Clarity

Hi,guidelines 

We manage our projects without timesheet and we need reprogramming projects task using %completed instead of ETC. I found one attribute that suppose can help me but I don´t know how can I use it. This is 'Task estimating Rules' in estimating task .

Some body can help me with a guideline for use autoschedule without timesheet?

Thanks a lot,

Cira

I am a little doubtful if you will be able to utilize the Autoschedule functionality that comes with PPM Gantt, as you will not be using ETC for the tasks or the projects.

As you see, this Autoschedule uses task duration, task date constraints, priority order, dependency information, and related date and resource logic to identify the project critical path and schedules tasks. Each task is scheduled:

• To use availability as early in the project as possible
• To start at the earliest or latest possible time, subject to date constraints
• To minimize the duration of the critical path.

The critical path determines the earliest finish date of the project. Autoschedule uses the critical path information to make the following scheduling adjustments:

• Determines early and late start and finish dates for each task.
• Moves the early start forward or back, as applicable.
• Checks for load patterns that are set to fixed, and adjusts early start and finish dates to fit.
• Builds new ETC curves that are based on the recalculated early start and finish dates for the tasks, and subtracts as applicable from remaining resource availability.
• To eliminate or minimize resource over-allocation, calculations can move out a task finish date, or the project finish date.

Hope this helps. Thanks.

Hey Cira, 

I also checked for Open Workbench (OWB) which another project scheduler tool that PPM supports officially. These are the following things that OWB considers while scheduling the projects: 

• Determine one of the following items:
  
  • The minimum length of time that is required to complete each task (task duration).
  • The resource usage on each task (used to determine duration).
• Determine the ETC for each resource.

So here also, ETC is needed. 

Regards,

Abhisek Dhar

Thank you Abhisek,

I understood your explanation but now we are not using timesheet and I want to know if is possible set some attribute in the configuratuon in order to do that the ETC will be calculated related to %completed . It means that PM put the %complete and the system calculated ETC.

Let me know if is possible.

Regards,

Cira

I do not think so. The way I see it the initial ETC is set by the PM.

It will reduce by the actuals entered. If there are not actuals it will not be reduced unless the loading pattern is fixed. With fixed loading pattern the ETC will be reduced automatically when time goes by.

For the different calculation methods for %Complete see

CA PPM Tuesday Tip: How do the three % Complete Calculation Methods Work 

You could create a GEL process which calculates the ETC and xogs in the data.

No, Cira. That was my point. You will not be able to use Autoschedule if you are not going with the concept of ETC being filled up for tasks/projects.

Thank you Abhisek,

Regards,

Cira

Hi Cira

I'm not sure whether the below solution works for you

Task Estimating Rules

Create and apply estimating rules to calculate ETC automatically. For example, you can create an estimating rule for a group of tasks that considers the budgeted cost of the tasks in the ETC. Though you can create multiple task estimating rules for the same task, only one can serve as the default rule.

Example

You know that Phase I requires 100 hours to complete. Before you can enter the number and can apply it, you set up the tasks for the phase to receive some percentage of those 100 hours. In this case, you can enter 60 percent for Task A, and 40 percent for Task B. Once the tasks are set up to receive a percentage, you can apply the ETC. The number is distributed accordingly.

Check out the below link

Task Estimate to Complete (ETC) - CA PPM - 15.4 - CA Technologies Documentation 

Thanks

-Venkitta

You can use autoschedule without ETC.

However, it will not do everything it is supposed to do. Then it will not calculate task duration based on ETC and resource availability nor schedule them properly.

It will maintain their given durations and schedule them according to the dependencies  given.

For some simple examples see the attachment

Thank you Urmas,

Can you send he attachment?

Regards,

Cira

Sure, message me with your email address.

civelasquezv@falabella.cl

Thanks.

Cira

Thank you Venkitta,

Regards,

Cira