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ProjectLibre FRC Tutorial V2

1. Forward scheduled box selected and to enter July 1 2014 in the Start Date field I mentioned that I d explain what this forward scheduling means later on The reason I did this was it might have been confusing to describe the forward and backward options before you had some experience working with tasks Throughout this tutorial we ve used what is called forward scheduling which is another way of saying if the project starts on this date and has these tasks when will the project be done When we added tasks or adjusted durations therefore we weren t changing when the project was starting but rather we were changing when the project would end Backward scheduling is the opposite and essentially asks the question when do we have to start this project with these tasks if it has to be done on a certain day In backwards scheduling if you add tasks to the critical path or increase their duration the mandatory project finish date remains fixed but the start date will move earlier on the calendar es 14 Both of these styles have environments in which they make sense Forward scheduling is quite common on projects with definite starts dates but indefinite end dates and is often used to give upper management an idea of when the project might finish and thus an estimate of its costs Backwards scheduling is often used in environments where there are contractual completion dates and the c
2. Management Oversight Marketing study on the idea Design round 1 R1 Prototype R1 Function amp Prototype R1 function B Prototype R1 function C Prototype R1 function D Design tests for Round 1 Execute tests for Round 1 R1 User Documentation Design round 2 R2 Prototype R2 function amp Prototype R2 function B Prototype R2 function C Prototype R2 function D Design tests for Round 2 Execute tests for Round 2 R2 User Documentation Design Final round FR Code Final Function 4 Code Final function B Code Final Function C Code Final Function D Design Final tests Execute Final tests Final User Documentation Duration Predecessors 75 days 40 days 155 5 days 10 days 155 2 days 5 333 days 355 2 days 8 days 355 5 days 12 903 days 355 7 days 10 days 355 7 days 16 days 4 5 6 7F5 6 days 7 days 738 24 days 355 5 days 7 days 2 4 5 6 7F5 3 days 955 3 2 days 1155 2 days 5 days 1155 4 days 9 677 days 1155 5 days 4 days 11 3 days 1155 10 days 12 13F5 3 days 14F5 3 day 8 days 10 1155 5 days 10 days 11F5 3 days 17F5 5 days 5 days 1955 4 days 2 days 1955 8 days 14 516 days 1955 8 days 2 days 19 7 days 1955 4 days 12 days 20 21 22 23 24 6 days 18 19 Resource Ni TM1 12 TM2 50 T 4 TM3 75 TM3 75 TM1 31 TM4 TM5 25 TM6 TM7 50 T 4 TM3 75 TM3 75 TM1 31 TM4 TM5 25 TM6 TM7 50 TM4 TM3 75 TM3 75 TM1 31 T M4 TM5 25 TM6 TM7 50 TM7 50 As an aside
3. program As such the context for the tutorial was not described As this tutorial is now finding use in other environments l Il take a moment to explain the context for the prior discussion and examples FIRST For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology is a US based but now international organization whose goal is to inspire students to explore the science and technology fields by hosting four levels of robotics competitions See www usfirst org for more information At the FRC level the student teams have only six weeks from the date that the year s challenge is announced to design and substantially complete a large up to 120 pound 54 5 kg 5 foot 1 5 m tall robot that competes against other teams robots As an understatement this six week build period is an incredibly busy time for the teams and so as part of helping the local teams gather the skills they will need this tutorial was written to help teach them the basics of project management This is why there are so many references to building robots FIRST sponsors four levels of robotics starting with Junior FIRST Lego League JrFLL for children as young as five or six years old on up to the FRC level for those in the last three years before moving on to college Any reader wishing more information about these programs can contact the author Resources Dealing with resources was not included in the original version of this tutorial as most of the
4. was that this task and all the ones before it had only a single dependency This is not always the case since sometimes multiple tasks have to reach certain points before a new task can start Consider our next Testing and rework task Imagine that the team has decided that it can start testing seven days before the basic robot build completes The complication here is that given this overly high level testing and rework task its start date is controlled by three other tasks the two build tasks and the programming task Thankfully it is easy to describe this kind of dependency on multiple tasks You simply list each individual dependency and separate them by semicolons The key here is to just take them one at a time First the testing task can t start until seven days before the build common features task is done so this is a 5fs 7 It can t start until seven days before the build design specific features task is done so this is a 6fs 7 and finally it can t start until seven days before the programming task is done which is 7fs 7 Put them together and you get the mouthful 5fs 7 6fs 7 7fs 7 Enter this as the predecessor for task 7 and look at what happens to the Gantt chart I did this on purpose for the tutorial In reality the build programming and testing rework lines should be at a lower level so that individual features can be tested as they are done a a a a a a a 8 Nam
5. AM Fil 6f14 5 00 PM w M e If we re not yet at July 7 congratulations this task is ahead of schedule but what happens if today is Wednesday July 9 where this task now appears to be over a day behind schedule This is the topic of the next section Before we move into the next topic however I will reinforce and explain here the message on the slides that smaller tasks are better than larger tasks The benefit of smaller tasks 1s that it is easier to see if they are fully done or not Let s use an example of opposite ends of the spectrum where one project has 10 three day tasks and another project has a single 30 day task doing the same total work After nine days it is easy for the first project s team to know if the first three tasks are done or not since they are separately defined tasks After nine days how easy 1s it for the second team to estimate their percent completion of the one large task In general the larger the task the harder it is to easily and accurately track its progress and errors can be major Smaller tasks naturally lend themselves to a more definite understanding of what is and what isn t yet done and errors are less significant Estimating the completion percentage wrong by 10 on a 30 day task is a large schedule swing when it is discovered but misestimating a 3 day task by 10 is hardly noticeable Do yourself a favor and try to keep your tasks small Adjusting Late Tasks Adjust
6. Having nine tasks is easier for learning a tool than is having perhaps 30 to 40 real tasks during your build Here are the hypothetical tasks and their estimated duration length of time to complete the task we ll be using e Kickoff 1 day duration e Consider designs 8 days e Identify common design features 1 day e Decide final design 1 day e Build common features 15 days e Build design specific features 20 days e Programming 15 days e Testing and rework 10 days e Practice 10 days I m sure many of you are cringing at these tasks and the length estimates Good If so you realize that these are crude and unrealistic However they work for the tutorial An actual Gantt chart used by Team 3511 in the 2013 build is included at the end of this document for an example of a real set of tasks We ll now enter the first task In the top line under the Name column enter Kickoff and press lt tab gt Notice how the focus has now switched to the Duration column which was automatically filled in with 1 day We want the Kickoff to have a 1 day duration but since the means it is an estimate let s make Ecc 5 it a definite day Do this by typing 1d into Kickoff line s duration box ProjectLibre lets you enter the number and the first character of the time such as hour day week etc if you don t want to spell it all out Note that the Start and Finish boxes contain 7 1 14 8 00 AM and 7 1 1
7. Units interact in the following manner Duration Units Work This equation shows the result of changing any one of these If you double the effort Units put onto a task it is reasonable to expect it to be completed in half the time Duration In the same way doubling the amount of work to be completed Work without changing the available time Duration means that the effort Units has to be doubled or else the schedule will not be met Remembering that Duration Units Work is one of the keys to resource management The first task we ll assign to a person is Task 2 the marketing study Task 1 is being skipped on purpose for now and will be discussed later This task is expected to take 20 work days if the person it is assigned to is working on it full time In the Gantt chart view double click on the box for Task 2 in the Resource Names column The following box appears awt Task Information 2 ue e f General Predecessors Successors Resources Advanced Notes Name Marketing study on the idea Duration 20 days Estimated Percent Complete Priority Cost 0 00 Work 160 hours Dates Start 8 11 14 8 00 AM x Finish 9 5 14 5 00 PM Baseline Start Baseline Finish This should not be a surprise since this task was initially defined as taking 20 days to complete and so this box shows the Work as being 160 hours or 20 days 8 hour days Clicking on the Resources tab g
8. happens if all of TM1 s programming tasks are assigned to TM3 with task delays added so that TM3 is not overloaded Looking at the project report we see that the project will be completed faster and will cost less 27 tutorial version two Dates Start 8 4 14 8 00 AM Finish 12 9 14 10 40 AM Baseline Start Baseline Finish Actual Start Actual Finish Duration Scheduled 91 333 days Remaining 91 333 days Baseline 0 days Actual 0 days Percent Complete 0 Q x Scheduled 1 281 hours Remaining 1 281 hours Baseline 0 hours Actual 0 hours Costs Scheduled 52 156 00 Remaining 52156 00 Baseline 0 00 Actual 0 00 Variance 0 00 Please note that this is not to say that it is always cost ineffective to have management do programming tasks I know many managers who are also very good cost effective programmers This example was created to show how using a project management tool like ProjectLibre can help you save time and money by looking at what if scenarios Everything we have done so far has presumed that the project has not yet started We will now presume that it is September 1 2014 and the project has been going approximately according to schedule during the month of August The project manager can keeping the tasks updated with the percent completion by clicking on the task and updating the percent completion field in the general tab periodically Setting statuses for this example we will set that tasks 2 4 5 a
9. hour Standard z TM Writer Work TM User Documentation 50 40 00 hour Standard Since we cannot use all these team members at a full time rate based on the common United States full time rate of 40 hours per week this 1s a good time to describe the relationship between Duration Work es 18 and Units Work is the amount of effort required to complete the task For example someone might look at a specification for a software routine and estimate that it will take 20 hours of effort or work to complete the task In terms of calendar time how long will it take to complete this task It could be completed in one day if the programmer is willing to not sleep It could take 20 days to complete if the programmer worked on it one hour per day Ignoring for this example that these are not really equivalent given how long it takes to remember where the person stopped working the day before The difference between these is the Units being applied to the task In a 40 hour per week environment working on it full time would be a Unit of 100 Working on it 20 hours out of each 40 hour week would be 50 While Unit is the recognized industry term for this you can think of this as a percentage of their week s work going towards this task You might think that Rate would be a good word but it is already used to mean the amount of money the workers get per quantity of time as you can see in the previous screen shot The Duration Work and
10. robot builds involve teams that are small enough to not need this additional level of project control However a discussion of managing resources was requested and thus is added to this version The first version of this tutorial focused on managing tasks how to define them assign dependencies from one to another and how to see whether the project is on track or not and if it is not ending soon enough how to see which tasks are the critical path tasks that determine when the project will end Managing a project by keeping track of just the tasks 1s sufficient when dealing with a small project like the robot build period where it is just six weeks long has a reasonably small number of tasks and a small to moderate number of team members with each generally working in a specific area such as programming game strategy pneumatics etc Managing a complex project where the complexity comes either from the number of tasks the number of people involved or having people working on multiple tasks is more difficult if the focus is only on the tasks As an example of the potential problems imagine managing a project with three tasks that can be active at the same time Task_1 Task_2 and Task_3 and while the other team members are best focused on certain task areas the team has a person that is equally qualified to help with any of these three tasks Which task should this person be assigned to If the project management s focus is only on the t
11. start on a certain day This lets us take the remaining 70 in this task and shift it to the right timewise to begin today Since this is a project wide setting it isn t under the task tab in ProjectLibre but rather is at File Project Update Click on this The Update Project box appears WARNING this box has what I believe to be an unusual default namely adjusting every task to whatever percent completion they should be at the start of tomorrow morning s work day For projects with a small number of tasks being active simultaneously such as the robot build I suggest talking to the team to find out each tasks real percentage completion instead of using this default setting 12 To adjust the schedule for tasks that are late select the Reschedule remaining work after button and set the appropriate date Now a note about the appropriate date The date is likely one different from what you might expect Read the wording of that button we selected carefully and note the work after part If you put in today s date it will reschedule the remaining work to begin tomorrow which makes sense if your team reviews the schedule at the end of the day s build activity However if your team reviews the schedule at the start of the day s activities you ll have to put in yesterday s date to have the remaining work start today on the schedule You ll get the hang of it quickly On more warning Save your pro
12. task s bars the Gantt chart remains unchanged 21 D Name Duration Predecessors Resource Names 1 Management Oversight 65 days 2 Marketing study on the idea 40 days 155 5 days TM2 50 3 Design round 1 R1 10 days 155 2 days TM4 4 Prototype R1 function 4 4 days 355 2 days TM3 5 Prototype R1 function B 6 days 355 5 days TM3 6 Prototype R1 function C 4 days 355 7 days TM1 7 Prototype R1 function D 10 days 355 7 days TM4 8 Design tests for Round 1 4 days 4 5 6 7F5 6 days TMS 9 Execute tests for Round 1 7 days 738 TM6 10 R1 User Documentation 12 days 355 5 days 11 Design round 2 R2 7 days 2 4 5 6 7F5 3 days 955 3 12 Prototype R2 Function 4 2 days 1155 2 days 13 Prototype R2 Function B 5 days 1155 4 days 14 Prototype R2 function C 4 days 1155 5 days 15 Prototype R2 Function D 4 days 11 16 Design tests for Round 2 3 days 1155 17 Execute tests for Round 2 10 days 12 13F5 3 days 14F5 3 day 18 R2 User Documentation 8 days 10 1155 5 days 19 Design final round FR 10 days 11F5 3 days 17F5 5 days 20 Code Final Function 4 5 days 1955 4 days 21 Code Final Function B 2 days 1955 8 days 22 Code Final Function C 6 days 1955 8 days 23 Code Final function D 2 days 19 24 Design Final tests 7 days 1955 4 days 25 Execute Final tests 12 days 20 21 22 23 24 26 Final User Documentation 6 days 18 19 While the schedule hasn t changed there are problems in the project Look at TM4 as an example This perso
13. tasks While you are shortening task durations don t be surprised by seeing the critical non critical i e red blue status of the lines change As an example of this change the duration of build design specific features line 6 from 20 days to 18 days Doing this shortened a critical path task yet didn t change the end date and furthermore the line turned blue The reason this happened is that while it is no longer a critical task item by gating when the testing task could start another task also gates the testing task and a aa a a ar a a 10 so the project s end date still didn t change Note that right now all of the tasks prior to the build task might be blue I have seen a bug in ProjectLibre that occasionally when a red task becomes blue it accidentally and incorrectly sometimes paints the earlier tasks blue as well If this happens you can force it to recalculate all the colors by taking the last task shorting it by a day and then putting it back to where it was At this point set the duration of line 6 back to 20 days and save your project file File File Save as Now that you can easily get back to where we currently are at in the tutorial File File Open feel free to play with changing durations of the various tasks to see how the critical path line moves around and how the example project s end date changes Once you are done experimenting with how duration changes affects the critical path plea
14. the red lines helps you to see which tasks to try to shorten Here is what the project should look like in your display a DE seat ssi OC SC T E T G A T E T E E a 28 l1 b4 boz ho ha he hg 2 bs ka by ba be ba ho hs ha Pr P4 Pz bo bz T Kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM Consider designs 8 days 7 2 14 8 00 4M 7 15 14 5 00 PM Identify common design feat 1 day 7 10 14 8 00 AM 7 10 14 5 00 PM Decide Final design 1 day 7 16 14 8 00 AM 7 16 14 5 00 PM Build common Features 15 days 7 14 14 8 00 4M 6 7 14 5 00 PM Build design specific features 20 days 7 17 14 8 00 AM 8 21 14 5 00 PM Programming 15 days 7 29 14 8 00 AM 8 21 14 5 00 PM Testing and rework 10 days 8 12 14 8 00 4M 8 27 14 5 00 PM Practice 10 days 8 19 14 8 00 4M 9 3 14 5 00 PM won nwt UON See how the build common features task line is blue The reason it is blue is that the task gated by its completion the testing task also requires other later completing tasks to complete To show this change the duration of the build common features from 15 days to 12 days and look at the project s end date See how the end date didn t change at all While shortening tasks that are not on the critical path might free up people to work on other tasks shortening it alone will not change the project s completion date Please return build common features to 15 days duration now If you need to shorten the schedule concentrate on the red critical path
15. 4 5 00 PM respectively ProjectLibre defaults to a traditional work week of 8am 5pm Monday Friday You will be shown later how to change this to better match your team s workday schedule At this point you should see the following on the screen a project planning tutorial son x an a g gt m Sy 3 project planning tutorial w ProjectLibre OPEN PROJ Task Resource View E7 s Open close et Print 2 Information Save Baseline m New OD Preview Calendar Clear Baseline Save Aj Save as gt PDF Projects gt Projects Dialog Update File Print Project Duration Start Finish Kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM If this is not what you have verify that you correctly did the steps in the previous paragraph and make sure that when you started this project that you specified the start date as being July 1 2014 so that our displays will match On the lines below the Kickoff line which now has a 1 in the leftmost column showing this is task number 1 enter the eight remaining hypothetical task names and durations from our example Once done with this your screen skipping the header section from here on should look like this rie J FrINE J Frojecc D Name Duration Start Finish 1 Kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM 2 Consider designs 8 days 7 1 14 8 00 4M 7 10 14 5 00 PM 3 Identify common design Feat 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM
16. 4 Decide final design 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM 5 Build common features 15 days 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 21 14 5 00 PM 6 Build design specific features 20 days 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 28 14 5 00 PM 7 Programming 15 days 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 21 14 5 00 PM 8 Testing and rework 10 days 7 1 14 8 00 4M 7 14 14 5 00 PM 9 Practice 10 days 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 14 14 5 00 PM Notice that the Build design specific features line is the only red line As a reminder the norm for Gantt charts the right side of the display is for the red line to represent the critical path meaning that this set of tasks although just a single task in the example for now represents the tasks that will ultimately determine when the project will end Right now since all of these tasks are scheduled to begin on the same day it is not hard to see that the longest running task 20 days long will determine when the project will finish It is not of course realistic for all of these to start on the same day so in the next section we ll add some dependencies between these tasks Adding Dependencies In project planning a dependency simply means that something must happen before something else can happen If you are going to a store alone by driving it is intuitive that you must complete the task walk to the car before you can begin the task of drive to the store We would then say that drive to the store is dependent upon the completion of walk to
17. 5 Execute Final tests 12 daysi20 21 22 23 24 BY O 26 Final User Documentation 6 days 18 19 This simplified project should in an ideal world complete towards the end of October An ideal world however is defined as one in which we have infinite resources and so every task can begin as soon as its predecessor requirements are met and will complete in exactly the number of days specified in the duration field Sad to say the ideal world doesn t exist We have seven team members and only a few of those can work on this project full time Clicking over to the Resource command and clicking on the Resources icon on the left side of the options line we will define the members of the team in this way A A Pp ProjectLibre 7 Be I File Task Resource View Zoom Out Copy Insert j Indent Ye Information amp Find Resource Usage B ou Cut e Delete 4 Outdent Calendar Resources Zoom In Paste 1 Notes Views Clipboard Resource Name RBS Type E mail Ad Material Initials Group Max Units Standard Rate Base Calendar 1 TM1 Management Work TM1 Manager 75 60 00 hour Standard 2 TM2 Marketing Work TM2 Marketing 50 40 00 hour Standard 3 TM3 Programming Work TM3 Programming 75 35 00 hour Standard 4 TM4 Programming Work TM4 Design Programming 100 60 00 hour Standard 5 TMS Test Design Work TMS Testing 25 25 00 hour Standard 6 TM6 Testing Work TM6 Testing 100 18 00
18. FRC ProjectLibre Tutorial Using ProjectLibre for Your Robot Build Version 2 Craig Yankes Western amp Central PA FIRST Regional Planning Committee cyankes msa com ProjectLibre is a trademark of Marc O Brien and Laurent Chrettieneau a a macc 1 Contents PEE CMU NO ate steter are ee pee E N toa sce pales eta serosa ates anes A EE E 3 STV TS NN SU Ss rece cece Seneca EE E canoe ree pest een T E 3 COPE S TOOT gt Renee eerste rca E ence ee eee ce et cree ee ee ee ey eee 3 Resources for More Information or HElP cccccccssscccceseccccesseccceescceseesececeenececeeceeeeeecessuecessunneceeseges 3 GENE A Ohara ce sds rc nsec EEE eae eine ius ecosc at dusnoe denen see raearatoreaniates tess 4 ree oP POISE a e E E A A A 4 Normal DDI e caine oars cesta eerste petro caenestiene anne sete gaseeeamnonseaee aces 4 EWING Lal gT Al S 0 1116 ol gt eeenemeer rte tence eemrent ln etme ten Cran nTe erent men ore ener nee nee ee aren one 5 GTI VOU Pro OCU spena oocetnanudedeunaruaceenssoatuanaesuca nat ventansssauiunarencepanaducetusanaeesisauvieddad iace enanacuaseerucabaries 5 PRIA TIKS ofc po eee serene sett E net eeeats coanta can catanonadetac esnnna votes et scraatavesnatncooiseeeetucace 5 Aane DEPE g 8 016 kc eee ee ne ane een ee ene ee ene eee ee ee E ne ee ee eee 6 EE VV OAS ates were cee cto cceceietete cease vionpunnoecaeei E 9 U MECC Me A NS ag eps tete sti detniewiac E E E E E 10 wa 421225 DETE T men arene mrt
19. PM 255 5 days 4 Decide final design 1 day 7 14 14 8 00 4M 7 14 14 5 00 PM 2 5 Build common features 15 days 7 10 14 8 00 4M 7 30 14 5 00 PM 3 6 Build design specific features 20 days 7 15 14 8 00 4M 8 11 14 5 00 PM 4 r Programming 15 days 7 22 14 8 00 AM 8 11 14 5 00 PM 655 5 days 8 Testing and rework 10 days 8 1 14 8 00 AM 6 14 14 5 00 PM 5F5 7 days 6F5 7 day 9 Practice 10 days 8 7 14 8 00 AM 8 20 14 5 00 PM 855 4 days Setting Work Days As mentioned earlier most project planning tools default to the normal workweek Let s say that your team works on the robot Monday through Thursday of each week and so we want Fridays to not be counted as a workday Adjusting the schedule of workdays is easy Click on Task Calendar and the Change Working Calendar box will appear Scroll to the July 2014 month calendar and click on the F in the day of week line See that all the Fridays have been highlighted on this and all the other calendar pages whether shown or not On the left side click Non working time and then OK at the bottom Take a look at the ending date of the project Now instead of it ending at the end of the week of August 18 the project will now extend into September and if you zoom in Views Zoom In you ll see that Friday Saturday and Sunday are now all grayed out to show that they aren t work days Let s now look at how to deal with specific days off July 4 is a day that schools are closed so wil
20. a 50 50 basis between these two tasks during the overlap period but this is a more advanced level of usage I suggest getting comfortable with the basic features first before attempting overlaps like this There are two ways of resolving this situation The first 1s to change Task 7 s predecessor dependency in the Gantt chart screen that it cannot start until Task 3 has completed It is currently 3SS 7 meaning it can start 7 days after task 3 begins This is not the preferred method A different approach is to use the Leveling Delay option for the task Double clicking on the task will give you the Resource Information box Scroll over to the right and you will see the column entitled Leveling Delay As the name suggests this is a delay that can introduced before a task is to begin to help with leveling the workload for a team member Changing it to 3 days for Task 7 delays it by 3 days and gives us this resource utilization for TM4 TM4 will be much happier with this allocation Now why did I suggest using the Leveling Delay feature instead of changing the task s predecessor If you go back to the resource chart you will now see this for TM4 4 TM4 160 hours work Oh Oh Design round l R1 SO hours Flat D days D days R ate 4 Work Prototype R1 Furction D a0 hours Flat D days 3 days Rate A Work While the column headers were not included in this the 3 days
21. a nee 11 Task Completion Percenlapt ge eee rn TN ee 11 PCS CVS ACS Fas hora aarti darersin nee etsnsd antonio tua oats E ea estan tidetina sew hdannebenaetarten tio anncenoaentoeteneneieieaes 12 WAM UO eE E E E 14 DERE Ilo 2 a E A eee eee eee eee 14 Creating a Project with Forward versus Backwards Scheduled Tasks cccccccssesceeeececenecseneceeeeeeeees 14 New Topics in the Second Version Of the Tutorial ccccccccssscccccesseccceesecceeeeseceeeeeceseeecceseeecessuneceeteeees 16 Context Tor Version ONG erriren ore E uaae aise dona EE E 16 RESOUNO E E E AE E E A E 16 Appendix 1 from V1 2013 Team 3511 Task List cisscninccicosstntetenaansdontasssannsdtdedsaanncdvoieaantecwrattiataanssdswaccedens 32 Introduction General Comments Congratulations Reading this shows that you are interested in using project management software to help with your team s robot build While using this type of software to help manage a 6 week project might seem excessive I believe you will find that this will help you deal with the hectic build period by quickly showing where your team is in the build process and whether it is behind on or ahead of schedule Quite importantly if your team is behind schedule a tool like this can help identify where the team needs to concentrate its effort to achieve the goal of taking a quality robot to Regionals and possibly further on to Nationals Two comments before we get into the meat of the subj
22. anagement As mentioned on Page 4 there are good resources available on Amazon for more details on project management in general and on ProjectLibre in particular Enjoy 31 Appendix 1 from V1 2013 Team 3511 Task List As mentioned above Team 3511 used an Excel spreadsheet for the 2013 build to track their progress Jim Broker of that team has graciously allowed the spreadsheet to be included in this Tutorial as it might help you break down the robot build into tasks Since subsequent competitions won t be throwing Frisbees your team s details will be different but this 1s a good example of a task level that worked for a team Ao oe Wo hd fo LO Bo Ro Ro hi Ro Wi Pi hd hi Rho oe RR RR ee FE re He a oo ON fe lo hi e eo oo oo on fs bo Ro e 32 aa 34 35 36 37 38 39 Ag 41 43 43 44 45 Ag Ay Ag 4g 50 51 52 53 54 WORK DAY Finish Day Hard Stop Date Mechanical Work Complete Ho School OPTIOHAL DAY 5 M WEEK as 1 7 1 8 1 9 1 10 1 15 1 16 1 17 1 21 1 22 1 223 1 24 1 28 1 29 1 30 1 31 2 4 2 5 2 6 afF 2 11 2 12 2 13 2 14 3 15 kickoff Brainstorming Top 10 designs Evaluate Eliminate designs Test Kt and Data Collection Design Related Component Strategy Related Component Human Play of game Design Finalized Drive Order Build Drive Primary Drive Prototyping Primary Drive Disk Thrower Prototype Disk Thrower Disk Feeder System Prototype Disk Feeder System Lift System Prototype Lift Mec
23. asks it could be difficult to make the correct decision and worse yet in a sufficiently complicated environment this person might accidentally be assigned to work half of their time on each of these three tasks This does not mean that the project manager knowingly did this Imagine a situation where Task_1 and Task_2 are both active tasks and it is believed that Task_3 will not start for quite a while due to predecessor tasks It could be reasonable to assign this person to cementation gage ee ne 16 work half their time in all three of these tasks since only two are currently active What happens if Task_3 s predecessor completes earlier than anticipated All of a sudden this person has three active tasks to work on 50 each Managing the project only by tasks risks that the group members will not be efficiently used or risks having the schedule based on an impossible level of effort required from group members Resource management is the part of project management that attempts to avoid either of these situations So what are resources Recall that tasks are the individual pieces of the project Resources are what is needed to perform and complete the task and normally include people but can also include special equipment needed for the task For example a high quality 6D computer controlled lathe that can be rented at an acceptably low cost to the project but is available for only one month at a particular point during the
24. at Odays work Prototype R1 functionA 32 hours Flat 0 days 4 e 160 hours Design round 1 R1 80 hours Flat D days Prototype R1 functionD 80 hours Flat Ddays 5 TMS 32 hours Design tests for Round 32 hours Flat Days 6 e S6hours Execute tests for Round 1 56 hours Flat Ddays Worl 7 IM 86 hours ck R1 User Documentation 96 hours Flat Ddays i i This software as does nearly all project management software can graph the commitments that have been put onto team members In the upper right corner of the screen yov ll see these buttons 22 Click on the left most of these buttons and the histogram boxes will appear at the bottom of the screen If you click on a team member s number to the left of their name on the gray shaded line you will see a graph appear showing their work levels and availability similar to this for TM4 As the legend to the left shows green represents the amount of time this person is spending on this project while the black line shows the person s availability over the course of the week in this case Why is the availability line only a bit over 70 when TM4 works on the project full time Full time means 40 hours a week normally on Monday through Friday but a week includes Saturday and Sunday The software is averaging all seven days of the week and shows in this case that TM4 is available for 70 of the entire week including weeke
25. d 1 271 hours Remaining 1 271 hours Baseline 0 hours Actual 0 hours Scheduled 54 355 98 Remaining 54355 98 Baseline 0 00 Actual 0 00 Variance 0 00 This shows that the project is expected to take 108 normal work days to complete will finish at the very end of December and will cost 54 355 to complete The Actual values are all zero as the software still has each task listed at 0 completed This cost is slightly low Recall that when the team members were described TM1 was listed as coding at 2 the rate of the other programmers Therefore when TM is coding the Units has been set at 31 the 75 maximum for this person minus 12 for the Management task divided by two so that the schedule is correct This does understate slightly how much TM will earn and thus understates how much the project will cost Looking at the Gantt chart we can see that TM s coding of function C in all three phases is on the critical path This is not good for two related reasons Recalling the screen capture at the bottom of page 18 it shows that TM1 is tied with TM4 as earning the highest amount of anyone on the team yet TM1 programs only one half as fast as the others This is not a good combination for cost effective use of the resources since the least expensive programmer TM3 is not always busy While it is easy to think that having more team members working on tasks would be better than having TM1 merely perform the management task let s see what
26. d the schedule of the other tasks that depend upon it Is this new Task 2 completion time a problem We won t know until we assign the resources to the rest of the tasks To simplify the tutorial as this software development effort goes through three similar design code and test cycles we will assign team members only to Tasks 1 through 10 As an exercise you can recreate the project plan where this tutorial ends continue assigning people to the second and third development cycles and see the schedule effects of bringing other people onto the team We will next assign people to Tasks 3 through 10 Task 1 is still being held off for discussion later on in this tutorial Recall that we have one software architect TM4 TM3 can program but only functions A B and C and TM1 can program but at a slow rate The decision therefore of which team member will do the design task Task 3 is simple TM4 and we will make that allocation We have four programming tasks 4 through 7 one involving function D Task 7 that only TM4 can code so we will allocate TM4 to that task Since TM is slow we will assign Task 6 to that person and the other two to TM3 Making all assignments at the 100 Units level for now Moving beyond the programmers TM5 is our test designer and so is assigned Task 8 TM6 executes tests and so is assigned Task 9 and finally TM7 is assigned the user documentation writing in Task 10 Except for now having the names beside the
27. deration takes a few days more than planned five days into the design consideration we should start identifying the common features Therefore this dependency will be 2ss 5 since the important thing keeping task 3 from starting 1s task 2 being worked on for at least 5 days Enter the dependency into line 3 As when we entered the dependency for task 2 the Gantt chart has shifted around to reflect the new timing of these tasks Notice one thing different in lines 1 through 3 though The arrow comes from the start of task 2 s box instead of out the end of task 1 s box This visually shows whether the dependency is gt Also as mentioned in the slides tasks can be set to finish based on when other tasks start or finish but this is an unusual way of viewing task dependencies and is likely not needed in something as straightforward as the robot build Therefore it won t be used in this introductory tutorial a ree a a a 7 a finish dependency such as from task 1 to task 2 with the arrow coming from the end of task 1 s box or whether it is a start dependency such as from task 2 to task 3 In either case the horizontal length of the arrow indicates how many days have to elapse before the next task can begin To give you some more practice at this enter the dependencies for the following tasks e Decide final design Requires consider designs to complete e Build common features Requires Identify common design feat
28. dvance tab This now tells ProjectLibre that the ratio of Work to Duration is a constant no matter how short or long this task is Now having Duration be 65 days and Work be 65 hours does exactly what we want The software knows that this task takes one hour per day and if we extend the Duration to 85 days for example and will be longer after all the resource issues are resolved the Work automatically grows to 85 hours 25 Note that when you assign a person to a task of either type Fixed Duration or Fixed Work the software will automatically determine the percentage of this person s time that is required to fulfill the task Schedule and Costs Once the initial resources are allocated the next step is to verify that the right people are doing the right tasks To illustrate this the exercise of allocating resources in the previous section was continued to the end of the project The following people assigned to these areas throughout the project TM1 provides management oversight and codes function C TM2 does the marketing TM3 is a programmer given functions A and B TM4 is the designer and codes function D TM5 designs the tests TM6 conducts the tests and TM7 writes the user documentation Over commitments were resolved by adding delays The Gantt chart prior to starting the project now looks like this on oon ft ON NPN EEREN NIN ee bef ee ee le lee te ee A ARPA N Oo Oo Ory ay a bh win o Name
29. e Duration Start Finish Predecessors Kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM 1 2 Consider designs 8 days 7 2 14 8 00 AM 7 11 14 5 00 PM 1 3 Identify common design feat 1 day 7 9 14 8 00 AM 7 9 14 5 00 PM 255 5 days 4 Decide final design 1 day 7 14 14 8 00 AM 7 14 14 5 00 PM 2 5 Build common features 15 days 7 10 14 8 00 4M 7 30 14 5 00 PM 3 6 Build design specific Features 20 days 7 15 14 8 00 4M 8 11 14 5 00 PM 4 7 Programming 15 days 7 22 14 8 00 4M 8 11 14 5 00 PM 655 5 days 8 Testing and rework 10 days 8 1 14 8 00 AM 8 14 14 5 00 PM 5F5 7 days 6F5 7 days 7F5 7 days 9 Practice 10 days 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 14 14 5 00 PM See the multiple arrows that now feed into the start of the Testing box This shows that the timing of when this task can begin is gated by multiple tasks Now why go through the hassle of defining three tasks as predecessors for the testing task when we can obviously sic see that just having testing start seven days before the programming ends will give us the same date Be careful not to fall into this trap Just because at project planning time it is obvious when things end at the same time the reality of the project can delay tasks For example what happens if programming goes well and finishes early while the build design specific features task takes three days longer than expected If you just have this generic testing task gated by the completion of the programming task the testing could
30. ect First in writing this tutorial I am presuming that you have either attended the Project Planning session at the 2013 SCRA Workshop or have read the annotated slides from that session that are posted with this document The slides cover the introductory material explaining why a team can benefit from using project planning techniques introduces some of the terminology that is used and describes some common pitfalls that hopefully you will be able to avoid by being aware of them While the terminology will be defined in this tutorial the whys and oops in the slides will not be recreated here If you haven t seen them yet I suggest looking over the slides before continuing with this tutorial The second comment is one of thanks In the spring 2013 robot build Team 3511 used an Excel spreadsheet to view their progress and word of that spreadsheet led to the Project Planning session being requested at the SCRA Workshop Jim Broker Team 3511 s mentor has given permission for that spreadsheet to be used in this tutorial as example tasks or as templates as desired Thank you Jim Scope of this Tutorial It is impossible in a short tutorial to introduce you to every aspect of project management software whether represented in a free tool like ProjectLibre or commercial tools like Microsoft Project Therefore not only is this not going to be a comprehensive user s manual describing every option and feature in ProjectLib
31. end up starting too early compared to the hardware building task While defining all the relationships for a task like this Testing task is a few minutes longer it lets the schedule correctly adapt to any of predecessor tasks finishing either early or late Project planning tools will determine the last date of each of the dependencies and will use that as the start date for the task Now did you catch that I jumped right into fs types of relationships here While I didn t raise the issue in the last paragraph since it was focused on one versus multiple predecessor tasks remember the question introduced earlier about What should happen to this task if the other task doesn t finish on time We could have defined the Testing task as beginning some number of days after each of the three build programming tasks started but testing is a classic case where it normally makes sense to delay starting the testing if the thing s being tested have a schedule slip Therefore testing is a common task type gated by the completion of other tasks and not the beginning To complete the dependencies in this example set the Practice task to begin four days after Testing has started The final initial schedule should look like this Name Duration Start Finish Predecess 1 Kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 4M 7 1 14 5 00 PM 2 Consider designs 8 days 7 2 14 8 00 4M 7 11 14 5 00 PM 1 3 Identify common design feat 1 day 7 9 14 8 00 AM 7 9 14 5 00
32. er 15 and the workload histogram at the bottom shows an appropriate workload for TM7 Incidentally if you are wondering by now how to get rid of the graphs at the bottom of the screen clicking on the histogram button in the upper right again the button you pressed to bring this up on the screen hides the graphs At this point with the exception of Task 1 identifying whether any other team members are overloaded during this first round of the application development and leveling the workload for those team members will be left as an exercise for the reader Let us now finally turn our attention to Task 1 All of the other tasks have a defined amount of required work and so the question becomes when and who can best perform that task Management oversight on the other hand goes for the entire duration of the project This task initially had 65 days of duration since that was how long the project was going to run before factoring in resources but with what you now know you can see that this is incorrect When we entered tasks ProjectLibre presumed that the Duration was the same as the Work Even if the project did take 65 calendar days a small project like this would likely not need 65 full time days of management oversight Therefore how do we define a task that extends for a period of time There are a few ways of doing this The first is to change the task from the default Fixed Work type of task to be a Fixed Duration ta
33. going to identify the common design features among all their design options so that they can start building those common elements early Since we have 8 days for considering designs let s say that these common design features will be identifiable three days before all the design considerations are done Following the examples from the slides the dependency for line 3 will then be 2fs 3 which means that this task can start three days before task 2 finishes Now could we say this dependency is 2ss 5 meaning it can start 5 days after task 2 starts Of course Deciding which way to specify the dependency is easy if you ask this question What should happen to this task 3 if the other task 2 doesn t finish on time If this task should start on time anyway then the best way of expressing the dependency would be the 2ss 5 since even if task 2 is delayed five days after it starts task 3 can start anyway If on the other hand this task has to delay starting if the other task is delayed then it would make sense to express the dependency as 2fs 3 so that if task 2 is delayed task 3 will be delayed along with it so it still doesn t start until 3 days before task 2 has finished We ll use both forms in this tutorial so you can see where the different approaches make sense In the case of tasks 2 and 3 though we ll answer the what should happen question by saying that even if the design consi
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35. he per person workload histogram the left most button in the upper left clicking on the button to its right will cause the charting features to appear Towards the middle of the bottom section that just appeared you will see a list of chart types that can be requested Many of these are advanced accounting principles so we will concentrate on Actual Cost and Cost to help with cashflow analysis If you click on Cumulative and select Actual Cost you will see nothing in the charting area The reason is that the charting can either be for the entire project or can be done on individual tasks or group of tasks and we have not yet selected any tasks to chart While keeping the charting section active you can return to the Gantt chart as normal Namely clicking on Task Gantt I find that seeing the cost of individual tasks is not particularly useful so you can select all the tasks by clicking on the empty title box above the column of task numbers Doing that will now show you the following Name Duration Predecessors Resource Names TM1 12 y TM1 12 TM2 S0 Ey TMTE Resource Filter No Filter 7 Cumulative 4 m E Histogram TM2 work cost TMS 5 ctual Cos TM6 Fixed Cost TM Actual Fixed Cost Remaining Cost Baseline Cost JACWP IBCWP IBCWS Baseline Cost Baseline2 Cost v Note that the Cumulative button was selected thus this chart is
36. in the Leveling Delay column stands out as an obvious number that is hard to forget while changing Task 7 s predecessor rule can easily be forgotten The difference comes in if another team member is added that can do Task 7 If that task s predecessor rule is changed the new team member won t start the task until the design task is complete as that 1s what the predecessor rule now states That is not what we want Changing the predecessor rules to level the workload puts two very different concepts together The true dependencies between the tasks and the convenience of delaying a task To avoid many potential problems if a new team member can be added keep the predecessor rules defining the true relationships between the tasks and use the leveling delay to insert possibly temporary delays before certain tasks a a a a a aa a a a a 24 If you return back to the Resource Usage chart click on TM7 to show another issue If you zoom in to the daily level and look at the time between August 13 and August 28 this person shows 100 usage but only has a 50 availability This person like several others on this project team work less than full time and TM7 only works at a 50 rate If you go back to the Gantt chart and double click on task 10 click again on the blue paper to people icon and in the Assign Resources box change TM7 s Units to 50 The Gantt chart now shows that the R1 User Documentation task Task 10 will complete on Septemb
37. ing the schedule to account for tasks that are running behind can be one of the hardest things to do because it requires the team to acknowledge that some part of the project is behind schedule At the same time is one of the most important things the team s keeper of the schedule can do Repeating myself since this is on the slide set s annotations the importance of adjusting the schedule for late tasks is hard to understate since doing this is how the team can recognize what I call the current reality path and can make changes if that path does not point to success The earlier you can discover that a task is running late the more time you have in which to correct it so avoid the temptation to give the team another day or two to make it up before adjusting the schedule Besides the team already knows that the task is behind schedule so not adjusting the schedule doesn t help anyone And if the team does make up the work the team can celebrate and the schedule can be readjusted as will be demonstrated below Sorry for what might appear to have been a soapbox but hopefully this conveys the importance of facing schedule reality Ok back to the mechanics of adjusting the schedule Going back to the tutorial example consider designs was marked as being 30 done and is a bit over a day behind schedule since today is supposedly July 9 What project planning tools give you is an easy of saying that any work not yet done should
38. ives us an essentially blank box showing that nobody has been assigned to this task yet Clicking on the box whose icon looks like a piece of paper with arrows to two people towards the upper right gives this 19 re tec Task Information 2 General Predecessors Successors Resources Advanced Notes Name Marketing study on the idea Resources EIH Work Contour Assignmen i Sa Assign Resources Replace Help Recall that the team members were given the boring names TM1 through TM7 This box lists all of the team members so that you can assign who will do this marketing project Since TM2 is this team s marketing person click on TM2 s box in the Units column and you will see it change to 100 Press Assign and you will see the TM2 line turn green to show the assignment If you click the x to leave this box and click Close on the Task Information box behind it you will see that TM2 s name is now to the right of the task on the Gantt chart Other than that nothing changed but should it have changed Remember the important Duration Units Work equation When the tasks were first defined ProjectLibre presumed that each task would be worked on full time Units 100 and since TM2 was just assigned to this task 100 neither the Duration or Work had to be changed and so the project s schedule remained the same However the schedule i
39. ject file File File Save before adjusting the remaining work to start on a certain day Sometimes most notably if you are trying to undo a gap created by a bad date I ve seen the program apparently not display the proper task relationships Save your work before you do the update task in the next paragraph And of course as with any program saving your work often is good It is just good to do it before this function in particular Going back to the tutorial example we will presume the team reviews the schedule at the start of the day and that today is the 9 so set the date to July 8 2014 and press OK You ll now see this gap in the Gantt chart for task 2 E p Duration Start 2 Jun 14 b Jul 14 13 Jul 14 2U 25 MIT Mw T IE S 5 M T w IT F S IS MIT MIT IE S S r i y kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM zaai z Consider designs 9 6 days 7i2l14 8 00 AM FIFI 3 Identify common design Feat 1 day 7 10 14 8 00 AM 7 104 4 Decide Final design 1 day F174 1 46 PM Fizz 5 Build common Features 15 days 7 14 14 6 00 AM 877 1 E Guild Assine n iFi Feb an sae Tad 41a na Bisel Additionally you ll see that the project has now slipped out by a few days since task 2 was on the critical path thus making it longer makes the entire project longer Oddly the adjustment feature does not also work the other way Imagine that the team worked hard on this consider designs task on Wednesday the 9 and completed it Set its completion s
40. l we have to adjust the schedule to show that as a non working day Click Task Calendar again to check which day of the week July 4 2014 is on It is on a Friday which is already a day off for our hypothetical team so we don t have to tell ProjectLibre to ignore that day That s boring so let s pretend that the schools are not in session on July 21 2014 for some reason In the Change Working Calendar box click on just July 21 2014 and click non working time and then OK The Gantt chart will now show that to be a non working day and will shift everything after it to the right one work day If you want to change a non working day to being a working day select the day as above and click either use default or non default working time The difference between these is whether the day is one of your normal workdays or not If itis a normal workday clicking use default will return it back to normal If it isn t a normal work day a Saturday for example click non default working time Either way one of these will turn the non workday from gray to white background and that is the one you want to use Using Critical Paths After entering your real project s tasks and their dependencies you might find that the project s ending date is later than when it has to complete Pretend that the example project we ve created has to be completed before September 1 The Gantt chart critical path identification
41. n cannot be working full time on designing while also working full time on function D Similarly nobody on the project except for TM4 and TM6 are full time Project management software gives you easy ways of finding these kinds of problems If you click on Resource on the top row of options where it says File Task Resource View you will see the following options EI t pa File Task Resource view Zoom Out Copy Insert p Indent Information amp Find Resource Usage i J4 Cut Delete 4 Outdent Calendar Resources Zoom In Paste T Notes Views Clipboard Resource If you click on Resource Usage in the Views box on the left you will see a day to day listing of how many hours each person is expected to work in each week For each person the gray shaded line is their total for the week due to my zoom level and the non shaded lines under it shows the different tasks that person is to work on during that week While it has all the information a chart like this is not intuitive to use if the goal is to see if anyone is over or under used on the project Name Work Work Contour Assignmen 1 T 1 32 hours Prototype R1 function C 32 hours Flat Odays Work 2 TM2 160 hours i Marketing study on the ide 460 hours Flat 0days 3 lm ahos work Prototype R1 function B 43 hours Fl
42. nd 7 are complete task 6 is slightly behind schedule and task 2 is slightly ahead of schedule The Gantt chart now looks like the following and note that the green vertical line shows where today is on the schedule 28 oon oon ft WO Ne N BM BM BR BM BR Re on fF WON SF OW OA Don bt WYN FS OO R RARR Name Duration Predecessors Resource Names Management Oversight 63 days TM1 12 Marketing study on the idea 36 days 155 5 days TM2Z 50 Design round 1 R1 10 days 155 2 days TM4 Prototype R1 Function 4 5 333 days 355 2 days TM3 75 Prototype R1 Function B 8 days 355 5 days TM3 75 Prototype R1 Function C 5 25 days 355 7 days TM3 75 Prototype R1 Function D 7 days 355 7 days TM4 Design tests for Round 1 16 days 4 5 6 7F5 6 days TMS5 25 Execute tests For Round 1 7 days 738 TM6 R1 User Documentation 17 975 days 355 5 days TM7 50 Design round 2 R2 7 days 2 4 5 6 7FS 3 days 955 3 TM4 Prototype R2 Function 4 2 days 1155 2 days TM3 75 Prototype R2 Function B 5 days 1155 4 days TM3 75 Prototype R2 Function C 5 333 days 1155 5 days TM3 75 Prototype R2 Function D 4 days 11 TM4 Design tests for Round 2 3 days 1155 TM5 25 Execute tests for Round 2 10 days 12 13F5 3 days 14F5 3 day TM6 R2 User Documentation 8 days 10 1155 5 days TM 50 Design final round FR 10 days 11F5 3 days 17F5 5 days TM4 Code Final Function 4 5 days 1955 4 days TM3 75 Code Final Function B 2 days 1955 8 days TM3 75 C
43. nd on the far left you ll see the Gantt icon and word Click on that and you are back to the currently blank normal display for your work Without clicking on anything other than the toolbar tabs File Task Resource and View take a moment and look at the options that appear under the tabs There is a lot there but don t worry as there are only a few options that you ll need to know for the robot build Navigating in this Tutorial As you looked through the tabs did you notice that the options are grouped into sections In the previous paragraph I asked you to click the View tab and on the far left you Il see the Gantt icon and word Click on that That is rather wordy From here on Pll shorten this to tab section option and so moving back to the normal display is done by clicking View Task views Gantt If the option lm asking you to click is currently displayed 1 e there is no need to switch to a different tab P 11 specify the option by just saying section option Therefore from where you are now at if I wanted you to click on Resources llI ask you to click on Resource views Resources Go ahead and click on that Now get back to our normal display Defining Your Project Adding Tasks While I urged teams during the Workshop presentation and in the slides not to have individual tasks longer than one week long for this tutorial I m going to ignore that suggestion for one simple reason
44. nds As an aside that this tutorial will not really get into but ProjectLibre allows you to define custom schedules for each team member so that they are not all expected to work the standard 40 hour Monday through Friday 8 hours per day schedule If you want to explore this click on Resource Views Resources and if you double click on a team member s name you will see a Resource Information box Clicking the calendar icon to the right of the Base Calendar selector allows you to customize work schedules for this person including adding in when the person will be out for vacation time Returning to the resource histogram if you click zoom in enough times to show the information at a daily level you will see this for TM4 at the start of the project 3 Aug 14 10 Aug 14 17 Aug 14 F S M T w T F 5S is m T W T 5 M 200 190 180 170 160 150 190 130 120 110 This level of detail shows that TM4 is available Monday through Friday at a 100 Unit rate the black line but look at what happens between August 15 and August 19 TM4 is expected to do two people s worth of work 200 Unit rate for those three working days This shows a scheduling problem Even though the tasks allow for the prototyping of round 1 s function D to start before the design task is completed we have a practical limitation that the design has to be completed first so that TM4 is not overloaded We can assign TM4 on
45. ode Final Function C 8 days 1955 8 days TM3 75 Code Final Function D 2 days 19 TM4 Design Final tests 7 days 1955 4 days TM5 25 Execute Final tests 12 days 20 21 22 23 24 TM6 Final User Documentation 6 days 18 19 TM 50 TM1 12 If we look again at the summary financial data View Reports Project Details we see that the project has become slightly less costly due to the progress to date being ahead of schedule overall tutorial version two Dates Start 8 4 14 8 00 AM Finish 12 9 14 10 40 AM Baseline Start Baseline Finish Actual Start 8 6 14 8 00 AM Actual Finish Scheduled 91 333 days Remaining 91 333 days Baseline 0 days Actual 0 days Percent Complete 24 Nork Scheduled Baseline Remaining Actual 1 280 5 hours 0 hours 907 7 hours 372 8 hours 52138 50 Remaining 34906 50 Baseline 0 00 Actual 17232 00 Variance 16080 00 While this drop in estimated project cost is not dramatic 52 156 to 52 138 maintaining approximately the original cost estimates like this fully one third of the way into the project is quite good news since it means that the estimates for how long each of the first round tasks will take was rather good While this report shows the amount of remaining cost on the project what is often also important is what the outgoing cash flow will look like In other words not just how much remains to be spent but also when will it be spent If you recall where the button was to get t
46. of the tool on a project as straightforward from a project management perspective as building the robot ll briefly explain resources later on Returning back to the General tab enter 100 in the Percent Complete box and press close Note the green checkmark on the Kickoff line This shows that the task on that line is complete Now while it is hard to see since the Kickoff task is only one day long if you zoom in a bit on the Gantt chart you can see a black horizontal line through that task s red box As you ll see in this next step the black line represents the percent completion and doesn t only appear when the task is done To see this set the consider designs task to be 30 done The black line for that task goes into Monday July 7 as seen here Helmuth von Moltke the Elder the Prussian Army Chief of Staff for many years in the late 1800s is credited with saying no plan survives first contact with the enemy While he was describing military war plans project planning has the same attribute that reality rarely if ever goes exactly as planned so don t fear changes a a a a a 11 Name Duration Start Finish 22 1404 6 Jul 14 13 Jul 14 SIS Mm TW IT F IS SIT TIE ISS Im IT wt IT IE Iss of kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM F 1 14 5 00 PM Consider designs 6 days 7214 6 00 AM 7115 14 5 00 PM Identify common design Feat 1 day 7 10 14 8 00 AM FiOf14 5 00 PM Decide Final design 1 day 7 16 14 8 00
47. ompany performing the work wants to know when the various parts of the project have to start in order to meet the contract Oddly the robotics build is both You have both a definite start date kickoff and a definite stop build date In this sense either forward or backwards scheduling can work for the robotics project In either case the quality of your schedule depends upon the team s ability to identify and estimate the duration of the tasks and in either case you have to adjust for tasks being ahead or behind schedule Therefore you can choose either method One important difference between these approaches though is the impact of a task taking longer than expected In backwards scheduling tasks are delayed as long as possible and are generally started at the last possible moment This works well if you have a solid understanding of how long something will take For example while constructing a building a general contractor with experience will likely know down to the day how long it will take the pour the concrete foundation If you do choose to use backwards scheduling I suggest that you start to work on tasks as early as you can anyway to allow for later schedule slips Personally I d use forward scheduling for the robot build 15 New Topics in the Second Version of the Tutorial Context for Version One This tutorial was originally written for a specific audience Teams involved in the FIRST Robotics Competition FRC
48. orward scheduled option later but for now just leave it selected The project s start date field will default to today s date but to allow your sample project to follow this tutorial exactly change the start date to July 1 2014 As with the other date fields you can set this value by either just typing 7 1 14 in the box or you can click the down arrow on the right side of the box which will cause a calendar to appear where you can navigate to the desired month and just click on the desired date Whichever way you chose set it to July 1 2014 and click ok Normal Display What you now see is the normal task list Gantt chart display screen where you will spend most of your time Since you haven t defined any tasks yet both the task list on the left and the Gantt chart on the right are empty Before we add any tasks let me warn you that it is easy to get to other screens where it isn t obvious how to get back to the normal display For example in the upper left section you currently see various file options save open etc print options and project options Click on Projects in the Project section You will see one line for your sample project Itis not obvious how to get back to the normal display right Even the back arrow to the right of the ProjectLibre logo does not get you back Getting a aa a a a a a a a a 4 back to the normal display is easy once you know how to do it Click the View tab a
49. project s schedule Managing resources therefore 1s simply ensuring that the required people and equipment are available to work on the task As you can imagine if the resources are not available for when the task is scheduled there are two basic ways of solving the problem 1 Move the task to when the resources are available Using the computer controlled lathe example defining the task to be dependent on the lathe and the lathe being defined as being available in that one month will allow it to be used when it can be obtained inexpensively However this might not be practical if the task is either performed so late that it is delaying the rest of the project or if the one month of lathe availability is before the project is ready to use it 2 Move the resources to when the task has to be performed If the task has to be done at a certain time the alternative is to make the resources available at that time This could be reassigning people off of other tasks so that they can work on this one or continuing the lathe example might entail the project team deciding that even though the lathe is inexpensive in that one month it might be better to pay more to rent a different lathe at a time more convenient to the project While managing resources is required for large projects as you can imagine it can also potentially be time consuming However managing both resources and tasks gives a more complete picture of the project and accordingl
50. rap up At this point your screen should look like this zooming out a bit Name Duration Start Finish Prede H 1128 Kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM Consider designs 9 6 days 7 2 14 8 00 4M 7 17 14 1 48 PM 1 Identify common design feat 1 day 7 10 14 8 00 4M 7 10 14 5 00 PM 255 5 days Decide Final design 1 day 7 10 14 8 00 AM 7 10 14 5 00 PM Build common features 15 days 7 14 14 8 00 4M 8 7 14 5 00 PM 3 Build design specific Features 20 days 7 14 14 8 00 AM 8 18 14 5 00 PM 4 Programming 15 days 7 23 14 8 00 4M 8 18 14 5 00 PM 655 5 days Testing and rework 10 days 8 6 14 8 00 4M 8 21 14 5 00 PM SFS 7 days 6F5 7 Practice 10 days 8 13 14 8 00 AM 8 28 14 5 00 PM 855 4 days won on e WO Ne If it does congratulations You probably now know all you need to know about project planning tools to apply it to a project of the size of the robot build If your screen doesn t look like this go back and review the steps with a particular eye to the calendar dates being entered If you are still having problems or just feel that I explained something in a confusing way feel free to send me a question at cyankes msa com and to help me more easily see your question amongst my emails please put ProjectLibre somewhere in the subject field Deferred Topics Creating a Project with Forward versus Backwards Scheduled Tasks Back at the beginning of this tutorial when you were creating the project I asked you to leave the
51. re in the subject field As stated earlier this tutorial just scratches the surface of what ProjectLibre can do Amazon has books paper or Kindle available on ProjectLibre including a user manual a tutorial and other resources These books will teach you areas likely beyond what you ll need for the robot build As I suggested in the Workshop given the size of the build teams and the length of the tasks you can probably skip the added complexity of the resources concept of assigning individuals to tasks Getting Started ProjectLibre was so simple to install on my machine that I will presume that you have done that and are ready to run it When you first run it you will see a license popup While this is not a recommendation either way I will presume that you have accepted the license and want to continue with the tutorial Creating a Project Closing the tip of the day popup will bring you to another popup asking if you would like to open an existing project or create a new project Select Create Project The New Project box is straightforward You can name the project anything you would like and sample project works well for this tutorial Note that if you later merely save the project the filename will default to your project s name with a pod extension You can of course save as to give the project file a specific name The manager and notes fields are optional and P11 explain the f
52. re the scope of this tutorial 1s being purposely limited to the smallest set of features you ll likely need to manage the robot build In short the goal of this tutorial is not to impress you with the tool but rather to help you use this tool in your build If you are intrigued by this software there is plenty of time after the build and competitions are over to explore it more thoroughly Resources for more Information or Help There are several resources available to help you learn and use the tool There is an online help facility in the tool accessible by clicking on the in the upper right corner There is also a large user community SCRA is the Steel City Robotics Alliance If you are not familiar with it I highly recommend that you visit www steelcityrobotics org Among other events each year they sponsor a workshop for teams to hone their skills or learn about new topics Excel is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Project is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation a a a a ee ae a 3 on the www projectlibre org website that might be useful for you to join Given the short build time though many questions will be time urgent and so while the author of this document is by no means an expert in every piece of project management tools he is willing to help where possible You can reach him by sending an email to cyvankes msa com To help have your email stand out from others please put ProjectLib
53. s now unrealistic since this task is expecting TM2 to work on it full time yet we know from the team member listing above that TM2 only works 20 hours out of each normally 40 hour week or at a Units rate of 50 We can correct this by first double clicking the Task 2 box in the Resource Names column and clicking on the blue paper to people icon again TM2 s Units value is 100 If you click on the Units column to the right of TM2 it will likely change to 150 We want this to be 50 since TM2 only works at a half time rate so you can either achieve this by clicking the down arrow several times or else by putting the cursor in the 150 box delete what is there and enter 50 The software expects this to be a percentage so you don t have to type in the You can either click on Assign or press return Press x to close this box and click Close to return back to the Gantt chart Note that TM2 s name has been changed in both the Resource Names column and to the right of the task s bar to TM2 50 so that you can easily see the Units that TM2 is expected to put onto this task Zooming out to get the whole chart on the screen here 1s what the Gantt chart now looks like 20 Name Duration Predecessors Resource Names Management Oversight 65 days 1 2 Marketing study on the idea 40 days 155 5 days TM2Z 50 3 Design round 1 R1 10 days 155 2 days 4 Prototype R1 F
54. se Open the file you saved File File Open so that our displays are once again consistent Tracking the Project What we have done thus far in the tutorial is create a project estimating how long each task will take While it is important for planning to do this with the best estimates you can give the tasks the estimates will rarely turn out to be perfect Some tasks will complete faster than anticipated while others will take longer Dealing with this changing reality is one of the main benefits of using project planning software In this section we ll explore how to update the project s progress Task Completion Percentage While the project is ongoing you will gain much more insight into the project schedule if you periodically update ProjectLibre with the status of the current tasks You can assign a completion percentage of 0 to 100 to any task and the program will then use this information to help give you a better estimate of the remaining work and the anticipated project completion date Let s pretend in our example that the kickoff has completed The default column to the left of the Name column shows progress and if you double click on a position the Task Information box pops up for that task Go ahead and bring up this box for the Kickoff task There are many things that can be set for the task as you Il see if you click through the various tabs Nearly all of which I suggest ignoring for your first use
55. several steps ago page 20 21 when we first adjusted TM2 s Units on the Marketing Study Task 2 to 50 the schedule increased in length quite a bit and this question was asked Is this new Task 2 completion time a problem We won t know until we assign the resources to the rest of the tasks Now we can determine this After the other team member s work schedule were factored in the whole schedule has increased enough that this Marketing Study task is no longer the only item on the critical path Designing Round 2 cannot begin until some of the Round testing has completed as well Now that the project tasks are allocated to resources people and their workload has been leveled we can now determine the cost of the project The reason this should not be done before leveling the workload for the team members is that project long costs such as the management overhead cannot be accurately determined without knowing when the project will end To see a report showing how much this project will cost click on View Other Views Report Towards the top middle section of the screen there will be a menu Selector entitled Report Selecting Project Details results in this output tutorial version two Dates Start 8 4 14 8 00 AM Finish 12 31 14 5 00 PM Baseline Start Baseline Finish Actual Start Actual Finish Scheduled 108 days Remaining 108 days Baseline 0 days Actual 0 days Percent Complete 0 York Schedule
56. showing the accumulated cost already spent on this project Please also note that for simplicity this sample project does not include costs like the fixed costs for the team members computer depreciation office space etc Turning off the Cumulative button will show you the per week cost of the project thus far 30 If you now click on Cost instead of Actual Cost ProjectLibre will show you the costs per period which is weekly in the screenshots due to the zoom level for the entire project and will now look like this Aug 2014 Sep 2014 Oct 2014 Nov 2014 Dec 2014 Jan 2015 gt W io hz k bi lor lha ler les los fiz lio Pe loz loo he pa bo lor k et es b ui And no I cannot explain the spike on Aug 26 that doesn t show up on the Actual Cost chart above Sorry Looking at this chart from the perspective of today supposedly being September 1 we can see that the project s costs should be reasonable during September will go up in October and the first half of November and then will drop in mid November as the final testing is completing A real project of course would have developer time involved during the testing efforts for bug fixing the costs for whatever distribution mechanism will be used and supporting field test customers would have to be factored in This example was obviously highly simplified so that it can concentrate on demonstrating ProjectLibre Good luck with your project m
57. sk before assigning anyone to the task To do this double click on the task and in the Task Information box click on the Advanced tab In the Type pull down select Fixed Duration and make sure that the Effort Driven box is not selected Now go back to the General tab You ll see that the Work field shows 520 hours 65 days times 8 hours per day Change the 520 hours to 65 hours to reflect just one hour of management oversight per day What you have now told ProjectLibre is that over a duration of 65 days this task will require 65 hours The Gantt chart should not have changed since the task 1s still 65 days long If you change either the Duration or the Work fields the software will try to do what it thinks you want to have done Because of how easy it is for the user to be thinking one thing and the software interprets it in a different way Fixed Duration tasks can take a while to get used to For example if you change the Duration to be longer the Work will increase in the same percentage The software is presuming that the same rate of having to do this task will continue now for a longer period If you shorten the Duration however the Work can stay the same on the presumption that the work that needed to be done still needs to be done but now has a shorter amount of time The other option that works better for an ongoing task is to change the task s type to Fixed Work in the task description s A
58. t be assigned to This mobile smartphone app will go through three rapid design code test cycles Skipping many of the tasks that would be actually be required in order to simplify this example most notably fixing the bugs found in testing here is the initial task oriented plan for this project s 4ug 2014 Sep 2014 Oct 2014 Nov 2014 1 Management Oversight 65 days Ce ee E 2 Marketing study on the idea 20 days 155 5 days 3 Design round 1 R1 10 days 155 2 days 4 Prototype R1 function amp 4 days 355 2 days 5 Prototype R1 Function B 6 days 355 5 days 6 Prototype R1 Function C 4 days 355 7 days 7 Prototype R1 function D 10 days 355 7 days 8 Design tests For Round 1 4 days 4 5 6 7F5 6 days 9 Execute tests for Round 1 7 days 7 8 10 R1 User Documentation 12 days 355 5 days 11 Design round 2 R2 7 days 2 4 5 6 7F5 3 days 955 3 12 Prototype R2 Function 4 amp 2 days 1155 2 days 13 Prototype R2 function B 5 days 1155 4 days 14 Prototype R2 function C 4 days 1155 5 days 15 Prototype R2 Function D 4 days 11 16 Design tests For Round 2 3 days 1155 17 Execute tests For Round 2 10 days 12 13F5 3 days 14F5 3 day 18 R2 User Documentation 8 days 10 1155 5 days 19 Design final round FR 10 days 11F5 3 days 17F5 5 days 20 Code Final Function 4 amp 5 days 1955 4 days 21 Code Final function B 2 days 1955 8 days 22 Code Final Function C 6 days 1955 8 days 23 Code Final Function D 2 days 19 24 Design Final tests 7 days 1955 4 days 2
59. tatus to 100 and then update the project for all remaining work to begin after July 9 2014 Other than task 2 having a full horizontal black bar in it and the green checkmark appearing nothing else happened The easiest way of getting task 4 decide final design to show as being start able on July 10 is to remove task 4 s predecessor dependency on task 2 and hit lt tab gt This will cause task 4 to be moved back to the beginning of the entire project and then do the update outlined above to have all remaining work starting after today i e July 9 2014 That makes task 4 s start date be July 10 2014 and adjusts the rest of the schedule accordingly The downside of breaking these predecessors to account for tasks completed early is that you won t have them on the schedule to act as next year s template If you double click in the status column for the task the column that has the green checkmarks for tasks 1 and 2 at this point the Task Information box has a Notes tab at the far right If you select that can you can make a note to yourself that this task used to i suspect its definition of remaining work means what should have been done but hasn t yet been done from the start of the project to today Future items aren t yet late and thus must not count as remaining om Sg ed ae 13 have another task as a predecessor This would make it easier to reuse this project as a template next year W
60. the car As described in the Project Planning slides task dependencies aren t just of the start this when that finishes form but can also be start this when that starts or even start this X number of days before or after that starts or finishes Let s consider the dependency between our first two tasks kickoff and consider designs Since it is at the kickoff that the teams learn about that year s competition it is reasonable to say that the team can t start considering designs until the kickoff is over To enter this into ProjectLibre scroll the left half of the screen to the right so that you see the Predecessors column We want to say that the second task cannot start until the first task has completed so just enter 1 under Predecessors for line 2 Observe that the first part of the display has now changed to 29 Jun 14 6 Jul i4 13 Jul i Name Duration Start Finish Pri a MOT WW IT Pi IW IT IF 5 5 M 5 Kickoff 1 day 7f1s14 8 00 AM F 1 14 5 00 PM Consider designs 6 days 7i2i14 8 00 4M Fiii 14 5 00 PM 1 Note the changes The Gantt chart line for the second task has shifted to the right by one day there is now an arrow pointing from the first line to the second and that the second task s Start date has changed This is the result of telling ProjectLibre that the second task can t begin until the first task has completed In this hypothetical example the team is
61. unction 4 4 days 35542 days 5 Prototype R1 Function B 6 days 355 5 days 6 Prototype R1 Function C 4 days 355 7 days Prototype R1 function D 10 days 355 7 days 8 Design tests for Round 1 4 days 4 5 6 7F5 6 days 9 Execute tests for Round 1 7 days 738 10 Ri User Documentation 12 days 355 5 days 11 Design round 2 R2 7 days 2 4 5 6 7F5 3 days 955 3 12 Prototype R2 Function 4 amp 2 days 1155 2 days 13 Prototype R2 Function B 5 days 1155 4 days 14 Prototype R2 Function C 4 days 1155 5 days 15 Prototype R2 Function D 4 days 11 16 Design tests for Round 2 3 days 1155 17 Execute tests for Round 2 10 days 12 13F5 3 days 14F5 3 day 18 R2 User Documentation 8 days 10 1155 5 days 19 Design final round FR 10 days 11F5 3 days 17F5 5 days 20 Code Final Function 4 5 days 1955 4 days 21 Code Final Function B 2 days 1955 8 days 22 Code Final function C 6 days 1955 8 days 23 Code Final function D 2 days 19 24 Design Final tests 7 days 1955 4 days 25 Execute Final tests 12 days 20 21 22 23 24 26 Final User Documentation 6 days 18 19 The project will now complete towards the end of November instead of the end of October The reason for this is simple The tasks are defined so that the second round of design is not started until the marketing study is completed We have told the software that Task 2 is being done by someone who only works 20 hours per week and so it recalculated the ending date remember Duration Units Work and adjuste
62. ures to complete e Build design specific features Requires Decide final design to complete e Programming Can be started 5 days after Build design specific features has started Before showing you what my screen now looks like for comparison notice that the project has grown in length and now exceeds what likely conveniently fits in the Gantt chart section on the right You can zoom in and zoom out on the schedule by pressing Views Zoom In and Views Zoom Out respectively Zoom out one level and see if your screen now looks like this Name Duration Start Finish Predecessors Kickoff 1 day 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 1 14 5 00 PM Consider designs 8 days 7 2 14 8 00 4M 7 11 14 5 00 PM 1 Identify common design Feat 1 day 7 9 14 8 00 AM 7 9 14 5 00 PM 255 5 days Decide final design 1 day 7 14 14 8 00 AM 7 14 14 5 00 PM 2 Build common Features 15 days 7 10 14 8 00 AM 7 30 14 5 00 PM 3 Build design specific Features 20 days 7 15 14 8 00 AM 8 11 14 5 00 PM 4 Programming 15 days 7 22 14 8 00 4M 8 11 14 5 00 PM 655 5 days Testing and rework 10 days 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 14 14 5 00 PM Practice 10 days 7 1 14 8 00 AM 7 14 14 5 00 PM owrmont oot WwW NH A Note that ve grabbed the line between the data and the Gantt chart sections and moved it to the right to show more data columns You can do this by left clicking on the vertical line between these sections and sliding it right or left The reason I had you stop at Programming
63. y a higher degree of confidence in the schedule the effort required to complete the project and the knowledge that special equipment will be available when needed That last sentence sums up the goals of project management The rest of this section will show examples of using ProjectLibre for both task and resource management To provide a wider set of tasks in which to explore resource management the robot build example used previously will not be used in this section Rather we ll use an example of writing and marketing a mobile smartphone app The project will begin on August 4 2014 the first Monday in August and the team is made up of the following people e Team Member TM 1 Manager for the team and can help with programming but programs at only 50 the rate of the other programmers and cannot do function D Available 30 hours per week e TM2 Good marketing person and can offer ideas for what the app should do Available 20 hours per week e TMs3 Good programmer but only understands areas A B and C Available 30 hours a week e TMA Software architect and can program any app area Available 40 hours per week a a a a a a a ar 17 e TMS Good at designing tests Available 10 hours per week e TM6 Good at executing tests Available 40 hours per week e TMT User Documentation Writer Available 20 hours per week As with almost any team the people in the team have areas they are good at and others that they shouldn

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