Let’s say I have a right-to-left model of a process map or necessary condition network or IO Map or some representation of work to do. Let’s also say the I take advantage of Flying Logic’s Project Management Feature. I would like the option of aligning entities with the timeframe they occur in. (“Align entities to time scale” on or off).
I’m not sure this is logically possible, especially for when the entities have not had their effort durations and predecessors set. I also don’t know if the scale could be made consistent in size across the model without over-extending the width of the model.
I’m trying to “morph” the Gannt chart concept into one that is more conducive to knowledge work (like engineering) and that is easy to adjust as a project moves along. Grouping the entities by resource assigned would help represent the anticipated load of a resource, and make it easy to balance by dragging from one resource group to another. Feeding and project buffers could also represented by entities. The time scale feature could help estimate the duration of the overall project and show buffer consumption visually.
One idea I had was to create a transform to export the Flying Logic model so it could be imported into Tom’s Planner, with resources listed in the left-hand side instead of “tasks”, and the tasks themselves placed in the timeline, with predecessors in place so you could move things around and see the impact on buffer consumption.
If there is any interest in this, I’d be happy to flesh out the concept further. Maybe putting together a quick video to explain what I’m trying to accomplish. I would love to pull MS Project out of the picture and use just Flying Logic to manage these types of projects more easily.
If successful, this could move Flying Logic from thinking process tool into work planning and management. It all starts with thinking anyway. How nice to go from brainstorming to project plan and project management all in the same tool!
OK, so I’m going to admit to having egg on my face here. I just “discovered” the chart view. It works with and without project management turned on. It provides a time scale view that works for me. I’m feeling pretty silly here. Sorry about the above post.
Wolf, I promise I will read the full documentation before posting another feature request. I keep discovering cool stuff that I didn’t know exists in the tool. You can feel fully justified in reaching through the Internet and slapping me in the face. However, you will get egg on your hand.
I would like to be able to edit the effort duration and resource assignment in chart view. That would be very helpful…
One thing I want is a clear view from a resource perspective so I can keep an eye on the bottleneck resources and keep the constraint operating at full capacity while offloading work that can be handled by a non-constraint resource. I’m looking at the graph view of a small project I just modeled, and I think that grouping entities by resource assigned will fit the bill nicely.
Just an update for what it’s worth. I’m making my way through the documentation, and I am absolutely jazzed about the chart view and the ability of Flying Logic to handle things like project baselines, feature baselines, project buffers and feeding buffers. I have yet to try resource buffers, but I’m confident it will work. All this gives me the CCPM capability I was looking for, and an easy way to determine what my buffer consumption is. I’m beside myself! Before I dove into the documentation and started playing with the features, I was thinking I was going to have to export the model and import it into another tool for the CCPM aspects. Wolf, “you are steely-eyed rocket man!” Thanks! (Excuse the reference to a line from Apollo 13, but it’s one of my favorite quotes.)