CIOB Time Management Research

excuse me Rafael, I never said that MSP blah blah...

what I’m trying to say for example: if you want to get the square root of 25, you don’t have to tell the "tool" that it’s 5 (or you already know the answer).

Likewise, for a scheduling tool, if you want to ask how many carpenters will you be needing at a certain time, it will tell you exactly what it knows (assuming that you don’t know anything, but you know that you got 10 carpenters for disposal).

I just assume that MSP can never do that, I mean in just one press of a button.

cheers!

Hello all,

Yes I agree that the procedures are pretty annoying.
I guess the ultimate thing is to arrive at a conclusion that there are rules that guide those modifications. IF not we’d be performing some type of hard coding, a clear indication that the software miserably failed.

I am exchanging examples with Vladimir and trying to see if they can be solved in MSP.

When we’re done i’ll try to make a summary and post the examples somewhere and indicate how I arrived to a solution and the reason behind the steps taken. Hopefully that will help all of us understand things a little bit better.
But still i do understand why people get annoyed by it. I am annoyed too.

Regards
Roland

Anoon,

Quote: "What I’m trying to say for example: if you want to get the square root of 25, you don’t have to tell the "tool" that it’s 5 (or you already know the answer)."

This is how I believe Trevor solved the resource allocation for my sample job until he explain a simple procedure you can apply to a schedule with hundreds/thousands of activities with the knowledge it will yield the correct result.

About MSP blah blah, I still hold on MSP blah blah, I don’t like it at all, only P6 is worst. But it is still the most widely used scheduling software in the world; we all better learn how to get the most out of it.

Best regards,
Rafael

Roland

I will be waiting for your paper, thanks again.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi all,
MS Project is the good schedule visualisation and communication tool.
It was not designed for resource and cost management in complex projects. So don’t be angry and use the software for its purpose.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

I’m for Excel too! you can do what you want (even resource leveling) and never assume any result (whether right or wrong).

i’m never angry

Anoon,
unfortunately Excel cannot level resources, and cannot schedule activities. If some activity will be delayed you will need to do a lot of work moving the dates of all dependent activities.
It is impossible to manage complex projects using Excel.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Rafael, if you think that I was only able able to solve your example problem by inspection and judgement because it was so simple, please provide a more complicated, realistic one and I will solve that too.

Trevor,
do you suggest to find an optimal solution for 6000 activities and 75 resources schedule manually?
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Trevor,

I am challenging you to see if you give us the rationale, the same way Roland Tannous has provided us with useful guidance in the use of MS Project. I am interested in the logic, not on a single solution.

Maybe Anoon is right and you got the answer (the square root of 25) and then forced the scheduling options to get the answer (5) within MS Project, the easiest alternative would be using the solution by Spider Project.

Maybe you got an answer and we can put to rest all operation research scientists.

If you share your knowledge I will appreciate it, you already know from the spot I accepted your solution to my sample job as optimal and even checked it using SureTrak applying the equivalent priorities values and leveling options and got the same outcome.

If it is so easy then MS Project developers got to be very bad as not to be able to include an optimal solution within their software the same way Spider Project do, about Primavera developers there is no need to say how bad they are, after P6, a disaster from the very beginning, when they started with P3e, and after almost 10 years they are still debugging the software.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Anoon

"what I’m trying to say for example: if you want to get the square root of 25, you don’t have to tell the "tool" that it’s 5 (or you already know the answer)."

Sorry Anoon but its the wrong answer - it should be + or - 5.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Mike,

And now you come up with this, after all day taking out all grass from my lawn looking for a square root. As soon as I get a square root I will post the photo. I am already at my neighbors lawn.

Anoon,

Cotto will make a square root out of Pacquiau next Saturday.

Best regards,
Rafael

Rafael, I don’t even agree with your definition of "optimal" as the shortest duration possible. There may be many reasons to accept something a bit longer than that. It may be possible to produce a plan which is very tight but it has to be executed and coordinated on the ground, and the reality is that nothing can be executed like clockwork. So it has to be tight, but not too tight.

Rafael, the rationale is a mixture of judgement, care, careful thought and, yes, trial and error. Trial and error should not be so readily dismissed. It is not a random process, but a methodical and systematic one, usually aimed at eliminating scenarios which don’t work in order to narrow the field and find a "feasible solution space".
Trial and error approaches, such as the branch and bound methods, are well known and used all the time in OR.
When we are modeling a project, which is what project planning is, trying things out helps us to understand the problem. The best thing about the software tools is that the hard slog of the calculations is not an obstacle. Software allows many "what-ifs". Before software there just wasn’t the time available. Even now with software some types of OR problems cannot be solved because it just takes too long.

One trick I find very useful with resource leveling in MSP is to Group By Resource Name.

Vladimir, yes. Bigger just takes a little bit longer.

Vladimir,
You ask if I can do it "manually". I suppose that you do not mean with a pencil and paper and no software tool. I suppose you mean with MSP + judgement + care.
6000 tasks and 75 resources? This is not even a very big problem, but also not trivial. Is there an actual file or is this just a hypothetical? If it exists and you give it to me, I will do it.
Since it will take some time, can you provide an incentive, such as paying me at my usually hourly rate? No solution, no charge.

Vladimir,

Can you say the 6,000 tasks and 75 resources is not even a very big problem, but instead of not trivial also trivial to the scheduler when using Spider Project, that Spider Project can get an optimal soulution just at a click of the mouse, without the scheduler even thinking about special settings for the software to solve it? Without need of judgement and care? I am looking for a fool proof solution.

How long it would take for Spider Project to make a single resource leveling run on a notebook computer?

Best regards,
Rafael

Rafael,
Your point seems to be that you have your own opinion and you prefer Spider, and that is a choice that you are entirely free to make based on whatever reasons make sense to you. There is no need for you to convince everyone that you have made a good decision or the best decision, or that you are right and everyone else is wrong, although you are free to believe that if you choose. I am sure that Spider is very good software, and I would like to try it. I am prepared to accept that it is good from what Vladimir has described and explained about it. Also, Russia has a very good technical education and many talented programmers. For many years they had to perform mathematical miracles with inferior hardware so they were forced to be good at it, while in other countries programmers could be a bit lazier and let the hardware do the work.
Earlier you wanted an optimal solution. Now you demand a foolproof solution. I don’t need a foolproof solution because I don’t hire fools to do the job, no matter which tools we use.

Trevor

We do need foolproof solutions, in our country our Project Managers are overloaded and no matter how good they are at CPM scheduling, they simply do not have the time to be playing what if scenarios. In addition not all Project Managers are hooked on CPM, but they are the best qualified to plan the job. Most of our construction jobs cannot afford a full time scheduler on site, but the management issues must be solved as soon as possible, whether there is a scheduler or not, the Project Manager must solve the resource usage issues.

Just read the paper by the CIOB, seems that in the UK the situation is similar to ours and just the opposite to yours. We have no problem at all to be honest with our reality. To fill the gap we need software easy to use and more powerful, that efficiently deal with the issue on resource allocation, otherwise most jobs will continue to be scheduled without the CPM being resource loaded.

http://www.ciob.org.uk/filegrab/TM_report_full_web.pdf?ref=880

Your comment, "I don’t need a foolproof solution because I don’t hire fools to do the job, no matter which tools we use. " is arrogant, sems like you are still taking it personal, there is no need for it.

Best regards,
Rafael

Trevor,
you suggested me to pay for the decision I don’t need.
You asked for the real project, not me.

Spider Project finds the shortest resource constrained schedule for this project in 8 seconds. And my notebook is two years old and is not the fastest machine available.
You suggested to pay for the long time you will spend finding similar solution and honestly I don’t believe that you will ever do it.
This way you answered the question why the software that creates good schedules is profitable to have. It will save a lot of time, a lot of efforts, and a lot of money.

And having good and experienced field managers does not mean that the scheduling is not necessary as one can decide reading your post.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Hi Mike,

Yes, you are right it is supposed to be + and - (plus and minus), but you are looking for the absolute value, which is supposed to be the bottom line, so whether it is plus or minus doesn’t matter, but again, it matters in scheduling to know whether you are ahead or behind.

So I guess, you will need a dynamic formula for your manual leveling to become faster. Maybe Vladimir has it already, why don’t you try Spider?

cheers

Vladimir, I am sure you are right and I wish you all the best and I hope you sell a million licenses of Spider. And I will advise clients that MSP is not the only software tool, and direct them to the alternatives and they can make their own choices. Meanwhile, I still have to make a living in the world that is, not the one that might have been or the one that it might one day become.

Hey all,

Allow me to add one more thing.
Its something that is pretty obvious but I didn’t really pay attention to it until yesterday when I was trying to run Rafael’s example.
All MS products are made in such a modular way that you can write add-ins for those Products. Add-ins that would do anything you’d like in a much different way then the original product does.
Maybe ,sometimes, thats one reason MS doesn’t care about the basic features that come with its product that much. They count on 3rd parties to be improving these products through add-ins. Kind of the lazy’s man solution to making a lot of money.
Surprisingly there are many add-ins for MS Project. I used a demo of one of them yesterday and was really surprised it leveled Rafael’s example perfectly without having to trick it into doing it like Trevor already did with MS Project..

@Vladimir,
A more intuitive spider user interface would be nice. It already hurts my eyes . :)

Regards
Roland

Roland,
those who use Spider Project consider MS Project interface as not logical and hard to use.
It is natural.
Besides, Spider Project has much more functions and thus options. It makes its interface more complicated.
We will work to create an option to hide the functions that are not necessary now.

I know about some of MS Project scheduling add-ins. Some of them produce better schedules for small projects but work poor with the large schedules. But I don’t know all of them. So please give us the reference.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

A question for Mr. Rafael Davila (if I maybe allowed):

What really made you think and said that P6 is the worst?

Is it in general? If not, in terms of what?

Thanks

Anoon,

By taking a look at the Forum Discussion Category Primavera Version PM5 / PM6 you will see how many questions are there regarding the many bugs within the software.

Is even hard to get simple graphic reports with functionality similar to old P3, is more like you are limited to screen or layout printouts. This was an issue about 10 years ago when P3e was introduced, a software different to P3 and developed by another enterprise who sold the software to Primavera.

Primavera P6 has so many date definitions it even creates confusion, and some data fields seems like temporary calculation values.

Primavera P6 does not gives you a single automatic algorithm that look for optimum resource leveling, it cannot even provide you with true float values under resource leveling. Of course the various definition of optimal solution might require various algorithms. My main concern is job duration, for others might be resource smoothing, not as defined by Primavera but to minimize incremental changes in resource loading, for others might be Time-Cost trade off to minimize total project cost as a function of project duration.

The software is pricey and you can get better value from other software that is more efficient and less demanding on the hardware. At home we consider it too expensive and we have serious issues with the Government agencies, mainly uncle Sam, the US Government, because even against the federal procurement rules (FAR) many US Government Agencies brand specify Primavera, you have no option, is a matter of force, bullies take advantage of it.

What can you do when your own institutions evade the law, as the procurement regulations are supposed to have the full force of the law? I guess is complain, and make your voice heard. If not because of this I would not be comparing other products with Primavera, there would be no need. I am for allowing the end user to select the tool. If you are working on a lump sum job then the Contractor should be free to select the tool of his choosing, if you are under a PM type of agreement then the PM is the one who shall select the tool. We are in need of government agencies to stop evading the law. We need to get our government agencies, State and Federal, to issue performance specifications that do not favor a particular software.

GSA serves as the acquisition and procurement arm of the federal government, the following was extracted from one of their job specs.



Obviously, under free choice, I would expect MS Project to be the most widely used in Government Contracts, and why not?

Best regards,
Rafael