[Planner Dev] (no subject)

["Polar Finnish" <hrmanswer hotmail com>]

> Jani Tiainen redetin at luukku.com
> Wed Jan 26 08:03:40 CET 2005
>
> 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 was thinking the plane as a resource, it is assigned to a task, i.e. 
monitor potential
oil leakage in the baltic sea. The task has constraints, availibility and 
budget. So the
amount of money is an input, just as the availibility.
The task also has a subtask for each flight pass, consuming a part of the 
budget.
> 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, mabye this will make Planner the MSProject killer ;-)
> > 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.
I can see a point here, you don't want the Planner project to be too big and 
hairy
I guess.
But the financial data often only exists on pieces of paper from the above 
bosses
or in the projekt manager's head, so in a way you have direct access to 
financial data.
As I see it one part of a project manager's duties are to stick to the 
budget, so why
don't help him/her with that in the planner tool?
> 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. :)
I agree.
> > 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? =)
I know I'm a bit naive and mabye I've misunderstood something but I thougth
that Planner, although open source, is driven by Imendio and I expect the
company to have some kind of interest to make this software attractive
so thay can sell their consulting services to the users.

Anyhow I just wanted to vent some of my ideas and see what the responce from
the developers was because I think Planner is really good. And if I could 
get the
above functionality, especially the calendar issues, I would certainly use 
it as my
personal planner tool. Mabye I will dig in to the source.
> --
>
> Jani Tiainen

/PF

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