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Greg,
It started with PERT (Project Evaluation and Review
Technique) TIME, which supported software-based scheduling
of events. It added PERT COST, which did the same for
monitoring actual versus budgeted expenses. Then came
PERT RESOURCE, which introduced resource allocation (people
and material) and affected distribution of costs as well as
schedules.
While Predecessor/Successor supplanted PERT in terms of
depicting projects, sub-projects, and events, the components
of a schedule, the three inter-dependent functions of
scheduling, cost, and resource allocation remain at the core of
any complete project management software. In the RFPs to
which I have responded in the last few years for government
(city, county, and state) and education entities while
scheduling dominates, cost comes in second, and resource
allocation third.
In truth for any large software project where cost largely
depends on the availability of people resources the impact of
resource allocation on scheduling and costs poses a major
challenge. In what actuall occurs. In supporting "what if"
instances in which management must evaluate trade-offs.
As I said earlier these same RFPs "required" proposed
schedules in Microsoft Project. Somewhere in my archives on
some unused harddrive on an equally unused system I have
another OS/2 product from some other company that had
these features as well.
Now Gantt is not a scheduling feature in terms of inputting
events, but a presentation feature for visualizing with "fat"
lines instead of the "thin" ones normally connecting endpoints
of events. Normally their production gets driven by the
"physics" of the scheduling, their order of input, rather than
by the variable, i.e. dynamic, needs of management.
I have no idea of how far you want to pursue your students
experience, what level of exposure to the full range of
project management features you have in mind. Personally in
any "real" such application in software where your major cost
is people also your major resource allocation challenge I
would want a product with all three features.
Besides we refer to it as project "management" which refers
to its principal users. Their needs do not rely on the static
nature at any moment reflected in the presentation whether
Gantt or otherwise, but rather on the non-static, i.e. dynamic,
ones which Murphy's Law seemingly dictates must occur.
Therefore the importance and ease of applying "what if"
support for decision-making for management as changing
situations arise.
I also see no need to default to Microsoft Project due to an
absence of an equivalent open source alternative. Without
knowing how ambitious an undertaking you had in mind for
the Programming SIG in terms of your needs for your students
I would again request clearer communication on that topic.
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2007 ]
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