Scheduling and Resource Management
Gantt Sheet Overview
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Gantt Sheet Schedule
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The eTrack Gantt Sheet is specifically designed for multiple simultaneous users by having the following characteristics:
- Project Managers can try out different ‘what if’ plans, see the effect on resources and save the draft without booking the resources. Other users will not see the effect of the project on resources until ‘Saved to Schedule (Resources Booked)’ is selected.
- When leveling, instead of plans changing unexpectedly due to resources being assigned to other work, select to only take account of the utilisation and availability of resources and not other assigned work. Over allocations will show as red values that can be smoothed out in the GS Schedule in a controlled manner (where multi level Undo is available).
- Project Managers can book resources at one level of a work hierarchy such as for support work and then see how people booking time in their timesheets to work such as support jobs under that level use up the allocated effort.
Resource Managers can choose to view the effect on resource allocation or availability of only selected projects and/or all scheduled projects across the whole company.
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Gantt Sheet Resource Plan
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The Gantt Sheet Resource Plan displays the allocation or availability of any group of resources. A resource may be a Person, a Role, or Equipment such as cars, rooms, light projectors or systems.
Users can choose to view the allocation of a selection of projects or all scheduled projects across the company. Over allocations are shown in red and the user can choose to view the work assigned to a resource to see why they are over allocated. The assigned work can also be displayed in the GS Schedule where it can be edited. The over allocated days can be either manually smoothed out by moving work in the GS Schedule or automatically by leveling.
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Calendars
eTrack also supports Calendars or Non Working Time. A company wide calendar can be set up for public and company holidays and then calendars set up for each resource for annual leave and part time workers. All Calendars are shown in the plans as gray cells in the same way as for weekends. When work is scheduled by painting, filling or leveling, these are taken into account. You can still edit the gray cells planning effort on those days that will appear as red values (since effectively over allocated).
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Benefits over traditional tools
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The following outlines some key advantages of the using the eTrack Gantt Sheet for scheduling and resource management.
- The Gantt Sheet combines the usability of a Gantt Chart with the control of a spreadsheet in one view. You can display baseline and forecast bars with dependencies, but then at a click of a button, display the hour values for each day (or days for each week) on top of the bars. This allows you to edit exactly the hours you want to plan, rather than using percentages and split tasks. You can then move bars while preserving the cell value patterns, with full leveling. being performed in real time on dependent tasks.
- The Work Breakdown Structure can be displayed and edited. However, with one click you can also view and plan each Resource separately (as a separate row under the tasks).
- eTrack displays the Resource Availability or Allocation on the same screen as a Project Schedule. So you can see the effect of planning a project on Roles or People or Teams. You can then choose to see the work for each resource and so see why a resource is perhaps over allocated as it is planned.
- Any branch of the eTrack can be displayed. So instead of displaying a work breakdown structure for a project, you may chose to display the work structure for a product, a release, a phase, a person, a client or a team. Or display issues, risks, use cases or any thing else you wish to schedule like rooms, light projectors, test units, training. Leave and admin tasks can also be viewed in the same way.
- Leveling. in eTrack need not muck up your carefully designed plan. By choosing to just take account of Utilisation and Working Time and not other assignments you will get exactly when you expected when you level. You can then view when resources are over allocated and smooth them out manually. Alternatively you can chose to take into account other assignments when leveling. but, by using the filter options, you still have complete control of which other work (or all) you want to eTrack to include.
- Any branch of the Work Breakdown Structure can be leveled separately, with multilevel undo as well!…thus you have complete control of what you are doing.
- eTrack allows you to do ‘what if’s’. Suppose you wish to see the effect of planning a project on resources, and then save various different build/buy etc project plans. You can do this in eTrack and then when ready, Save the What If to be a real schedule and book the resources so now other users can see the resource allocations.
- Very often a handover is needed between two dependent tasks, or a second one results in updates needing to be done to the first. This requires the tasks to overlap with a lag. When leveling. eTrack will preserve this lag, instead of forcing you to either delete the dependency or remove the lag as MS Project does.
- eTrack Gantt Sheet has multi level Undo and Redo. For every user action, the whole plan in memory is completely saved and so you do not rely on trying to redo the opposite of each section. The is also full auto recovery.
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