Benchmark schedule for resource leveling test

Evgeny,

creating good resource-constrained schedule we consider as the core functionality of proect management software. So even cheapest Spider Lite ($670) includes Optimization and skill scheduling.

I will publish an example you required wben will return from the business trip.

At the example that you use for testing change the order of activities. An activity with one day duration shall be third. Some softwares level resources prioritizing activities by the order they were entered. Let software show its real power that does not depend on the way people enter the same information.

In Spider standard leveling you may select the priorities and for such simple example some of them may produce good results. For more complex projects playing with priorities is not sufficient. For some projects none of simple heuristics will find good solution.

Regards,

Vladimir

Evgeny,

I uploaded an example of 30 activities project that have different duration if to apply standard, optimization and optimization plus leveling. You may open and play with it using Spider Demo.

I also uploaded MS Project file for the same project.

You may compare the results.

Links: http://rapidshare.com/files/3878464385/j309_4Example.001.sprj

and http://rapidshare.com/files/3540550584/j309_4Example.mpp

You may also try simple sample project included in Spider Project Lite Demo. Resource constrained schedules created for this project by other PM packages have much longer duration. But for this example optimization and optimization plus produce the same result.

Enjoy,

Vladimir

Vladimir,

Thanks for example. I can see the difference now.

Even though in this case MS Project resource leveling did not do that bad. MS Project did on the level of Spider Optimization and much better, then Spider Standard. Only Spider Optimization Plus was better than MS Project. In reality it probably all depends on the specific schedule. In the case of the schedule, which put in the 1^st post of this topic, the difference was much more obvious

Regards.

Evgeny

P.S. Is it a good idea to place this example in Spider demo projects?

Evgeny,

Spider standard algorithm means that you may select leveling priority and trying different select one that is better for current project. If you will select different priority field the schedule will change.

In my test with this example:

Spider Project standard (default Late Start) schedule was very poor - 97 days (by the way it is default in most software packages), advanced and optimization - 79 days both, optimization plus - 75 days.

Spider levels resources by seconds.

MS Project 2013 schedule has 108 days duration if to select minite by minute leveling, 104 days if to select hour by hour or day by day. Looks strange because activity duration is set in days and the results should be the same. The schedule is shorter if to level week by week but it did not remove resource overallocations.

Please check your settings and inform me if your results also depend on the selected time basis.

An example was taked from the known set of sample projects that is used for testing leveling algorithms.

Regards,

Vladimir

Vladimir,

I used MS Project 2007, day by day leveling and got 79 days.

Strangely enough, when I used Minute by Minutes and Hour by Hours I got 80 days.

Regards.

Evgeny

Evgeny,

I suggest to ignore Project 2013. 

I did not expect such improvement from Microsoft.

Later I will post more examples. It would be interesting to compare not only Spider with MS Project but also MS Project 2013 with MS Project 2007. But do not use an option permitting to create splits in remaining work.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

Vladimir,

Just for your information.

I have ran resource leveling in MS Project 2007 without selecting option “Leveling can create splits in remaining work”, but it came with the same result – 79 days.

Ms Project 2010 produce result of 82 days

So, I would say that all together this is not a good trend in MS Project leveling engine from 2007 to 2013

Regards.

Evgeny

Next sample 30 activities project that may be tested with Spider Demo:

MS Project 2013: 67 days

MS Project 2007 and Spider Standard algorithm: 60 days

Spider optimization: 55 days

Spider optimization plus: 54 days.

It looks like MS Project 2013 is a big step backward.

Files: http://rapidshare.com/files/2099055420/j305_test5.001.sprj

and http://rapidshare.com/files/3948707615/j305_test5_1.mpp

At the moment I have no time to play with many samples but it looks like Microsoft decided to promote manual leveling together with Mike.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

Vladimir,

Thank you.

 I think this program is a good indication of different leveling algorithms and difference with MS Project.

Probably if you build schedule, which uses features like variable resource assignments, then the difference with MS Project will be even bigger, but this would be a bit “unfair” to MS Project, as it simply does not have this feature.

Regards.

Evgeny

I do not suggest to try MS Project or Primavera scheduling with construction example included in Spider Demo. There are shifts and other packages do not model shifts, activity durations are calculated basing on volumes of work and assigned resource productivity and in other packages durations shall be directly defined. Besides, this project supposes material and cost constrained scheduling and other packages do not level materials and costs.

Variable (range) resource assignments and skill scheduling also help to improve resource usage and are not implemented in other packages.

So full power of Spider Project just cannot be compared.

Best Regards,

Vladimir

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