wendy@sq.com (Wendy Harrison) (05/31/89)
I hope it's useful posting to this group, but it seemed like the right place.
I am new to project management, and seek the following information:
1. Good literature references to the use of PERT, CPM and project mgmt
in general. Especially as applied to software development.
2. Comments on UNIX-based project management software. Anyone used
QSP's MasterPlan, for instance? Any others? How about non-UNIX
based packages?
3. Any know about courses available in this area?
****************************************************************************
Wendy Harrison SoftQuad Inc.
Toronto, Canada
{utai,utzoo,utgpu}!sq!wendy
****************************************************************************cberg@leadsv.UUCP (Charles R Berg) (06/02/89)
In article <1989May31.123518.11606@sq.com> wendy@sq.com (Wendy Harrison) writes: > >I hope it's useful posting to this group, but it seemed like the right place. I certainly hope its the right place, too. IMHO its a lot more interesting subject than VMS bashing or trying to define a software engineer. >I am new to project management, and seek the following information: > >2. Comments on UNIX-based project management software. Anyone used > QSP's MasterPlan, for instance? Any others? How about non-UNIX > based packages? I have used VUE, which is distributed by National Information Systems in Cupertino. It is also available through the Artemis Office System. (I should be using past tense, since this was a couple of years ago. I don't really know current status.) At that time, VUE was not worth using for software projects. I spent over 12 months working with the product and its authors, trying to make it more useful, and eventually gave up. It did not have a graphic user interface, and the reports and printer graphics it produced were awkward and difficult to use. I gave it that much effort, because it was the only Unix based tool I could find. I have also looked at Sun's package, which they aquired from Ford Aerospace. It, like every tool I have ever seen on Unix, MS-DOS and Macintosh, has one major flaw which I consider fatal. No one seems to understand the concept of an activity's duration being a function of the resource(s) you apply to it. For example: Suppose I'm pouring the foundation of a new building. I need a certain amount of concrete. If I hire 1 cement truck, it might take me 4 days to pour it. However, if I hire 2 trucks, it should only take me 2 days. Every program I have ever seen, (except an in-house system I used at Dupont), requires that I change both the resource assignment AND the activity duration. Sure, its not numerically complex, but it sure is tedious when you have hundreds of activities and dozens of resources. Now, I'm sure some of you would say that it takes 9 months to have a baby - you cant put 9 women on the job and get it done in a month! Yes! But all that means is you have at least two kinds of activities - those whose duration is affected by resources, and those that are not. Others might say that for software projects, two people working together do not get twice as much done as one person working alone. Sure, but for larger projects than just two people, an average overhead figure can be developed to handle inefficiencies and either durations or availability adjusted accordingly. We're only talking about a model, it will never be perfect. That brings me to another feature I've never seen, but would sure like to have. How many of you work on more than one project at a time? And for each of those projects, how many individual tasks might you be working in parallel? Some tools allow you to specify a resource's availability to a project, usually as a percentage (or fraction) of the scheduling interval. (ie: Steve can work 80% of his 40 hours per week on project XYZ, and 20% on ABC.) Others allow you to specify the fraction of time a resource spends on an activity. A few even allow you to specify both. But none that I've seen allow the fraction of time spent on an activity to be multiplied by the fraction of time allocated to the project. (ie: if Tom is allocated 75% to project XYZZY, and assigned 40% to activity ASDFG, then he actually spends 30% of his time on activity ASDFG.) Again, the calculation is trivial, but when you have 50 - 60 resources, a dozen projects, and hundreds of activities per project, isn't this what computers should do for you? Now then, what I would really like to see is a tool that would allow me to specify the resource requirements of each activity, and the resources assigned to each activity, and have IT determine the optimum allocation of each resource to each activity, automatically determine the elapsed time for each activity, and analyze critical path, etc from there. What tool do I use now? MicroPlanner for the Macintosh. No, it too does not have the important features I described. But, it is a very cost-effective balance of ease-of-use and functionality. In addition, most of what I've asked for will be included in MicroPlanner Expert (to be released in August 89) for the Mac Plus, SE & II, and soon after for Unix platforms. By all means, I will be most interested in hearing from others, both on what they want to see in a tool, and on what they have found in existing tools. Chuck
rwh@me.utoronto.ca (Russell Herman) (06/02/89)
In article <1989Jun1.172742.6512@leadsv.UUCP> cberg@leadsv.UUCP (Charles R Berg) writes: > Others might say that for software projects, two people working together do > not get twice as much done as one person working alone. Futhermore, since when are skilled workers as interchangeable as cement trucks? My ideal PM tool would permit me to express: Assign Jane or Jill to this task, whomever {comes available first| will result in earliest {task|job} completion}. Jill's effectiveness on this task is 1.3 X Jane's. It would also allow me to define a restricted set of resources for certain tasks (e.g., a comms specialist who doubled as a general programmer when no comms-related work was available). Russell Herman INTERNET: me.utoronto.ca UUCP: ..uunet!utai!me!rwh
hthoene@doitcr.doit.sub.org (Hermann Thoene) (01/12/91)
I am looking around for a project-management program on MS-DOS or UNIX (SUN) forsmall projects (2-5 people working on).
Does anybody have expierience with such tools ? Which ones are powerful enough
for small projects and still easy to use ?
Please Email to me, I will collect the answers and post them.
Servus from Germany
Hermann Thoene, Muenchen, Bavaria <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
hthoene@doitcr.doit.sub.org