Project Scheduling Using OpenProj

Project Portfolio Management PPM – Project Portfolio Management Every company executes a set of tasks, that can be grouped together, utilizing a group of human resources and machinery/hardware – this is termed as project In every project, we need to track resources, time and cost In every project we need to plan, track and analyze the status Usually a team reports to a project manager OpenProj by Serena Software, helps to track projects The competing tools for OpenProj are Microsoft Project Plan, Open Workbench etc.

Tasks Tasks are the building blocks of project management A task must have a definitive start date and definitive end date A task can be assigned to one or more people A task can have a predecessor and/or successor. This creates a dependency between tasks We can have a detailed notes for every task

Resources A resource can be a human resource or machinery Resources will be associated with regular time rate and overtime rate Resources will be tied to the tasks for tracking purposes Resources are not shared between projects. Each project is treated as a separate entity

Project Calendar For scheduling a project, a base calendar is required In the calendar we specify the regular work time, holidays, etc We can use 24 hour calendar or a regular time calendar If required, we can also specify any unconventional work times Number of hours per day, number of days per week, number of days per month can be configured

Task Tracking Gantt chart is used to see a pictorial view of the task dependencies Gantt chart uses timeline as X axis and tasks on the Y axis, one below the other To create subtasks, use indentation feature We can define a task as milestone task as well to indicate a logical end point We can specify the percentage completion for every task When percentage completion is 100%, the task will be indicated with a tick mark

Baselines When tracking the tasks and the progress, it is imperative to save a baseline Baseline is a snapshot of the plan at a given point of time. After many updations to the plan, during the tracking phase, we can compare that with baseline dates This will tell us whether we are in line with or deviating from the original plans 11 baselines can be stored for every project Usually we suggest to have a weekly baseline of the plans If more baselines are required, we can clear some of the previously defined baselines

Task View The task grid can have many more columns We can hide an existing column or add a new column. There are many predefined columns such as priority etc. We can add our own text, number and date columns and rename them as well, as required Any column can be resized and the order of the columns can be rearranged When you double click on a task, you can see details of that particular task

Constraints The tasks do have dependencies as Finish to start, Finish to finish, Start to start, Start to finish. Depending on predecessors start and finish dates, and the dependency, the next task will be scheduled Apart from this we can specify constraints like, Start no earlier than, must start on, must end on etc. These constraints put additional stress on ensuring the tracking is done correctly

Work and Cost When we include the work column, based on the number of hours configured per day, the effort is calculated We can use the work part to calculate the planned and the actual efforts When we associate cost to resources and tasks to resources, the cost of the resources are used to calculate the cost of the task. The cost calculation is based on the work hours