[Planner] Re: Planner Digest, Vol 3, Issue 5

[Brian Christensen <brian SimpleProjectManagement com>]

> > Sheldon,
> >
> > > I'm trying out Planner for the first time today. It seems to work 
> > > very
> > > well so far, but I have a
> > > question. Is there any way for Planner 0.11 to implement dependencies
> > > between tasks based on
> > > (work) resource availability, or do I just have to manually create
> > > task dependencies?
> > >
> > > Just in case I'm not sufficiently clear, I have a situation where one
> > > "startup" task is a
> > > predecessor of about 8 different tasks that are logically parallel.
> > > However, all of the tasks are
> > > assigned the same resource at 100% and Planner seems to be perfectly
> > > happy scheduling all of the
> > > tasks simultaneously, although the resource can't actually work at
> > > 800% to do all of them in
> > > parallel.
> >
> > This question goes back to the definition of what a dependency is. 
> > Most
> > of the books say that a task A is dependent on a task B if task B 
> > can't
> > start until task A is finished. However, even though the tasks are
> > logically parallel, if the same person is going to do both tasks, that
> > person will almost always have a preference in the order they are 
> > done.
> > It is convenient to treat the tasks "as if" they were dependent and to
> > define dependencies between them.
> >
> > It is better to define a "treat them as if" dependency than to let the
> > tool define a random order for the tasks. This shows up most clearly
> > when you are taking status from the team. Say your team member has 
> > been
> > assigned tasks A, B, and C. that are logically parallel and so can be
> > done in any order.  Let's assume that the tasks will each take a week
> > to complete. You let the computer assign an arbitrary order to the
> > tasks and it comes up with C then B then A. What does your status look
> > like if the person decides to complete task A first? You would have to
> > report that task C is late and task A is early. You would also have to
> > explain to your management and to your customer why it is not a 
> > problem
> > to have a late task. Why create problems for yourself that can be
> > avoided?
> ... some snippage...
>
> I don't really see how this relates to my question, which was about
> resource overcommitment.

You asked whether there is a way in planner to define dependencies 
based on resource availability. The answer is "no". Planner only 
defines one kind of dependency that has to be used for all kinds of 
situations. The only controls you can set are whether a task should 
start on a specific date or after all of its prerequisites are complete.

I was also trying to make the point that even if Planner did have an 
algorithm for automatically adjusting tasks based on resources you 
might be better off not using it. Microsoft Project has an option for 
doing this, but most project managers tell me that it is difficult for 
them to predict the kinds of changes the algorithm will make and 
difficult to get it to do what they really wanted it to do. The 
computer just didn't understand the situation as well as they did. They 
ended up backing out the changes (sometimes starting over) and then 
making resource adjustments by hand.

The suggestion that Waldemar Augustyn made is the most sensible 
approach I have heard. Provide a tool kit of simple operations that the 
manager can use to adjust the schedule. Hopefully that's what Planner 
will provide in the future.

> Perhaps most readers of this list are thinking
> about software development projects and expect to a resource to be
> capable of being 100% committed to multiple tasks at once. I was 
> thinking
> of other situations where resources can not be overcommitted. For 
> example,
> if the resource is a piece of equipment. Can it be in my office 100% of
> time and in your office 100% of the time? You and I might have 
> logically
> parallel tasks, but if both of our tasks require the equipment 
> resource,
> they cannot procede in parallel (with 100% resource allocation), no 
> matter
> what our manager might wish.

> I accept that resource overcommitment should be allowed by the program,
> but I would like to be able to make resources non-overcommitable. If I
> have a non-overcommitable resource assigned to several logically 
> parallel
> tasks, then the program might give me a choice: A) order the tasks 
> prefer-
> entially, or B) allow the tasks to procede in parallel by dividing 
> (equally
> or not) the resource commitment among the tasks, or C) some 
> combination of
> A and B.

My hope is that the program will make it easy to see an potential over 
commitment (perhaps color coding the tasks -- like many word processors 
have the option of underling possible misspelled words), but I hope 
that it doesn't start prompting me how to fix them.

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