Robin Nicklas

This is the last of four articles I’ve written recently on the topic of on tracking a project. I have outlined a four-step tracking cycle:  set the status date, enter […]

In the first two articles of this series, a four-step tracking cycle was defined. It includes setting the status date, entering actuals, rescheduling incomplete work, and resource leveling the remaining […]

In my recent Tracking Starts with a Status Date article, a four-step tracking cycle was defined. It includes setting the status date, entering actuals, rescheduling incomplete work, and resource leveling […]

There are four steps involved in tracking a project:  setting the status date, entering actuals and schedule revisions, rescheduling incomplete work, and resource leveling the remaining schedule. These steps are […]

Different views into the same MS Project file enables us to see a schedule from multiple perspectives. Using the split view feature is one way to do this. The Project […]

  In my recent article, Sequencing Product Backlog, I used the shortest weighted processing time (SWPT) strategy to sequence a product backlog in order to minimize flow time and work […]

A colleague posed a problem recently. He recorded earned value after tracking work done in the first status period of his project. When recording work done in the second status […]

When modeling a project as a flow process, one objective is to deliver the maximum amount of value in the shortest amount of time. Most project managers likely start with […]

In my recent “Is MS Project’s Leveling Optimal?” article, I covered the fact that MS Project may not produce optimally leveled schedules in terms of schedule length. The analysis showed […]

The objective of resource leveling is to minimize schedule length while honoring precedence relationships and resource constraints. If we know what a schedule’s optimal leveled length is, we can compare […]

For the project manager, the objective of resource leveling is to minimize the length of the resource-feasible schedule. For the computer scientist, the objective is to write code that will […]

Mid-point or block scheduling involves a sequence of tasks, the scheduling of which is dependent upon the start of a target task embedded within the sequence. In practice, as the […]

  The schedule in the figure above was leveled in Project using the standard leveling order. Even though it appears to be discontinuous, the critical path is correct. It takes […]

Figure 1. An unleveled schedule (adapted from Peter Brucker and Sigrid Knust, Complex Scheduling, 2nd ed, Springer-Verlag, 2012, Figure 3.2, p. 120)   The schedule in the above figure is […]

  In the figure above, a schedule was resource leveled using Project (left Gantt chart). It was resource smoothed using Excel (right Gantt chart). Both results are resource-feasible, but the […]

  Impact on Expected Duration, Criticality, and Finish Time Correlation Schedule simulation can be used to estimate project duration. In addition, it can measure how much a task’s scheduling will […]