Re: [Planner Dev] Dev suggestions

[Jani Tiainen <redetin luukku com>]

Polar Finnish kirjoitti:
> Hello
>
> I'm new to planner so mabye this functionallity alread exists somewhere, 
> so please bare with me.

Feel free to implement any, some or even all of those. Planner is Open 
Source after all...

> The thing I was missing, although a rudiment is implemented in the 
> calendar,  is how to treat resource constraints. I will clearify with 
> some examples.
>
> How do I plan a person who is available 30% january-june then 0% july 
> 75% august-december.
> - The only way I found out was to edit every day in the calendar. Not 
> very effective ;-)

True. Calendar handling in Planner is pretty primivite but maybe 
someday... Maybe.

> How do I plan an aircraft, 100 % available in may, but with the 
> constraint that I only have a certain amount of money for fuel.
> - The only way I found out was a post-it note and a brain (not always 
> available though).

Well, how do you know that you have enough money for fuel? Not without 
attaching something to accounting software or doing by hand so what's 
the difference?

I don't think that funding is part of project management software, at 
least for people that Planner is targeted for.

And AFAIK not even (in)famous "MSProject" doesn't handle financial 
constraints - it can calc how much whole project will cost but nothing more.

> So my sugestions are the following.
> 1) Make the calendar easyer to use on per week and per month basis. Day 
> to day basis is to fine
>     grained. Also add the possibility to use percentage instead of 
> working hours.
> 2) Add the possibility to add finacial constraints on resources/tasks 
> and projects.
> 3) It would be really nice to be able to import/export the calendars in 
> i.e. vCalendar format.

That would be nice too.

> Why do I want these changes?
> 1) In bigger organisations usually you're not interested in whom is 
> doing what on an hour basis, it's more common to think in percentage 
> availibility on week or month basis.

Some will be interested - it's just about level of grainess that is needed.

> 2) Sometimes you have several fundings, and some are wery dedicated to 
> certain resources/tasks and projects.

IMHO project management as such and financial stuff should be kept far 
away from each other unless you can access directly financial data.

One solutios is to use milestone as such, "airplane is 100% ready but do 
we have enough money to fuel it up?" if yes project is finished if no 
you have to get more money from somewhere. This is most common style 
that I've seen used.

And in general it shows up very bad thing to just start to do something 
and wish that money wont run out - no wonder that many great projects is 
killed due financial troubles. :)

> 3) It would be nice to be able to syncronize with other calendarsystems.

Definitely.

Not to mean be rude but what you makes think that anybody wants to do 
these changes? =)

--

Jani Tiainen