SimpleSchedule™ - Schedule Level concepts
Most people are familiar with the phrase “work breakdown structure” (WBS) and understand that project plans are fundamentally defined by these. Each item in a WBS is systematically worked until the project is completed and the overall objective accomplished.
WBS’s may be very detailed depending upon the needs of the project. The more detailed the WBS (lots of steps and levels) means more work for the project team keeping the project plan up-to-date. Large and detailed WBS’s are the norm for most projects, but large and detailed WBS’s for multi-site projects are next to impossible to keep current and relevant.
BigWave aids execution of multi-site projects by keeping the WBS applied to each site as simple as required to get the job done. BigWave discourages over-engineering and over-thinking the problem enabling you to create a simple and clean WBS that is ultimately applied to each site in the project. Typically only important milestones are tracked.
BigWave offers three “levels” to track these milestones and each successive level offers the ability to track more detail. They are Work Order, Activity, and Task. Work Orders are containers for Activities which are containers for Tasks.
BigWave has always had these levels, but previous versions required the user to maintain all dates across all levels. SimpleSchedule™ eliminates the chore of entering these dates by calculating dates for the parent levels from the level you are working.
For example, if the level you are scheduling at is Activity, and your WBS for each site looks like the following…
The Work Order level dates adjust to the dates entered for each of the Activities (Check in, Install, Day after support, Sign off) as seen below.
In this example, we have chosen Activity to be the level we wish to enter dates for. Notice the parent levels become read-only and schedule data for each milestone need only be entered in a single field.
To set your schedule level, navigate to your project Setup tab / Schedule Options sub tab and click the [change] link.
Then set your schedule level from the drop down.
Email This Post