resources.



Most of those were being run by the contractors with another project manager, so my approach has been to let them manage their own project, keep me up to date on the status of what they are doing, and make sure that the critical mass stuff was getting done on time.



This whole job would have been much easier had the client had their copy of Maximo set up to handle scheduling, and if they were using something besides the abomination that is MS Project.



The question I keep asking, is why do people continue to use MS Project when it is such an abominable piece of effluvia? It must be working for someone, or it wouldn’t be selling more copies, but I sure as heck don’t see how.



I’d like to see someone come out with a multiple platform project management tool that would work as well as Primavera and would retail around $200 a seat. One of the few advantages that Project has is its price.



Larry

I forgot to mention that I also assigned priorities to all of the tasks, so that the tasks that were most critical would be scheduled first when the crane resource was a tie.



What we are really doing is running a rolling schedule, with the critical path having dedicated resources, and the other resources being doled out among the other tasks scheduled for that day.



So Day 1, we have 15 tasks that could get done that day. We have a pool of 30 people for work crews.



I got the numbers of staff needed for each job during my estimation phase, which the project manager/supervisor will use to decide which jobs will get worked that shift.



In this instance, the PM decides that jobs 1-10 (each require a six person crew for 6 hours) will get worked this shift. With each crew doing two jobs during the shift. The other 5 jobs will be scheduled the next shift.



At the end of the shift, we get updated task status and rerun the schedule. Jobs 1-9 were completed during the shift, so they are marked as done. Job 10 was more complicated than we expected, so we had to schedule its remaining work during the next shift.



We only have a 15 person pool during the night shift, so the Project Manager schedules 6 people to complete the 6 hours remaining on Job 10 and and then splits the remaining 9 people out to work on 3 person jobs that will each fit in the 12 hours the shift. The 6 people on job 10 will be split out to 2 crews of three to work on three person jobs that can be done by the end of the shift if possible, or will be split out to other crews as needed.



We’ll run this schedule each day, watching to make sure that the remaining Priority 1 and 2 work doesn’t go past the deadline.



If I had my druthers, I would have been here 6 months ago to do this, rather than 2 months ago, but I ate what was set before me .



Larry

Not really a solution as much as a workaround. My project has two 12 hour shifts that share equipment resources. At first I tried scheduling everything on a 24 hour schedule but it turns out that Project will then schedule equipment during the day and the workers at night. Not terribly useful. To solve this problem, I divided the workers into day and night crews and the equipment into day and night crews. That still didn’t work, as there was no way to force Project to schedule the equipment for the same hours as the crews.



What I finally did was just focus on scheduling the equipment, as the availability of workers was up to the supervisors in the field as conditions change.



So now, I know whether or not I have enough cranes to do the work each hour, but not whether I have enough people, but as most of the tasks are critical mass rather than critical path (the critical path tasks have dedicated equipment and resources) the main job is to make sure we continue to make progress on the critical mass tasks.



The discussion here has been very helpful in deciding to take this approach. My hope is to persuade the client to move to SureTrak or P3 ASAP, but I’m willing to bet they have a corporate MS license, so it may be somewhat difficult to do.

unfortunately, Spider is not in my budget, so rescheduling a 600 plus task project is not an option. I have a solution for now. The main reason I posted the question was to see if anyone else had pet peeves about MS Project besides me. I detest it, myself.



Larry

The only reason I’m using MS Project is because that is what the client uses. If I had my druthers, I’d use Primavera. I just spent the last week trying to get Project to scehdule a 24 hour turnaround and finally gave up trying to use resource leveling.



This is my first turnaround schedule, so it’s been a real learning experience.



I do plan on checking out Spider Plan by the way. I’ve read a great deal about it and it intrigues me.



Larry