Project versions

You decide, unless you want to use default location.  It can be anywhere in your computer or an external hard disk or server.

You manage it through the Storages Properties Dialog.

You can click on the file at their Windows Explorer Folder if you want to, but only windows file names will be shown.

Hi, Rafael! It is so good to see Spider Project computing resource schedule drag!

"Of course I suppose you already must be an expert on resource leveled DRAG."

I would guess that, insofar as there is an expert on the subject, it would be me, as I've undoubtedly thought more about it than anyone else. But, as you point out, it's complicated! I feel I still have much to learn about it. And now that there's a package out there that computes it, others will almost certainly point out things I haven't thought of.

To me, the whole point of drag is to show precisely WHAT is adding HOW MUCH time to the project duration. In CPM, this is due to the duration of work activities and the logical constraints. It's often pretty hard to change those logical constraints without changing Newtonian physics!

That's why resource availability drag is such a great new tool. If we can see that the lack of a specific resource at a specific time is adding 5D to the project duration at a drag cost of $15,000/D, that justifies spending up to $75,000 to make that bottleneck disappear. (Of course, we try to spend $3.77/D to make it disappear, and the rest is profit -- but you know what I mean. I'd love to see Spider have the functionality to compute the value increase on projects due to computation and alleviation of resource availability drags!)

It's important to recognize that a bottleneck does not have drag unless it delays project completion. For example, a bottleneck that delays by 20D Activity X which has 15D float on the CPM critical path will only now have drag if Activity X is now on the critical path. If parallel Activity Y which has 3D of float on the CPM critical path has a bottlenecked resource that delays its dates by 12D, Activity Y's path would be critical and its resource bottleneck would be the delaying factor, causing a 9D delay of the project from the CPM schedule and 4D of drag compared to Activity X's path (which would have 4D of resource schedule drag).

At least, that's what seems to me to be the most valuable information.

But I'm VERY interested in your thoughts, Rafael.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

www.TotalProjectControl.com  

Steve,

I hope you noticed in my example the file/job called Resource DRAG, I am exploring new functionality for DRAG calculations under resource leveled jobs.  Of course I suppose you already must be an expert on resource leveled DRAG.

As we all known calculation of resource leveled floats is more complicated than old traditional CPM calculations to the point most software developers do not even attempt to do it and some of the few that did attempted to calculat resource leveled float never got it right.

LOL

Hi Raphaël,

my question certainly was not clear enough; I was mentionning the possibly several versions that are displayed in the right hand-side column: on yuyr example, Version1 dated 01/12/2015, Version2 dated 01/05/2015, and so on

are these different versions of one specific project stored in the same spider project file, and then in which fields; are they stored in the spider project file, beyond my reach; are they stored in what I could call "phantom" files, like the baseline project in Primavera PM6?

thank you

by the way, I will try to understand DRAG some day in the near future

Hi, Alexandre.

Understanding drag, and it's value, is dead easy. It's simply the amount of time that any item (activity, logic, calendar or resource constraint) is adding to the project's critical path.

• Here is the Wikipedia page.
• Here is the 2012 Defense AT&L article "The Drag Efficient: The Missing Quantification of Time on the Critical Path".
• And here is my new book Managing Projects as Investments: Earned Value to Business Value, which talks about using drag and a lot of other things.

Computing drag, and drag cost, is a little trickier. There are some exercises, with answers, on my website. But ultimately, drag is exactly the sort of thing that software should compute. Vladimir Liberzon programmed it into Spider back in 2009. And now he has made a major leap forward by allowing the computation of drag on the resource-leveled schedule. This is, IMO, huge, as it allows the user to see how much resource bottlenecks are delaying the critical path.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan

Hello Alexandre,
each project version is a separate file. The format of the project file is as follows:

• OS_Project_File_Name.001.sprj,
   
• OS_Project_File_Name.002.sprj, 
   
• OS_Project_File_Name.003.sprj.
   

Spider searches for files with the same name, but different versions (001, 002, 003, etc.) and shows them in the Storage Interface as one project with different versions.

Also remember that the code of the project is the actual name of the file in the Operationg System Explorer (if the project code is "This_Project_Code" and version is 1 then the file name corresponding to the code will be "This_Project_Code.001".

Hope this clears things up.

Regards,
Bogdan

Hi Bogdan and Stephen,

thank you very much for your explanations

Alexandre

It might be convenient to setup different folders for Schedule Updates, Schedule Baselines and What-if, in this way you keep visibility and better/easier control on the sequencing of versions.