Multi Project Planner 3.1

Multi Project Planner 3.1 is the best solution for the problem of planning and scheduling multiple concurrent projects competing for scarce resources.

The core of Multi-Project-Planner is a global plan containing two schedules:

1. The activity schedule, representing the schedules for all work teams participating in the activities and upon which the activities are booked according to the resource requirements of the activities and the competences offered by the work teams. You may say that the activity schedule is a model of your production capacity upon which the gantt charts of the projects are superimposed.
2. The work hour schedule, representing the schedules for all resources, who staff the work teams.

Benefits of this layout:

• This layout directly addresses the problem of resource conflicts as they are immediately visible.
• Further the layout allows an emphasis on flow of throughput over the capacity, thereby preventing sudden build up of resource demands.
• Template projects lets you build the gantt chart of a project in the familiar single project management way and later drag the project onto schedule letting Multi-Project-Planner handle the booking.
• Multi-Project-Planner accepts resource conflicts. They are represented by a feature called hot potatoes. The effect is that Multi-Project-Planner remembers the problems, freeing you from having to deal with everything simultaneously.
• Together with a lot features, the layout of Multi-Project-Planner greatly eases the daily handling of multiple projects as well as minimizing the lead-time for the projects and finally minimizes the strains on the brains of the planner.
• Look and feel of the familiar planning board.

Main benefits:

• A far superior overview, as both resource allocation and the interrelationships between the activities of all projects are handled in one and the same view.
• Unsurpassed control of the planning process.
• Just in Time scheduling maximizing your instant maneuverability.
  

Major Features:

1. Instant overview
   • The application consists of three boards:
   • The Capacity Schedule, which is a model of your company's production facilities upon which your projects are booked. That is the gantt charts of the projects are superimposed upon a schedule, mirroring the capacity.
   • The Employee Schedule, showing which employees are present at any given time. The employees man the work teams.
   • The Resource Situation Overview, showing the accumulated demand and supply of resources.
2. Work Team
   • Every work team supplies a set of competencies.
   • A project activity has a corresponding set of competence demands.
   • A best fit between the demands and supplies is the key when editing is performed, ie when you drag a project template or a project,all activities other than the one you control with the mouse, is placed onto the plan according to this fit.
3. Template projects
   • New projects can be scheduled by "drawing" directly in the Work Team Schedule.
   • Alternatively, predefined projects can be dragged onto the schedule, and the program will try to make a best fit with respect to competence demands and available work teams. finally projects can be stored as templates, ie the other way around.
4. Handling conflicts
   • Conflicts may occur because of lack of available work teams with the needed competencies.
   • Conflicts can either be resolved instantly by overruling, or left to be dealt with late (hot potatoes).
   • Flags indicate unresolved conflicts.
5. Progress Tracking
   • Progress (completion and actual time used) can be calculated automatically from actual time reported, or it may be specified directly.
6. Weekend modifiers
   • Weekends and special days are respected when editing the plan, ie the number of working days are still the same. This functionality is fully configurable.
7. PERT chart and relative constrains
   • Pushing a button will show a time scaled PERT chart for the selected project, leaving the others grayed. In this picture the relative constrains between the activities are edited.
   • Relative constraints can be given some plasticity, i.e. A must finish before B ± 2 to 5 days f.ex. When moving the project or dragging a template onto the plan, these constrains including their plasticity are respected.
8. Capacity structure easily modified
   • The capacity structure is easily modified in magnitude and order by the mouse. The structure is hierarchical in nature.
9. Decision points
   • Decision points can be attached to project activities.
   • A decision point contains all the decisions which must be taken at a specified interval relative to the execution of the activity.
   • A project activity can have multiple decision points.
   • A warning flag is raised if decisions are due today.
10. Flags
    • Flags are attached to activities to indicate an exception.
    • An activity can raise a flag if
    • No resources allocated at all.
    • Resources only partly allocated.
    • Relative constraints violated.
    • Notes attached to the activity.
    • Activity fixed in time.
    • Decisions due.
    • Notes
    • Notes may be attached to project activities. If notes are attached to an activity, a yellow flag is raised. The tool tip of the flag will show the first line of text in the last note.
11. Editing facilities
    • The editing is done with the mouse.
    • The editing facilities includes:
    • Creating project activities using a "Pen".
    • Moving / resizing project activities with the following modularities:
    • •  Respecting relative constrains or not (ie related activities following or not).
      • Respect weekends or not.
    • Dragged to other rows. (capacities)
    • Splitting an activity into two.
    • Turn an activity into a hot potato.
    • Overruling or brute force editing. If the program denies an activity the right to occupy a space, either because its already occupied, there is not enough room or insufficient competencies, you may overrule it by pushing the "Ctrl" button.
12. Duty templates
    • Duties mainly constitutes a recurring pattern. Multi-Project-Planner offers a duty template
    • in which you state duty pattern one and for all.
13. Workforce Assignment
    • Resources may be automatically assigned to activities with respect to:
    • The competencies needed for a task and the competencies offered by the employees.
    • The availability of employees.
    • Preferred employees, ie. a distinct set of employees assigned to a distinct set of work teams.
    • Of course, manual assignment is also possible.
    • As always: You are in command
14. Printing facilities
    • The size of the printout is configurable. It can span multiple pages.
15. Finally
    • You may use Multi-Project-Planner without any of the facilities listed, or only part of them as you please.
      

Enhancements:

• Multi user access.
• Employee can be assigned to multiple activities simultaneously.
• Critical path analysis.
• Bug fixes

 Requirements:

• 100 MB ram
• 400 MB HD