Let’s Challenge SPIDER

Hi Rafael,

Sorry, I just want to lay down some facts as regards to your statements (if I maybe allowed?):

"Planning without considering resources is not good Project Management; it is hard for me to believe how some (isn’t this ALL?) self proclaimed planners schedule their jobs without consideration for resources. I even have a few (again, ALL?) clients who do their initial “planning” without considering resources just to find out latter that their jobs are driven by availability of resources and then improvise"

Hi Carlos,
thank you for your question. Organization of the group work deserves special discussion.

Spider Project Professional, Desktop Plus and Lite support group work but differently.
Spider Project Professional includes not only project but also portfolio management tools. I understood that your question is about project management.

If the project has subprojects that are managed by different persons and organizations (we call such projects programs or multiprojects) then you will need Spider Project Professional for program management.

You shall also to implement some strict regulations on the time of program data updating. Program scheduling and reporting require the existence of the common data date for all subprojects that belong to the Program. So all program participanta shall enter actual information on the same date and time. These requirements are the same for evrybody who is responsible for updating program data.
Let’s suppose that the Program is updated on Tuesdays basing on the program status on Monday evening. So all Program participants shall enter actual status information strictly on the required time (Monday evening) to make the status date the same for all program subprojects. And this shall be done on Tuesday morning before the Program will be rescheduled and reports will be produced.

But subproject managers may require different frequency of data updating. In small subproject it may be necessary to reschedule daily to supply resources for the plans for the day (shift). So subproject managers may need to manage their subprojects separately, with their own data dates, resources, regulations though all of them shall follow program requirements and supply the program planner with the Monday evening statuses of their subprojects on Tuesday morning.

That is why Spider Project uses special organization of the group work with the program data.

Program Planner creates Responsibility Breakdown Structure where phases are the names of responsible managers, activities in these phases are those that belong to their subprojects. Program Planner creates a list of responsible managers and enters the folder paths where to send them their subprojects and where to take updated models. These responsible managers are assigned to the phases in the responsibility structure.

When the command Distribute suprojects is selected by Program Planner Spider Project replicates the Program model and sends to each of responsible managers the models of their subprojects for the autonomous work until the next update. Now subproject managers may work with their own regulations until the next Tuesday (for an example updating the model every day). All of them know that it is necessary to update their models to the status of Monday evening on Tuesday morning because at 10:00 on Tueasday Program Planner will select the command Consolidate subprojects and all information in the program model will updated by the information that exists in the subproject models. This way the new version of the program model will be created and the previous one will be kept in the program archive. The program shall be rescheduled and analyzed, corrective actions may be planned, and after new plan for a week will be accepted Program Planner selects the command Distribute subprojects ...

At the lower levels program planners may use not professional but Desktop version of Spider Project that is much cheaper. They do not need to work in the network, they just need to place their models with Monday evening status to specified folder, to FTP server, or just send by E-mail. The size of Spider Project files is relatively small.

But if you manage relatively small project where project participants just enter actuals (not work with the models adding activities, assigning resources, costs, etc.) then you don’t need to replicate project model and use different model of the collaboration. And for this model you can use Spider Project Desktop Plus (two times cheaper than professional version).

You still need Responsibility Structure but this time people are responsible for entering actuals for different activities. Usually they are assigned as resources but sometimes you can decide that actual data shall be entered by somebody else (foremen, etc.).

But this time Spider Project will send not the models of subprojects but table Reporting Forms that include the data of what is planned for current time period (list of planned activities, assigned resources, planned dates, volumes of work, durations, costs, material consumption for all planned activities).

For each parameter this form includes initial, planned and remaining quantities. If actuals differ from planned actual quantities shall be entered and other parameters will be adjusted. An example - if you entered actual activity volume of work, the software adjusts the remaining volume of work, actual and remaining duration, actual and remaining costs and material consumption.
You can modify actual data with the forecasts of remaining volumes, durations, costs, material requirements.

Entering actual and forecasted data you shall save this form to the specified folder, FTP server or just send it to Project Planner. Using command Consolidate monitoring data Project planner updates project model creating its new version. Previous version is stored in the project archive.

Reporting forms can be opened and filled with Spider Demo that is free. They can be exported to Excel and imported from Excel.

And of course you can create different access to the project data for different project participants defining what they can see and edit.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Anoon,

You are correct +/- 0.000000%

Maybe because of inefficient software that cannot do good resource leveling and do not show resource critical path some schedulers avoid it at all while others make use of "soft relationships". Soft relationships is what my clients use, I resource load the schedules on my own to double check but although the results are viable they are inefficient.

The true practical value of resource leveling is starting to show up with Spider Project and I would like all software to be as good, this software is raising the bar without you having to learn new science, it does the math for you.

Project Management is like playing music for dancers, if the music is slow the dancers will move slowly, if fast the dancers will go fast, if slow, fast, slow, fast ... dancers will fall. A good Project Manager makes sure the tempo of his job start fast and keeps it this way. This is impossible to do with inefficient resource allocation, with many ups and downs, with available resources being used inefficiently or unused, your labor perception on urgency goes down.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael,
looks like Nobody is willing to take your Spider Challenge at resource leveling.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

Spider not only shines with regard to resource usage, probably the most important of all functionalities, but also in many others.

Among one of the functionalities we have not talked is how you update the schedule, this is someting you don’t realize at the beginning, when you start exploring the software.

It seems that by default when you update the schedule you update the period actuals and not only the to-date, it also prevent updating the schedule activities by mistake and keeps a clear and auditable log of every update. Keeping the integrity of the data is a serious matter, Spider takes care of it in a practical way.

If you can give me some hints on this, with the understanding I am new at it, I will appreciate it.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael,
Spider Project keeps the history of project changes and among other project tables has Performance Archive table that keeps all actual data entries.

Entering actuals you don’t play with any percent complete. You shall enter physical volumes that were done, time that was spent, materials consumed and money spent on project activities during the considered period. Besides the user can enter expected remaining volumes, durations, material requirements.

I don’t understand percent complete approach. If 40% of activity volume of work was done, 50% of activity duration was passed, 60% of material 1 and 35% of material 2 were consumed what is percent complete?

Spider Project also keeps project history and comparing two project versions you can get the reports on any changes that happened between selected dates. You can also get reports on project performance for any time period (from one date to another).

If you will have specific questions I will be glad to answer.

I also have some questions to everybody.

In Russia (and not only) some workers are paid not for the time but for the quantity of work that was done by these workers. In this case resource hour cost does not make sense. The same if resource is subcontractor - the client pays for the work and not for the time.
How to model this in Suretrak, P3, P6, etc.?

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

We call it piecework, very common here for some trades such as cement plastering and masonry block installation. I can be specific only for Puerto Rico, in the Continental US, I suppose, it is similar because we are subject to the same laws regarding minimum wage.

Here is common to pay a whole day or eight hours for a required production, is easier to model in our payroll systems. For example the installation of 350 concrete blocks means eight hours even when you finish after 5 hours. Our laws require you pay a minimum wage and report payroll per hour. Also you cannot claim these are individual subcontractors and avoid paying payroll tax such as social security, unemployment insurance, workmen’s compensation and vacations among a few others. Our local labor department recognizes these agreements if written and the result payment ends being more than the minimum wage.

Therefore in this case we get a better prediction on productivity; we schedule the resource the eight hours for the agreed production.

On the other hand we pay earth moving on trucks per a formula as established by our government agencies, these are considered to be individual contractors when they use their own trucks. Here we have to use average production based on an estimated capacity of the truck and the particular conditions of the job, such as the distance of earth moving by truck.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael,
here we pay per volume units - per cubic meter, or kg, etc without transforming the price into hour costs. In any case paying for hours means that different actual data will mean wrong payment. How do you manage resource costs with your software?

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

For labor we pay 8 hours for a fixed production, the labor end its day when reaches the production, there are no different actual data, on the contrary and very simple a fixed production per fixed 8 hour or per day. No error with payment at all. By law we are not allowed to use piecework to evade the law and not pay labor tax. Only on rainy days an adjustment is made.

Regarding earth movement by independent truckers it is by cubic meter, these are considered individual contractors and the rate is established by a government agency.

If you move dirt on a road you must use these independent contractors, if within a site, without getting into any road you can use your own.

Here we have been for years in argument with the Workmen’s Compensation Agency that does not recognize truckers as independent contractors. We, contractors end up paying their Workmen’s Compensation based not on actual payroll but on an estimated payroll for the work based on a percentage of the payment to these individual contractors, kind of ironic.

In general we like the Workmen’s Comp idea as if you pay for it, in case of accident, you as employer have immunity, also the fee is reasonable, substantially lower than using private insurance companies. This we know because at some federal jobs we are required to use the private insurance companies and the fee is very high, and in addition as employer you do not get the immunity, being liable in case of accident.

Vladimir, different States have different laws, so there might be differences among the states. But the idea of providing you with as much information as I can is that you can understand our particular needs. I hope eventually Spider Project becomes one of the dominant CPM software here, because of its own merits, because is excellent software.

If Primavera can be all over the world, why Spider Project being a better product cannot? For this to happen you have to stop thinking only on the Russian experience, I understand your question is because Spider Team cares.

By the way on friday I was at a meeting discussing a Bid, because of the job duration we will be in need of scheduling two shift, if awarded the job, here Spider fuctionality shines as no other.

Best regards,
Rafael

Thank you, Rafael.
I know that we shall learn the needs of different markets. We have customers in 26 countries but most Spider Project users are Russian speaking.
I still don’t understand. Let’s suppose that the job for 8 hours the workers had done in 6 hours. Instead of working further they just leave the construction site? If they did not do the work in 8 hours they work until they will do the expected amount? What about the next shift?
If to enter actual information that the workers worked only 6 hours then the cost of the work will be wrong?
So acceleration is forbidden?
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

You got it right because of our laws acceleration using the same labor to produce more than a "days" work is forbidden. You got to use other shift that might start earlier or use more employees (no subcontractors, no way our laws will recognize individuals as independent contractors unless specific requirements are met.

Yes after they finish the production of a single day they will leave the construction site until next day.

We will enter 8 hours work and you better pay over minimum wage for the eight hours. If latter you are proved to evade the minimum wage law the penalty will be 100% payable to the employee plus all due labor taxes and very high penalties.

I am not sure but if you allow them to work over the basic eight hour production, the remaining might be interpreted as overtime and payable at twice the rate, here in the construction business our "Mandatory Decree" does not recognize 1-1/2 pay rate. For other industries it is different, the same as for holidays.

It would be good if you get info from Mainland US Contractors, to get the big picture.

Best regards,
Rafael

Here we use different approach.
People are paid for the quantities like per each cubic meter of concrete. If they will do more they will earn more but proportionally. This way people are motivated to work faster but there is a need for proper quality control.
The same with contractors - there are fixed price or fixed unit price contracts.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

1) I cannot vertical scroll the lower half window, is it a demo limitation?

2) The Labor Cost Curve uses as a reference an ASAP schedule, I can set another Baseline to show ALAP but not in the same screen two baselines, maybe I am wrong, please comment as I am trying to show Early and Late curves on the same screen.

Note costs are not linear as I am exploring other cost functions, using fixed costs on a few activities, don’t pay attention to the model details.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael,
the histograms part of the window has not scrolling.
We do not expect that people want to have hidden histograms.
This feature can be added if necessary.
You can show Early and Late Cost Curves but not together with the current cost curve.
If you will calculate and save late schedule and budget, then ASAP schedule and budget and compare these two versions you will be able to show both in the same screen. But still only two curves.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

For your knowledge, I use the ALAP data only to show the Owners and others not knowlegeable of CPM that the Progress Curve is not an absolute measure of your job status, not to mention ASAP only. The request is a matter of convenience, not of high priority. I will try with your suggestion.

Regarding the histograms the way Spider Project presents them, aligned with the schedule on top is just what I need. I keep my histograms one per resource as this is easier to understand but it will make it easier to have the lower screen to scroll verically as to accept as many histograms I need to be readily available and latter-on to be printed with my schedules. This request for me is of high priority.

By the way I am starting to explore the cost functions, something I rarely use but for the moment the interface seems very good, still to explore it at the updating time.

Best regards,
Rafael

Vladimir,

Early and Late curves done easily in two separate files, the same for the jobs comparison, because this I do only when baselining there is no issue. The export to Excel function with the baselines and updates shall be no problem.

Eventually might try a script to create the ALAP schedule with a single click of the mouse, but first things first, still crawling, after my first complete job I will be running.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael,
thank you for proposal, we will create histogram window vertical scrolling.
As for Alap schedule try the script but even without scripts it can be esily done if to create formulae Alap=’Alap’
Applying this formulae and recalculating project schedule you will get AlAP schedule.
Regards,
Vladimir

"histogram window vertical scrolling" that is great news, as you know the horizontal scrolling other software do without showing the schedule above is no good. This will be better than those who can only show a single histogram.

About the script, forget it, so easy with a formula as per your suggestion, you can toggle back and forth at a snap.
I defined two formulae as follows:
Alap=’Alap’
Alap=’Asap’
just execute for desired value to toggle back and forth, yes as you said, a piece of cake, a third formula can easily be done if your model combines ALAP with ASAP so you can go back to the original.

Quote from Vladimir:

_"In Spider Project you can enter recursive formulaes like making all durations two times longer. That is why we do not use automatic (Formulae) calculations."

_"You can set that formulaes that link cost components and cost centers will be executed automatically with any cost calculations. You can set that some formulaes will be executed automatically when you entered actual information and others not."

I still would like to have the additional option to select for “Automatic perform after schedule update”. This option when in conflict with recursive formulas or with other selected formulas to be dimmed and not available for selection until the user resolves the conflict, the same when creating recursive formulas.

In the following example my formula to display Start and Finish dates in nominal days is not computed automatically, I had to create a script to run the two formulae, one for Start and another for Finish.





If I can automate it when not in conflict, I would like to do so. But never eliminate the option for recursive formulas.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael,

I just thought that I can do the same in excel, using your formula.

cheers

Anoon,

Of course you can, but the constant might not be the same as might be based on a different 0 day. This one I figured it out by looking at some values and then by trial and error, for Excel there should be many references or you can figure it out yourself by tial and error until it converges.

What is novel in Spider Project is the concept of using recursive formulas, formulas whose value depends on itself. Of course in Spider Project these are a single loop run.

Best regards,
Rafael

Vladimir,

Did Spider Project ever considered using drop down icons in the toolbars such as the following example used by Autocad? I don’t mean the ribbon as this takes much valuable space, the hundreds if not thousands of menu items in Autocad even requires a combination of the ribbon and drop down icons.



Best regards,
Rafael

Rafael,
an idea looks attractive but icons take more space than just text and our drop-down menues are too large.
You were right that developing interface it is necessary to use the space wisely.
What we need to do - to create an interface where functionalities can be switched on and off.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

The interface as of now I love it, is uncluttered and the toolbars icons get you directly to over 90% of your navigation, the 10% I prefer it to be at the menu bar. If you add all menu items to the vertical and horizontal toolbars then the toolbars will be cluttered and will slow down your 90% navigation needs, will kill its purpose.

The idea of drop down icons is for in case you need to add some icons to the toolbars this is a possibility to consider, please keep it close to what it is now, don’t over do it.

About an interface to switch on and off functionalities I would only switch off risks and trends. We have pending a discussion about this but now I am getting somewhat busy for another couple of weeks and this topic deserves serious and long debate. Although I am somewhat reluctant to complicate things further with these functionalities I want to listen to what you have to say, I don’t want to repeat the mistake of not listening at you as I did for many years until now.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael - Hi Vladimir

I have just got a real planning job putting together a roll out programme for all the road maintanance operations for Suffolk County Council for the next three years.

It will probably reach about 130,000 activities on 600 projects per year.

I am using PowerProject enterprise and I am also using the resource levelling software.

They only have 2 road paving machines that need to be kept occupied throughout the paving season so I let powerproject do it for me.

If you are interested I will keep you informed on progress.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Hi Mike,
I am very interested.
I like large programs with resource restrictions.
Are there other restricitions except one drum resource?
Do you plan to create resource management plan finding what optimal amounts of other resources are needed to keep drum resource busy?
I will have more questions if you will keep us informed.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

P.S. Do you use the levelling software other than PowerProject? Why? What software do you use?

Mike and Vladimir

Are you considering optimizing the movement from job to job by minimizing distance? Let say crew is at grid location no C20 so it first will look for jobs at location C20, if not available then at locations B19, B20, B21, C19, C21, D19, D20, D21?

Going from grid location C20 to grid location W12 when a job at C20 is ready to start is not optimal.

Best regards,
Rafael

Rafael,
I expect that the sequence of maintenance jobs is defined. If not then it is necessary to solve this task first.
Mike will inform us.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Hi Vladimir,

If I may ask, how do you define the sequence of works like preventive or predictive maintenance (not a routine maintenance)?

cheers

Usually there is a year program for the maintenance.
The order of works can be defined by program planner.
Please specify what do you mean by preventive and predictive, I am not sure that understood you correctly.
But I am leaving Russia until Tuesday and will be able to answer only on return.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

"Preventive Maintenance" - I’m also not sure if there is a standard definition, I just happen to step on it and made me believe that this type of works exist. How to define it?

Maybe others have any ideas?

Hi Anoon

Have a look here:
http://www.maintenanceworld.com/Articles/worshamw/ispreventive.html

"Preventive maintenance is planned maintenance of plant and equipment that is designed to improve equipment life and avoid any unplanned maintenance activity. PM includes painting, lubrication, cleaning, adjusting, and minor component replacement to extend the life of equipment and facilities. Its purpose is to minimize breakdowns and excessive depreciation." (quotation from this site)

With other words: If e.g. you know that after 100000hours of operation there is a risk, a certain pump will break down, you’ll change it after 100000 hours to prevent a plant or a refinery from breakdown or you’ll exchange engine oil of a car on a regular basis.

Best regards
Dieter

Lucky you, we are not in preventive maintenance, more like in covering potholes. They come out faster than we can cover them.

Hi All

What a response!

I am only 12 days into the task and already you have listed one or two of the particular problems.

The main problem however is controlling the "Lead In" tasks where for even a simple Pot Hole infill of 2 days duration there are about 125 taslks that have to be completed in time before the start.

Road Closure permits are only a part of all the consultations and surveys that have to be undertaken by about 8 different agencies before a truck goes out with a bucket of tar and grit and three guys to fill up the hole.

I have estimated that the full programme will exceed 200mb.

This is my first hands on experience of public sector working and it is a big eye opener.

In the real commercial world the same work load would be done with about 30% of the current work force.

Best regards

Mike Testro.

Hi again! I’m coming back from a long period of internet shortage.
Thanks Vladimir for the answer in collaborative work. Last week I mentioned Spider in a talk with my boss when he mentioned they will be updating the P6 licenses this year.
Now, I have been using Spider in my (little) spare time, trying to see if I can get a similar workflow in Spider than the P3’s workflow the managers are used to. The first thing is, Contractual (signed) schedule is grouped and sorted according to P3 activity codes. So, this post’s question #1 is: Given the case, can Spider use P3 activity codes to group and sort the gantt chart?

Question #2: How do I define an activity where a person can write one page per three hours (this includes necessary research), if he has to write 30 pages working 10 hours daily? The day starts at 8:00 AM, then we get one and half hour free at 2:00 PM, to return to the office at 03:30 PM until 7:30 PM where we say Yabadaba-doo and leave the office.

Hi Carlos,
1) Yes, Spider Project can group and sort activities by codes.
This function can be found at Activity Gantt menu Project/WBS and then Create by codes. Grouping activities Spider Project creates additional WBS and later you can easily switch between defferent WBSs selecting them in the special Gantt Chart window. Try this in Demo version and inform me if this is what you expected.
2) You define that activity volume is 30 (pages), that resource (person) productivity is 0.333 (pages per hour, the number of digits after zero may be nine), that work time is 8:00 - 14:00; 15:30 - 19:30; (defined at the Weeks table that can be found at the Calendars section of the main window middle part). That’s all. The software calculates everything else. Separate calendars (including work days, weeks, and exceptions) can be defined for each resource, activity and lag.

Thank you for your questions and Best Regards,
Vladimir

Carlos,

About your question no 1:

In Spider Project you are not limited to a single WBS, you can have as many as you want, and yes you can define any WBS on activity codes, no surprise you are not limited in how many activity codes you can define in case 20 or 30 is not enough.



There is more than meets the eye to this functionality as there is some other powerful functionality regarding the handling of WBS in Spider Project.

About importing activity codes directly from P3, I do expect when you import a P3 file into Spider Project these will be imported.

About your question no 2:

I believe in Spider Project you can set the activity type to productivity and then the duration of the activity will be calculated during scheduling. Initial data for this activity type is its volume and assignments productivity, from this everything will follow.

Explore the above until Vladimir can expand.

How is the weather in Acapulco and Cancun? Here seems like a perfect day for scuba diving. Yes, but Murphy says on the weekend it will rain.

Vladimir,

Seems like our response crossed in the way. Can you expand on Spider Project P3 import, do we get the activity codes imported? The demo does not have the P3 import functionality available.

Best regards,
Rafael

Hi Rafael,
thank you for your help and reminding that I forgot to mention that it is necessary to select activity type Productivity in my answer to the second question.
I should add that productivity is not resource but resource assignment feature.
Best Regards,
Vladimir

Carlos,

In Spider Project you can import P3e files to Spider Project, this option might work better when importing from P6 to Spider Project converting from P6 to P3 to Spider Project (P3e not equal to P3 similar names different software) .

From Spider Help:

The user can import a project from Primavera P3e SQL database to Spider Project. To perform import:

In the Main window menu select File –> Create Project –> From Primavera Data Base.

In the opened Create project from database dialog box select required Primavera P3e database and press Open. In the opened list of projects (with project codes, version number and name) the user can select required project (for further import) or press Close (to stop import and close database).

Press Import. Selected project will be imported to Spider Project. Code and name of the imported project will appear in the opened Project properties dialog box.

Note that: the user must have database options set for the database from which the project is imported. In order to establish initial connection to Primavera P3e database the user must specify user name privuser and password privuser.

During Primavera P3e project import database fields without counterpart in Spider Project database structure are transferred to user-type fields (see Fields’ list dialog box). These fields can be useful in some cases; e.g. to obtain the same activities order as in Primavera P3e project the user can sort activities in the Activity Gantt by seq_num field.

Best regards,
Rafael

Carlos,

I just heard that Spider Project new version is about to be released. It will have conditional formulas to define relationships, unique new functionality above ancient CPM functionality, FS and no lag, also above now antiquated PDM schedules with only SS, SF, FS and FF with lag relationships in precedence schedules and no more.

To me true float and optimal resource allocation available in Spider Project and nowhere else was a checkmate on all the others, at the click of the mouse, no brain needed, but this will be like checkmate on the first move.

As soon as this new functionality is on the demo you should explore it, this is serious stuff.

Best regards,
Rafael

Thank you Vladimir and Rafael, I’m now making my planning. I must say, it got a smile out of me when I introduced my work hours and Spider calculated the daily hours and the workweek.

I’m wondering if there’s a way to model some holydays of the type: "Third monday of February" (USA President’s day) or "Third monday of March" (Mexico’s President Day).

Now that you mention it Rafael, I wish I coud be in Cancun or Acapulco right now, lying in a Hammock under the palms with my coco and my tekila. But they are some hundred KM from my place, I must do a careful planning. Think of it, since Spider has Hammocks, It now just needs cocos and tekila.

Best regards.
Carlos

Carlos,

You can explore in Excel the following formulas, you can figure out how to adapt them to your holidays. About Good Friday you must ask a Maya Indian, they figured out the calendar for moon phases.





Best regards,
Rafael

Vladimir,

1. What is the purpose of the option for selecting one of your many WBS as the Main WBS?
2. Is this for Project portfolios, to tell the software which to use?
3. If for Project Portfolios can I change the WBS of a particular project to another WBS by changing the particular job Main WBS?
4. What about other users on the network can they select their own WBS per job on a Portfolio?
5. How many projects you can have on a single portfolio?

Keep in mind the demo does not have the Portfolios/Enterprise functionalities; I have no way of exploring these.

I would appreciate if you can e-mail me a screen capture of a screen showing a multiple jobs Activity GANTT .

Best regards,
Rafael

I GOT A RESOURCE LOADED SCHEDULE!

I made a schedule for the realization of a productivity claim, involving me and another analyst.

CTRL+F9 gives the duration of the claim works, without adding any relationship =D. But it gets the final evaluation in the beggining and the information collecting last ... How do I assign priorities?

To assign priorities, select the activity/phase by double clicking on the line as to show the activity/phase properties dialog box there on the Data/Initial Data tab you can enter the priority or you can enter the data into any one of the two the Gantt Chart column panes, after you make the priority column to show, and there you can assign activity/phase priority.

It will be interesting to know how the results vary depending on the leveling method selected, optimization might favor the owner. We are lagging with these methods, here Vladimir can tell us about the Russian experience.

Also would like to know if the resource critical float and path help others to understand resource availability can be critical. It is kind of ironic how our definition of float cannot be correctly shown under limited resources in most of our specified software (other than Spider).

Best regards,
Rafael

Rafael,
below are the answers to your questions.

Main structure is one of many WBSs that can be created for the same project. Among these multiple WBSs you can create the structures that include only part of the project activities and will get all reports on this part. But at least one of project WBS shall be full and include all project activities. You can add and delete WBS but there is a danger that you will try to delete your only full WBS. So one of WBS is called Main, it is certainly full and cannot be deleted. If you decide that main WBS shall be deleted select some other full WBS and call it Main.

Multiple WBS are used not only in separate projects but also in the project portfolio. There is a need to synchronize WBS codes for creating portfolio WB structures from the structures of individual projects. When projects are consolidated in the single portfolio model the software looks at the WBS codes.

There are no restricitions on the number of projects in the portfolio. At the last PMI College of Scheduling conference there was a presentation on Project Portfolio management in Romanian Telecom. They had approximately 2000 projects in their portfolio.

Olympic Program Sochi 2014 includes approximately 250 large construction projects that are included in the single portfolio.

Spider Pro Demo includes portfolio functionality. But don’t forget about 40 activities restriction. If you will create two projects with the total number of activities that does not exceed 40 you can create the portfolio, add these projects to this portfolio and play with portfolio features.

But don’t forget that portfolio management is supported only by Spider Project Professional. Other versions work with the separate projects. Using Desktop you will need to keep all your projects in one model if you will want to level resources across multiple projects and get summary reports.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Hi Carlos,
Rafael already described the priority assignments.
I want to add some information on Spider Project priority usage.
If you select Standard levelling and select any levelling criteria then all your priorities will be considered. But if you will select Optimization and Spider Project will find that the schedule that took into account your priorities is not optimal then it may suggest shorter schedule where some priorities are ignored.
If you are certain that some activity shall be done later than others enter links. We consider priorities as "nice to to have" option in addition to the logical dependencies that are entered. They are usually apllied for what if estimates.
Phase priorities are considered first but don’t forget to switch on Apply phase priorities in the Levelling dialog.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Vladimir,

I tried Portfolio Management within the demo as per your suggestion; you should have not mentioned it. Now that I found how easy Portfolio Management can be as compared to P6 I am starting to like the functionality.

Most of my clients will prefer the desktop version because of price, 1/3rd that of P3 and P6, with 99% of all the goodies and not a stripped down to a G-string version as Primavera Contractor is. Most want everyone in the management team to have their own license, and there are a few that really need the Portfolio Management functionality, and being so easy why not.

Best regards,
Rafael

Congratulations Vladimir for reaching 200 posts in this topic!! It is a great adventure to be learning Spider.

For this 200 post here’s a little trivia:

What’s the spanish word for "Spider" ?

The answer may amaze you.

C. Arana

Carlos, hide your last name, dont’t give any clue to Vladimir.