Re: [Planner] Resource dependencies

["Steve Evans" <cahanpm operamail com>]

Xavier Ordoquy wrote:
> Well, again I'm not sure this is that easy.

Me neither! I think any form of automated resource levelling will be extremely complicated, and at best only give a rough schedule that the Project Manager can start from and work with.

In practice I have only ever used the resource scheduling in Project Workbench (PMW) from Niku. Even though it's very sophisticated with the features such as front or back loading the effort, it frequently did strange things that would have to be manually corrected.

I would favour the toolkit approach as the PM will always have to manually intervene in any automated schedule and anything that would make this easier would be better. Such things as moving tasks, reallocating resources and seeing the totals allocations per resource by period. 

PMW used a different model and maintained effort and duration separately - it didn't (at the time) have percentage allocation. For instance, imagine you had 2 6-hour tasks both allocated to the same resource. PMW would allocated 6 hours of task 1 and 2 hours of task 2 on day 1 and the remaining 4 hours of task 2 on day 2.

Although I prefer this method to percent allocations, I would suppose that it would be a big change for Planner to adopt this model.

Regards,
Steve


----- Original Message -----
From: Xavier Ordoquy <xordoquy wanadoo fr>
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2004 16:53:09 +0100
To: Planner Project Manager <planner lists imendio com>
Subject: Re: [Planner] Resource dependencies

> Richard Hult sloffed:
> > There are a few subtasks:
> > 
> > 1. Figure out how to display the dependency visually.
> > 
> > 2. Implement the visual part (planner/src/planner-gantt-row.c and
> > planner-relation-arrow.c mostly).
> > 
> > 3. Come up with a good algorithm for leveling the resource load.
> > 
> > 4. Add the dependency (called relation in the code) type everywhere that
> > dependencies are handled.
> > 
> > 5. Implement the algorithm (mainly
> > planner/libplanner/mrp-task-manager.c).
> > 
> > If people think that this is a good idea to do, I think 1 and 3 are good
> > starting points.
> 
> Well, again I'm not sure this is that easy. Let me take the example with
> two tasks for which of the two resources only one resource can work on
> both. It points that a resource commitement in a task can change against
> the time. This implies far more than it just sounds. Even if someone sets
> the balance between the 2 tasks for the resource.
> 
> Task 1: ==================== (Resource 1, Resource 2)
> Task 2: ===== (Resource 1)
>              ^ (1)
> 
> (1) Resource 1 has finished task 2 on which he was working full time. He
> now ca work on task 1 at 100%. Gantt chart will have to make the distinction
> of before and after for computing its length in time (not in worked time).
> 
> Tasks 2 lasts 5 and Task 1 35 days.
> Tasks one will take 20 (5+15) full days of resources 2 and 15 for Resource 1
> Therefore Tasks 1 length will be 20 days.
> 
> Implementing this means a lot of changes in the way resources and tasks are
> linked. Just warning to make things clear.
> 
> Regards,
> Xavier Ordoquy.
> 
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