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Advanced Tab

This tab provides advanced controls for the manner in which Open Plan treats activities during resource scheduling.

These controls allow you to provide flexible treatment of activity durations during resource scheduling or to require that an activity start on its earliest feasible date regardless of the effect on resource loading.

Contents

Field Description
ID, Desc., Status, Duration

These fields are common to all tabs. See Common Fields for a description of these fields.

Total Float

Displays the total float for the activity as calculated by time analysis. This is the maximum number of work periods by which the activity can be delayed without delaying project completion or violating a target finish date.

Resource Scheduling

Open Plan provides advanced controls for the treatment of the activity.

Field Description
Type
  • Normal: The activity has no advanced controls for treatment of the duration during resource scheduling.
  • Splittable: Activity splitting allows the duration of an activity to be split into two or more pieces to permit it to be scheduled earlier than would otherwise be possible due to gaps in the availability of a required resource. You can use two parameters to control the splitting of an activity during resource scheduling:
    • The minimum duration of an activity piece
    • The maximum number of pieces

    For example, suppose that 3 units of a resource are available on January 1 and January 2. On January 3, only 1 unit of the resource is available, and on January 4 and January 5, 3 units of the resource are again available. This is illustrated in the following profile:

    split.gif

    Normally, a 4-day activity with a requirement of 3 units per day could not be scheduled during this period since there are not 4 consecutive days in which the necessary resources are available. As a result, either the activity must be delayed or the resource availability exceeded. However, if the activity can be split, it is possible to schedule the activity in two pieces with one 2-day piece starting on January 1 and the second 2-day piece starting on January 4.

  • Stretchable: Activity stretching allows Open Plan to lengthen the duration of an activity during resource scheduling to reduce the peak requirements for a constraining resource. Stretching an activity can, in many cases, result in an earlier scheduled date. To control the effects of stretching during resource scheduling, Open Plan allows you to enter a maximum duration for the activity.

    For example, assume that a 2-day activity with a requirement of 6 resource units per day is scheduled against a resource with an availability of only 4 units per day:

    stretch1.gif

    If the availability of the resource cannot be exceeded, Open Plan delays the activity. However, by stretching the duration of the activity to 3 days (4 units per day), it is possible to reduce the peak requirement of the activity enough to permit the scheduling of the activity.

    stretch2.gif

    (Note that the total resource requirement of the activity remains unchanged.)

  • Reprofilable: Reprofiling an activity provides Open Plan with the most flexibility in scheduling an activity. An activity with this attribute can be scheduled in any way consistent with available resources provided that the following criteria are met:
    • The duration of the reprofiled activity cannot be shorter than the specified duration.
    • The reprofiled requirements cannot exceed the original requirements profile (on a cumulative basis).

    Thus, a 10-day activity with a resource requirement of 3 units per day cannot be reprofiled so that it has a 1-day duration with a requirement of 30 units.

    You can also set an option on the Advanced tab of the Resource Scheduling dialog box to restrict the maximum quantity per scheduled unit (such as days or weeks) to the setting in the original profile.

    For example, assume that a 3-day activity has a resource requirement of 5 units for each day of its duration, for a total of 15 units. Depending on the availability of the resources, the activity can be reprofiled in any number of ways, including the following examples:

    reprof1.gif 5 days at 3 units per day

    reprof2.gif 4 days at 2 units per day, followed by 1 day at 3 units per day and 1 day at 4 units per day

    reprof3.gif 2 days at 4 units per day, followed by 1 day at zero units per day, followed by 2 days at 2 units per day and 1 day at 3 units per day.

  • Immediate: Open Plan forces an activity with the immediate attribute to start on its earliest feasible date, even if that means overloading a resource. Open Plan calculates the earliest feasible date for an activity during resource scheduling. The earliest feasible date is the earliest possible date an activity can start in the absence of any resource constraints on its schedule.
Min Duration

When the Split option is chosen, this field controls the minimum duration of any piece of the split activity.

Max Splits

When the Split option is chosen, this field controls the maximum number of pieces into which the activity can be split.

Max Duration

When either the Stretch or Reprofile option is chosen, this field controls the maximum duration for the activity.

You may enter the maximum duration using any of the following duration units:

  • M: months
  • W: weeks
  • D: days
  • H: hours
  • T: minutes

While you may use decimal values (for example, 4.5 D), you cannot enter durations using mixed duration units. (For example, 4D4H is not allowed.)

Priority

This field controls the priority Open Plan gives the activity during resource scheduling and acts as a tie-breaker. You can enter any 3-digit number. Lower numbers indicate a higher priority than higher numbers. The default for this field is zero (and, therefore, top priority). Negative numbers are allowed.

For this setting to take effect, you must also select Priority as one of the priorities on the Advanced tab of the Resource Scheduling dialog box.

Separate Resources

This option controls whether Open Plan should consider members of a pool and members who share the same skill as separate resources during resource scheduling.

For example, assume the following resource pool:

res2.gif

If this option is selected and the resource assignment for an activity calls for 8 hours of ELEC for 5 days and a second assignment of ELEC for 5 days, Open Plan treats the two assignments separately and can schedule 8 hours of LISA and 8 hours of PAUL for each day.

On the other hand, if this option is not selected, Open Plan combines the two assignments and attempts to schedule a single resource for 16 hours a day with the following results:

  • With resource-limited resource scheduling, Open Plan will be unable to ever schedule the activity.
  • With time-limited resource scheduling, Open Plan will overload the selected resource.

This same example holds true if you are assigning resources based on a skill instead of a pool.

Suppress Requirements

This option controls whether Open Plan should suppress resource requirements for the activity during resource scheduling.

  • If this option is selected, Open Plan does not consider the resource requirements for the activity during resource scheduling.
  • If this option is not selected, the resource requirements for the activity are taken into account during resource scheduling.

Earned Value

Field Description
EVT

You can specify the EVT for the activity. When the Base Physical Percent Complete on EVT option is selected on the Progress Calculations dialog box, Open Plan uses the selected EVT to update the earned value of the activities when progress calculations are run.

This field is disabled when the _UserCannotChangeInProgressEVT user preference on the System Preferences Defaults dialog box is set to 1 and the activity is in-progress or completed.

For information about how the EVT field affects the Physical % Complete field, see Rules For EVT and Activity Physical % Complete.

You can choose from the following EVTs:

  • Level of Effort (A): This EVT assumes that if the activity has started, it will progress (and, thus, earn value) according to the original budget without deviation. By definition, the value earned by an activity using this Earned Value is equal to the budget up to Time Now. In other words, starting a Level of Effort (LOE) activity results in the activity immediately earning its entire budget up to Time Now.
  • Percent Complete (C): With this EVT, the user enters percent complete directly. Percent complete places the burden of objective performance measurement on the individual or system that provides the information.
  • 50-50 (E): With this EVT, 50% of the value is earned as soon as the activity is started, and the rest is earned when it is completed. Since value cannot be earned in any intervening periods, this EVT is best used for activities that span a maximum of two fiscal periods.
  • 0-100 (F):With this EVT, no value is earned until the activity is completed. At which point, the entire budget is earned. This method is best used if the activity is scheduled to start and finish in the same fiscal period.
  • 100-0 (G):With this EVT, all the value is earned as soon as the activity is started. This method is best used if the activity is scheduled to start and finish in the same fiscal period.
  • User-Defined Percentage (H): This EVT is a variation of the 50-50 EVT. The percentage earned at the start of the activity (1 to 99%) is defined in advance by the user by entering the percentage in the Start % field. The remainder is earned when the activity is completed. This method is best used for activities whose schedule dates span a maximum of two fiscal periods. The Start % field is only enabled when you select the User-Defined Percentage EVT.
  • Planning Package (K): Activities using this EVT are used for planning purposes only and do not earn value. This causes earned value to always be calculated as zero regardless of any progress that has been applied.
  • Resource % Complete (L) / Assignment % Complete (L): This EVT allows you to enter status and calculate earned value at the resource assignment level. This option is useful when you have long activities and your resources are not spread across the entire activity. An example is when you have many resources assigned to a single work package.
  • Steps (N): The use of steps allows you to break down an activity into a series of smaller tasks that can be measured or checked off to more accurately show progress or provide a direct indication of what has been done. Steps can be weighted as a proportion of the overall activity/task and as each step is completed, the parent task physical percent complete is updated. If the EVT for the activity is not set to Steps, you can still define steps to provide additional information of the breakdown of the work but completing a step will not impact the physical percent complete of the activity. Steps are defined on the Activity Details Steps tabs.
  • The following Cobra EVT types are not included in any Open Plan calculations:
  • Milestones (B)
  • Units Complete (D)
  • Earned as Spent (O)

There are few hard and fast rules about selecting performance measurement techniques. The general rule is to select a method that allows you to "earn how you plan." For example, if an activity spans two periods and the budget spread is $50 in the first period and $50 in the second period, you should select an Earned Value that, if on schedule, would allow you to earn half of the $100 budget when the activity is started and the other half when it is finished. (This scenario would most likely use the 50-50 EVT.)

Note: 50-50, 0-100, 100-0, and User-Defined Percentage EVTs are normally used on activities that span no more than 2 periods.
Start %

This field is enabled when you select User-Defined Percentage for the EVT. You can enter the starting percentage an activity earns in this field. The remainder is earned when the activity is completed.

Related Procedures