Deltek Open Plan Help

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Project Analysis

Open Plan provides several tools that are designed to facilitate project analysis.

These tools are as follows:

  • Time Analysis: The process of calculating the early and late dates for each activity on a project, based on the Time Now date, the duration of the activities, and the logical relations between them. In addition to using this tool on a regular basis to check the status of the project and to change the Time Now date, many project planners also use time analysis to determine whether they will be able to meet the project deadlines.
  • Risk Analysis: The risk analysis feature of Open Plan enables you to define and analyze the factors of uncertainty or risk associated with a project. When using this feature, you enter three durations (optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely) for activities. During the risk analysis process, Open Plan uses random durations within the defined range and distribution profile and runs time analysis multiple times. (The actual number of times that time analysis is performed is a user-defined value.) This process generates statistical outcomes for your project completion date. This feature is frequently used for high-risk projects.
  • Resource Scheduling: The process of calculating a set of scheduled dates that takes into account the resource requirements of each activity and the availability of these resources. Open Plan offers two types of resource scheduling algorithms:
    • Time Limited Resource Scheduling
    • Resource Limited Resource Scheduling
    By using advanced resource management techniques such as splitting, stretching, and reprofiling activities, you can refine the ways in which an activity is scheduled. By using these and other techniques, you can maximize the use of resources that may be in short supply.
  • Cost Calculations: The process of summarizing resource hours and costs to the activity and subproject level. This feature is useful for determining the cost at all levels of the project and for calculating earned value. To ensure that baseline cost values are correct, this process should be run before setting a baseline.
  • Progress Calculations: The progressing function calculates status information about both activities and resources in a project that is underway. Automatic progress calculations are run for several reasons. Some of these are:
    • To automatically enter activity status information
    • To update the physical percent complete for BCWP calculations
    • To update resource progress based on activity status
  • Baselines: Baselines provide a "snapshot" of a project by storing a set of project data for a specific point in time. By comparing baseline schedules and costs with current information, you can see the areas of the project that are deviating from the original plan.

Related Topics

Related Procedures