Vladimir talked about the ability to track quantities of materials consumed and produced using the tool. I have seen this capability before in the demo software, and in the plans of some real-life projects that use Spider. It is pretty straightforward to define new material types, attach the production or consumption of these materials to individual tasks, and then graph the time-phased quantities of the item. It is a very flexible feature.
Vladimir went on to talk about "norms": "It permits to create and to use corporate norms. We consider this as quite necessary step in PM System implementation. These norms may include resource productivities on typical activities, material requirements per unit (!) of typical activities, unit costs, etc. It is natural in construction, manufacturing, oil&gas, but we insist that it is useful also in telecom, software development, engineering. If the work is typical then it shall be measured the same way in any project of the organization."
I would like to know more about these "norms", but I do not want to take over the previous thread. Vladimir, please provide some more background on what you mean by this. I attended one of your presentations in the PMI AP Congress in 2008 in Sydney, but never fully understood this point. Saving Changes...
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Vladimir LiberzonR&D Director| Spider Project TeamMoscow, Russian Federation
Good Corporate PM System means existence of the internal PM standards that include PM Guidelines, Document templates, Project, activity, resource coding system, Corporate resource pools, WBS templates for typical projects, Models of typical processes (Typical Project Fragnets), Databases of typical activity and resource requirements and characteristics.
It is necessary to be sure that typical activities estimations are the same in different projects, that production rates are the same if the same resources are assigned to do the same work but in different places, etc. It is necessary comparing different schedules be sure that the same elements have the same estimates.
Resource productivity is the quantity of work that is done in an hour. If some resource is assigned to do the same work his/her/its productivity shall be the same in all projects.
The quantity of work can be measured in physical units (meters, tons, cubic meters, etc.) or some more sophisticated units like function points. We call the quantity of work to be done Activity Volume.
Material requirements and Activity planned cost is usually proportional to activity volume.
So it is useful to create a list of activity types, and for each type to define unit cost and material requirements per volume unit.
Activity cost may include components, materials may be consumed and/or produced.
It may be useful to create Resource types. Resources belong to the same type if they have common features like the same productivities on the same activity types. It may be useful to create many type fields.
Creating databases (reference-books) for typical activities (cost and material requirements), resources and resource assignments (standard resource crews, productivities and workloads, payments and material requirements per time or volume unit, etc.) we create corporate rules for estimating time, cost and material requirements for typical elements of all projects. We may be sure that project schedules and budgets are based on these rules. It is easier to justify calculated project durations and budgets. It is easier to implement changes. Changes in the reference-books will be reflected in the models of all projects that are linked with these reference-books. It is useful in management, it is extremely convenient for what if evaluations.
Please look at the attached file that can be also downloaded from http://www.spiderproject.ru/library/tt.ppt I will be glad to discuss all this in more detail but answering specific questions. The whole topic is huge and underestimated.
Best Regards,
Vladimir Saving Changes...
These "reference books" seem very useful. It seems like you could define a named resource, or a skill-based resource (programmer, designer, or whatever), and set their expected productivity level or cost in the shared reference book. Then, if the standard rate or productivity measures change in the future, you can make the change once, in the reference book, then the change will go into all of the attached schedules and plans.
That is a very useful feature. As far as I know, Spider Project is the only piece of software offering these features. You could use Visual Basic to write a script to perform mass updates in MS Project, but it is not built-in and there is no integrated "reference book" system like this. Saving Changes...
Vladimir LiberzonR&D Director| Spider Project TeamMoscow, Russian Federation
Alex,
your description is correct.
I want to add that in new project it is sufficient to define activity types and volumes, and assign resources or skills from the corporate pool. Everything else will be done by the package. Durations, costs, material requirements, necessary resources will be calculated basing on reference books data, Project schedule will be based on the corporate norms.
Another useful corporate tool - a library of typical fragnets.
These fragnets are small projects (resource and cost loaded) that simulate typical technological or organizational processes (work package level). The planner uses this library after creating or selecting project WBS. Necessary fragnets shall be inserted on work package level for creating project computer model. In this process the planner specifies the volume of work for each specific work package and the software adjusts fragnet data.
An example: the pipelines have many similar parts that may be decribed only once and then duplicated with volume adjustment.
Best Regards,
Vladimir
Saving Changes...
Yes, the "fragnet" concept is very useful. I often create these small sections of a project plan in Excel or MS Project. I then copy-and-paste them into whatever scheduling tool I am working with. I use Excel formulas or search-and-replace to scale the fragnet up or down, and to customize it to the particular set of work that is being accomplished.
It is much better, though, to have built-in support for the library of fragnets. That way, it is easier to scale the estimates up and down consistently. I wind up playing with Excel formulas to achieve the same effect in other tools (usually MS Project). Saving Changes...
