Updating of Milestone Activities

In the lack of an option for the Topic Activity that was available in SureTrack but not in P3 the workaround is to create a milestone that will set the start of the group of activities that would be under the Topic Activity and another milestone to define the end of the group of activities.

Fredric Plotnick somewhere revived the concept of the Topic Activity under a different name but cannot find the reference, if anyone of you find it please let me know. I was in one of his articles relating to Relationship Driven CPM.

This workaround creates some havoc, you needs extra activities, milestones that must be properly updated or chaos might surface if wrongly updated.

My call is for a milestone type [Topic Milestone] that will affect other activities but that will be automatically updated.

This is another type of milestone in addition to the regular milestone. Also different to a [Flag Milestone] that also would not require updating but will be frozen in time, a milestone that would not drive any other activity a milestone that would have no effect on schedule computations, different functionality.

Of course I would like to have the three mentioned options,  the Topic Activity, the Topic Milestone and the Flag Milestone .

I have the workaround for the Topic Activity [not easy and error prone], but no workaround for the Topic Milestone, this is what at minimum I am looking for. As we say at home "a falta de pan galletas" [in the lack of bread then cookies].

Rafael,

unfortunately I don't understand your request.

Please suggest an example of topic activity and topic milestone.

Regards,

Vladimir

Topic Activities in SureTrak are WBS Activities that can have driving predecessors and can drive successors.

The following is my workaround to model Topic Activity using Milestones, cumbersome, isn't it?

Predecessors/Successors to a Topic Activity are Predecessors/Successors of all the child activities.

Because Spider does not have WBS activities per se but Summary Bars at a WBS level I am using a Hammock to mimic WBS Activities. A WBS Activity that I called before a Group Activity [to avoid confusion when you have more than a single WBS dictionary as in Spider] shall be visible on any WBS Dictionary.

About Topic Milestones I do not have a workaround, this is my request, to at least have a workaround. As per my definition they are milestone events that shall be automatically updated to occur as soon as logic allows.

Rafael,

I don't see much difference between topic activity and a hammock and your example is right.

Do you mean creating topic milestone just to avoid the need to link a milestone (and topic activity) with a set of activities? If you mean just automatic update   

Best Regards,

Vladimir

For Topic Milestone I just mean for it to be of automatic update, maybe not a good name I just came out with.

I am dealing with a job where the Contractor is to give me the As-Built dates and he always misses correct dates for such milestones. His scheduler created many milestones that would drive a group of activities. Each of these milestones have many predecessors and he gets confused as to the actual date and time the milestone happened. This is creating many out-of-sequence events that in combination to retained logic creates problems in understanding the updates.

Maybe it is the equivalent of a node in an AOA schedule where many activities meet and where you have many successors to this node, the dates for this nodes are automatically computed and the user is in no need to input dates for it on a schedule update.

A Topic Activity is born from a WBS Activity, it can happen that some or all of child activities of a WBS Activity are independent of each other, without links among any of them. It can happen exterior links can switch the order[timing] of the child activities. The start of the WBS Activity will be driven by the start of the first activity in the group and the finish will be driven by the end of the last activity.

In P3 WBS activities are summary bars [activities] that cannot be linked by logic. On the other hand the Topic Activity is a special kind of WBS Activity that can be driven by predecessor links and that can have driving successor links. Ironically I don't recall creating Topic Activities from within P3 but from SureTrak, even when become available in P3.

You create the Topic activities when in Outline mode in SureTrak and maybe you can do the same in MSP.

http://youtu.be/mBqR5xEeZX4

Say:

A = Pump House Structure

B = Pumps Installation 800hp[2ea] + 1,000hp[1ea] - installation of each is independent of installation of other. You do not know which will start first nor which will finish last.

C = Pump #1    D= Pump #2   E = Pump #3

F = Pump #2 warranty [for simplicity only one warranty activity was created] to start upon the delivery of each pump that can be at different time. Say Pump#3 space was spare and the owner decided to include it as a change that came latter on. Example taken from a real job, the fish ladder is still missing.

G = Deliver Job - after all pumps are installed

In SureTrak Independent activity refers to all resources be non-meeting resources.

By the way our elections came out to be closer than those in the mainland.

Rafael,

in Spider Project a milestone will never appear in the Input Actuals table if the last event that preceds this milestone is not scheduled to finish at the Input period. But now I understand what you meant. Yes, it could be done, I mean automatical making a milestone happened when all conditions were satisfied.

In Spider Project it is possible to assign cost and resources to milestones. They may have own calendars, etc. So by automatic I mean the first moment since all conditionce were satisfied when assigned resources are available by milestone calendar. 

Exactly this is what I mean, as an option that might or might not [always] be automatic, although I honestly was missing the point about calendars and resources.

I guess this option should work differently when the Milestone is set to ALAP instead of ASAP, ie happened when all conditions were satisfied.

Best regards,

Rafael