Project planning is of paramount importance to ensure the success of your objective.
By ensuring optimal management of costs, deadlines and quality, project planning allows you to estimate the necessary resources, establish a realistic schedule and define the expected performance indicators. In the absence of planning, you expose your project to risks of financial losses, delays and inadequate quality.
Projeqtor offers a wide choice of control levers to best plan your project and in precise conditions.
The planning is calculated as simply as possible. This means that no complex algorithm is applied.
The principle adopted is simply to be able to reproduce what you could do with a spreadsheet, but this time automatically.
All unrealized work is planned, from the start date to the maximum date depending on the load assigned to the project(s).
With version 12.0, the planning order has been redesigned and optimized to provide more consistent logic and increased accuracy.
Important
These planning order changes will not impact your existing schedule. In fact, only new instances installed after version 12 will benefit from this new organization automatically.
For previous versions and updates from v12.0, you will need to choose the option that suits you best in the settings.
The WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), that is to say the structure or scheduling of your schedule is planned first if no other constraint comes to disturb this order. It is read from top to bottom and from left to right.
The validated end date
It is possible to set the default priority of activities from the finish date posted before the order in the WBS structure.
This will give higher priority to activities that need to finish sooner, regardless of WBS.
The planned end date is by default the validated end date.
If the validated end date is not defined, the planned end date can be retrieved from a successor (e.g. end milestone) or from the parent.
When the end date is retrieved then it is displayed in pink and is written in gray italics.
The bar is also displayed in pink.
If two activities have the same scheduled end date, the WBS is always the last priority criterion.
This feature can be disabled in Global setting to fetch default WBS criteria only.
Priorities of activities
All activities with the lowest priority value will potentially be scheduled first.
Important
Priority of activities before version 12.0 was inter project.
After version 12.0 with new scheduling rules enabled, priority of activities is intra project
Project priorities
The smallest value (index) is calculated first, this means in particular that if the projects have different priorities, all activities of the project with the smallest priority value will potentially be planned first.
Planning modes
Before v12.0, the modes “F.D.C.DUR”, “STARR”, “REGUL, FULL, HALF and QUART” and “RECW” modes are priority modes compared to the other activity planning modes other than manual planning.
After v12.0 with the new planification mode, the F.D.C.DUR modes are no longer a priority.
Dependencies
If an activity or project has a predecessor, the predecessor is always scheduled first.
Meetings
It is fixed on a given date. Even if not all of the participants are available.
In this case, an alert informs you and the Gantt chart displays the unavailability.
Planning Manual and planned interventions
This highest priority planning mode. The workload assigned with this planning mode can be recorded in planned work or in actual work.
Projeqtor offers several ways to plan your resource’s workload with planning modes.
The order of the planning modes is not random.
The further down the list you go, the more priority the planning modes have and will recover the load on the tasks that can be planned in the previous planning modes.
Some planning modes are reserved for expert users.
If you do not want to keep the modes that you do not use, you can use the dedicated screen which will allow you to close and therefore hide certain modes.
The task is planned by duration. The Validated Duration field is a required field. If you do not fill it out, it will be set to 1 automatically.
If work is assigned to the task, the scheduling behavior is the same as “Regular Between Dates”.
Ability to readjust (start and end date) the task with handles directly on the Gantt view bar.
When the number of assigned work days exceeds the indicated duration, then the days (detail of the Gantt bars) following the validated end date of the activity will be in red.
If workload is entered for a resource on a parent activity, and this resource is also scheduled on child activities, then the total of this workload will be displayed on the parent activity for this resource.
The dates and duration section of the activity shows the overall load for a resource.
20 workload days = 10 workload days for Analyst A for parent activity + 10 workload days for Analyst A for activity A.
The mother activity, even if it has priority in relation to its position in the WBS, will distribute the workload assigned for the resource after the workload on the sub-activities.
the load of the mother activity is planned after the sub-activities¶
The task is planned by duration which is fixed. If you do not fill it out, it will be set to 1 automatically.
If the allocation of resources exceeds the set validated duration then the distribution of remaining work becomes overuse.
When the assigned workload does not exceed the number of days of fixed duration then the planning mode distributes the workload by smoothing it throughout the duration, exactly as with the fixed duration or the regular between two dates.
In automatic calculation mode, only the activity in this mode will be recalculated.
Other activities, even those driven by dependencies, will only be recalculated with the full calculation function.
Ability to readjust and move the task (handles on each side of the bar) directly on the Gantt.
With the left handle you adjust the full bar without changing the duration.
Planning mode Duration driven: work that exceeds the duration is calculated as overuse¶
If the start date is specified, the task takes priority over those of the same priority which do not have one.
When the start date is entered but not respected, the bar turns red and a red line is displayed at the base of the line to indicate the duration of the drift (validated start date or end date of the predecessor(s)).
If the duration is not respected, the task is red.
If a stronger constraint, such as dependencies or real work, is specified, the planning mode will no longer be respected.
You can block resource imputations in this planning mode by enabling the global parameters “lock timesheet before validated start date” in global parameters
The task must not begin before this specific date.
This planning mode reclaims time from previous planning modes.
It has priority over the “as soon as possible”, “fixed duration” and “work together” modes.
The start date is no longer respected if a stronger constraint, such as dependencies or real work, is specified.
You can block resource imputations in this planning mode by enabling the global parameters “lock timesheet before validated start date” in global settings
If the dates are too short compared to the assigned load, the excess load will be divided and added in the same way as the chosen mode.
So you can get full days even in regular mode in quarter day or half days.
Example with 8 days of workload to plan over 10 days with the Regular mode in half days between dates
The load is distributed regularly so as to respect the dates.
If the load is too high to meet the dates, the excess load will be distributed over the whole day after the validated end date and will therefore be late (red color)
This mode allows you to plan the workload on a weekly basis which will be distributed each week, for example 1/2 day every Monday, 1 hour every day, etc.
It automatically adapts to the elements which determines the total duration of the project. If the project falls behind schedule, this mode will continue to adapt and automatically distribute the load for each added day.
Tip
Please note, the project is only an envelope, it is the elements that compose it which will determine its duration.
A recurring activity cannot be calculated correctly if it is the only component of the project, even if it has validated dates.
Other elements (Activities, milestones, etc.) will be needed for the distribution of this load to be done correctly.
Click to enter the load for each day of the week.
The work is distributed dynamically according to the load indicated on the assignment table.
Planning mode in half day: assigned days are distributed evenly in quarter days¶
If you don’t want the recurring activity to fit the project, you can limit it between finish-to-start and finish-to-finish milestones.
Planning mode in half day: assigned days are distributed evenly in quarter days¶
The display area allows you to filter the resources you want to display.
The screen is blank until you select the resource, the team or the organization.
The calendar is displayed for the resource or for all members of the selected team or organization.
These parameters are not exclusive, you can select team and organization.
Resource: filter by resource on calendar display.
Team: filter by team on calendar display.
Organization: filter by organization on calendar display.
Project: filter by project on calendar display.
Year: select the year to display.
Month: select the month to display.
Hide done items: you can hide the activities recorded in the “done” state in the displayed list.
Note
The selected parameters, except the month, always set by default to the current month, are saved as a user parameter.
When the user returns to the screen, he therefore finds the last parameters entered
List of Projects and activity
The list of activities displayed are in the planning mode “manual planning”. If no filter is selected (project, resource, organization …) then the screen does not display any data.
You cannot create new activities in manual planning mode from the intervention screen. You need to access the activities or schedule screen to create the new activity in manual planning mode. The new activity will then appear in the list.
Click on to access the activity screen and view its detail
FTE
In this calendar, we display graphically if we respect the quantity of people requested on the activity and on the half day.
Fill in an integer value for each activity to check.
If you enter 1, you expect at least one person to perform half a day on this activity.
A check is then carried out and takes into account all the resources assigned to each activity, and not only those selected and visible on the calendar.
If the field is left empty or at 0 then no control is carried out and the calendar will not display any green or red box.
By défault, the planning calculation is done without overuse, when multiple activities are assigned to the same resource, ProjeQtOr planned them sequentially.
A resource cannot work more than one full day per day, and the planning engine enforces this constraint.
As shown in the example below, since the same resource is assigned to several activities, these tasks are automatically spread out over time.
They are planned one after the other, allowing the resource to complete them at their own pace and within their capacity.
The resource is then allowed to exceed their daily work capacity.
In this case, the same resource can be planned on multiple activities at the same time, even if the total workload exceeds one day.
In other words, ProjeQtOr permits the resource to “work two days in one,” which can be useful for simulations or intentional overbooking scenarios or to identify the criticality of a resource.
to enter the load for each day of the week.
to access the activity screen and view its detail
and check the box “Plan with overuse (infinite overbooking capacity)” to calculate the planning
