Submitted by gregory on 2010/08/28 01:37

In trying to understand and document IQ's project management facilities and in particular the Gantt view, I have come up with some questions (which I can only partially answer):

Q1: How is TaskEffort updated and used? In my databases, there is no VB code associated with this field.

·         Q2: Who is the grid supplier for the Gantt component and what is the name of the control? (So that we can look at the documentation, and potentially import some of it if the copyright assignment permits that)?

o   And here’s some of the answer: The control used is called eXG2ant from supplier Exontrol

o   Further information can be found at http://www.exontrol.com/exg2antt.jsp

o   Their approach depends upon Precedence Diagramming Method ( PDM or scheduling activities in a project plan )

§ The Precedence Diagram Method is a tool for scheduling activities in a project plan. It is a method of constructing a project schedule network diagram that uses boxes, referred to as nodes, to represent activities and connects them with arrows that show the dependencies.

·         Critical Tasks, noncritical tasks, and slack time

·         Shows the relationship of the tasks to each other

·         Allows for what-if, worst-case, best-case and most likely scenario

§ Key elements include determining predecessors and defining attributes such as:

·         early start date

·         late start date

·         early finish date

·         late finish date

·         Duration

·         WBS reference (to tie things back to the Work Breakdown Structure)

·         Q3: How does the histogram use the various system fields? And when can we have a “fixed” version that correctly uses the system fields, in particular, TaskEffort?

·         Q4: Can you display and change TaskEffort on the Gantt view? If so: how? If not: is this a planned development (albeit low priority)?

·         Q5: It looks as though the control supports identification of the project critical path – but my reading is that some additional system fields would be needed in IQ; thus in addition to the current ones, which are:

o   TaskActStart
o   TaskActStart
o   TaskActEnd
o   TaskActEnd
o   TaskDuration
o   Nb Days
o   Task%Complete
o   TaskEffort
o   TaskEffort
o   TaskID
o   TaskID
o   NextTaskID

·         We’d need IQ to support:

o   Early start
o   Late start
o   Early finish
o   Late finish
 

And of course more of the functionality of the underlying control would need to be exposed, integrated with IQ, and documented. I wouldn't put this as anything other than a low-priority development - most IQ users will not need to get into this kind of depth.

Mark

Comments

Hi Mark,

Did you get enough answers to those (not here, of course... I can see that)?

>Q1: How is TaskEffort updated and used? In my databases, there is no VB code associated with this field.

TaskEffort is a numeric field. Each unit = 1 day.
 
I think I explained that somewhere, but I use a different formula because I don't find that a "1 day" unit is good to plan work on a project, plus the histogram doesn't really show an accurate picture of the effort, etc.


>Q3: How does the histogram use the various system fields? And when can we have a “fixed” version that correctly uses the system fields, in particular, TaskEffort?
the taskeffort field works pretty well here. But I use a different custom field as I just mentioned .
 
 

>Q5: It looks as though the control supports identification of the project critical path – but my reading is that some additional system fields would be needed in IQ;  [...]  We’d need IQ to support:
o   Early start
o   Late start
o   Early finish
o   Late finish
 
 
I'd really like to have something like those supported too.  Not sure I like the late finish etc. terminology, but I know this is used in MS Project.

The "minimum" is almost there though : Quoting from Project Management Process - Phase 2 - Planning - Develop Project Schedule :
 
[quote]

For any type of project schedule, there are four types of dependencies or precedence relationships:

  • Finish-to-start—the “from” activity must finish before the “to” activity can start
  • Finish-to-finish—the “from” activity must be finished before the “to” activity can finish
  • Start-to-start—the “from” activity must start before the “to” activity can start
  • Start-to-finish—the “from” activity must start before the “to” activity can finish.

Every project schedule task should have at minimum:

  • ID and WBS number for task identification during discussion and assignment
  • Task name
  • Task duration
  • Planned Start and Finish dates (can also have actual start and finish dates)
  • Prerequisites to show precedence relationships
  • Percent complete
  • Resources assigned
  • You might also want costing information by assigning hourly rate to each resource and adding a Cost column to the schedule. The hourly rate will be multiplied by the duration of the task to assign cost information.
[/quote]