Re: [Planner] Tasks assigned to same resource scheduled concurrently?

[Roberto Leibman <roberto leibman net>]

I used to be somewhat active in the TOC (Theory of Constraints) list and 
the ProChain list, but I didn't bother re-subscribing a few email 
addresses ago. In fact, I'm just looking at my archives and it seems 
since 1999!

Other people that I remember as being very knowleadgable on the subject:
Tony Rizzo (last I knew he was with lucent)
Rob Newbold (I have his compuserve address, which tells you how old my 
info is)
Lisa Scheinkopf (She wrote another of the TOC books)

Some relevant lists that I used to be subscribed to:
cmsig lists apics org
prochain listbot com

I'm not sure if Mr. Newbold would be interested in participating in an 
open source solution, since he develops (developed?) a non-free 
solution. It wouldn't hurt to ask, you can probably contact him through 
prochain (www.prochain.com). From a quick reading of their website 
they've been busy creating tools to manage multi-project environments 
(which is a whole different problem altogether).

Seriously? Though I like planner, I do think that it is as good as it 
gets in this respect, the application is good, but it is the foundation 
that is flawed, and if I wanted to do a "proper" tool I'd start from 
scratch (perhaps reusing part of the object model).

Take for example Gantt charts: They are one of the best ways to see at a 
glance your project, the tasks involved and what leads to what, but they 
have a deep flaw: they show tasks as taking up a defined amount of time, 
which is one of the most insidious erroneous assumptions in Project 
Management (tasks are much better defined using a probability curve). 
The "right" tool would not use Gantt charts as such (because of their 
deceptive value) but develop something different. People look at a Gantt 
chart in an instant of time and think that it is exactly the way that 
the project is supposed to develop. It never is, the project constantly 
changes, milestones are rarely (if ever) hit, and managers spend hours 
updating it throughout the project, the same manager using just PERT 
charts spends much less time fiddling with the stupid project plan. On 
top of that, to be able to hit the milestones enforced by the Gantt 
chart, all kind of buffering is put in place, which delays a project.

Projects managed with tools like Planner (or MSProject for that matter) 
end up being like train schedules, you know at what times the train is 
supposed to arrive at the station, if the train is delayed anywhere it 
is delayed everywhere, but if the train happens to get some tail wind 
and get to a station before it's due it still has to wait there for its 
departure time. In other words: delays accumulate but early deliverables 
don't. That's (IMHO) the biggest reasons for a project being late.

Tom Miller wrote:

> Roberto,
>
>    Thanks... I wonder if Newbold could be contacted to contribute
>    to this discussion somehow.
>
>    Tom
>
> On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 11:01, Roberto Leibman wrote:
>  
>
> > Tom Miller wrote:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > Roberto,
> > >
> > >   Good point(s).   Um, are there any nice tools which do
> > >   Critical Chain stuff?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > The only one I'm aware of (and it's been a while since I've seen/used 
> > it) is an add-on to MS Project called ProChain, developed by (IIRC) Rob 
> > Newbold, a very knowleadgable person on the theory of the whole thing, 
> > but it was very hackish. I've always dreamed of creating one, but it 
> > would require time/effort. As I said before, maybe next time I'm doing 
> > heavy PMing (currently I only need to PM myself, so  I'm the only 
> > resource available).
> >
> >    
> >
> > >   Tom
> > >
> > > On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 09:35, Roberto Leibman wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > >
> > > > <rant>
> > > > It's funny that what's perfectly obvious to someone new to project 
> > > > management is ignored by most experts.
> > > >
> > > > I have to agree with Josep that any tool that does project management 
> > > > has to make resource constraints a first-order problem, and not an 
> > > > afterthought. I've yet to see any widely used tool that does this; 
> > > > Primavera, MS Project, etc don't do it, they all require you to go 
> > > > through hoops to do resource leveling and most of the time you end up 
> > > > having to create artificial temporal dependencies such as the suggestion 
> > > > given to Josep. These dependencies are at best a workaround, but in 
> > > > practice they can be detrimental to the project because they obscure the 
> > > > possibility of doing tasks in parallel by the "simple" addition of 
> > > > resources to a task, in practice, as the project progresses you figure 
> > > > out that the link is artificial and often end up doing the task in 
> > > > parallel anyway, thereby throwing your hands in the air and saying: 
> > > > "screw this project plan", or even worse, spending another couple of 
> > > > hours redoing the whole thing (and then an hour's meeting explaining the 
> > > > "new and improved" project plan to the team.
> > > >
> > > > Which is why there exist better methodologies than Critical Path 
> > > > analysis (yeah, I know, I repeat myself) such as Critical Chain 
> > > > management, that take into account resource constraints from the beginning.
> > > > </rant>
> > > >
> > > > Josep Monés i Teixidor wrote:
> > > >
> > > >   
> > > >
> > > >        
> > > >
> > > > > El dj 03 de 03 del 2005 a les 13:56 +0100, en/na Max Lists va escriure:
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >     
> > > > >
> > > > >          
> > > > >
> > > > > > Hi,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You have to "link" the 2 sub task to tell task2 goes after task1.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > File attached.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >  
> > > > > >
> > > > > >       
> > > > > >
> > > > > >            
> > > > > Ah Ok! I knew I could do it this way but I expected the software to do
> > > > > that automatically, because tasks aren't conceptually sequential, it's
> > > > > just a resource problem. If I assign, for instance, task2 to another
> > > > > resource, I have also to remember unlinking it (and possibly unlinking
> > > > > and relinking many tasks which depended on task2).
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks very much.
> > > > >
> > > > > Josep
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
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> > > > >
> > > > >     
> > > > >
> > > > >          
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