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Adjust actual for being ahead of schedule Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
The OmniPlan docs clearly describe what to do in the event of two common cases in updating a live schedule: being on-schedule (via Catch up) and being behind schedule (via Reschedule). But what's the best way to update the actual schedule when things are (freakishly) running ahead of schedule? The docs are silent on this point. The best quick solution I've come up with is:
  1. Change "Effort" for the tasks completed early. This is easy to fudge, as I really want to say "the task completed at time X" and let OmniPlan figure out what the real effort was using the start time and work hours/calendar data. I went the lazy route.
  2. Level the tasks before marking them as completed, lest OmniPlan try to double-book me when I level (uncompleted tasks can be leveld to occupy the same time as completed tasks for the same resource -- looks like a bug).
  3. Mark the tasks completed.

This is a pain. Is there a better workflow? Also, what's the practical difference between Effort vs. Duration? The semantic distinction between these to OmniPlan wasn't clear when just fiddling about with these; I stuck with the Effort fudge for simplicity.
 
Actually, I just revised my approach, which I'll share here. Instead of adjusting Effort, I adjust the End time. Effort is correctly recomputed in this case. It's still necessary to level before marking the tasks completed.

Still, this is a suboptimal workflow. Perhaps a feature such as "Complete Task Now", with an alternate (or a dialog) form such as "Complete Task At". Each of these would marks a task as completed and performs/assists with any necessary schedule adjustments.

In any event, OmniPlan has generally been a delight to use, thanks for the great product!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwhitley View Post
Actually, I just revised my approach, which I'll share here. Instead of adjusting Effort, I adjust the End time. Effort is correctly recomputed in this case. It's still necessary to level before marking the tasks completed.

Still, this is a suboptimal workflow. Perhaps a feature such as "Complete Task Now", with an alternate (or a dialog) form such as "Complete Task At". Each of these would marks a task as completed and performs/assists with any necessary schedule adjustments.

In any event, OmniPlan has generally been a delight to use, thanks for the great product!
I, too, would value a more efficient way to track performance of a project by entering actual hours logged to a project. I use OP for scheduling my project which includes staff from several different divisions in my organisation. Each month our corporate system provides me with a report of the effort logged by each staff member to date in hh:mm (no days).

Some of the project tasks have 2 or more staff assigned to them.

So far, I've had to update progress on each task by dragging the slider and using the updating > x h y h to determine when to stop dragging. It would save me a lot of time if I could just open a dialog box for the staff member, and enter (i.e. revise) the total effort logged to date. This could be done on a task-specific basis (probably the best option) or as an aggregate total which would be distributed across the tasks assigned to the resource in chronological order.

Perhaps this is already possible and I just missed it in the user manual?
 
For tasks which are completed ahead of schedule...
1) Set completion to 100%
2) Adjust end dates into the past (somewhat optional)
3) Level the project, and check the box saying "Don't schedule any task before date" and choosing the current date and time.

Yes, leveling will "double-book" you, but only if you've got a task with an end date in the future that's already completed. Which isn't really double-booking, because you've already gotten one of those two things done. It's intentionally ignoring that completed task, because it knows you won't really be doing it tomorrow -- you've already done it.

The important part is to use the check box, so that leveling doesn't move incomplete work into the past.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by shoimthewoim View Post
I, too, would value a more efficient way to track performance of a project by entering actual hours logged to a project. I use OP for scheduling my project which includes staff from several different divisions in my organisation. Each month our corporate system provides me with a report of the effort logged by each staff member to date in hh:mm (no days).
There is no direct way to do this in the UI -- dragging the sliders (or typing percentages in the inspector) is the most direct approach. If your corporate system provides a relatively simple text file containing staff names, task names and hours/minutes worked on each task, it would be quite straight-forward to automate the entire process of updating progress with an applescript.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwhitley View Post
Also, what's the practical difference between Effort vs. Duration? The semantic distinction between these to OmniPlan wasn't clear when just fiddling about with these; I stuck with the Effort fudge for simplicity.
Effort is measured in people-hours. Duration is just plain hours. Stuffing envelopes might take 10 hours of effort, but if you have 5 people working on it, the task might have a duration (actual clock time) of 2 hours. On the other hand, a 1-week training conference is going to take 1 week duration whether you send one person or the whole team.
 
I'd request a feature that gives me the ability to enter the information in hours, rather than percentage. Entering as a percentage forces me to take out my calculator and convert the hours into a percentage. Seems to me it should be pretty simple to let OmniPlan do this calculation for me.
Cheers,
Brad
 
 


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