FRC ProjectLibreTMTutorial

Using ProjectLibre for Your Robot Build

Craig Yankes
Western PA FIRST Regional Planning Committee
cyankes@[Link]

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ProjectLibre is a trademark of Marc O’Brien and Laurent Chrettieneau.

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content
Introduction 3
General comments 3
Scope of this Tutorial 3
Resources to get more information or help 3
Introduction 4
Creation of a project 4
Normal Visualization 4
Sailing in this tutorial 5
The definition of your project 5
Add 5 tasks
Dependencies Adding 6
Adjustment of working days 9
Using Critical Paths 10
Project 11 Follow-up
Finalización de tareas Porcentaje 11
Adjustment of late tasks 12
Temporary leave 14
Deferred topics 14
Create a project with Forward against Scheduled tasks backwards 14
Resources 15
Appendix 1: 2013 Team 3511 Task List 17

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Introduction

General comments

Congratulations! The reading of this sample shows that you are interested in the use of software.
project management to assist with your team's construction robot. During the use of this
Type of software to help manage an 8-week project might seem excessive, I think.
that you will find this will help you deal with the manufacturing period of the agitated
quickly showing where your team is in the construction process and if it is
behind, on or before expected. Very important, if your team is behind scheduling a
A tool like this can help identify where the team needs to concentrate its efforts.
effort to achieve the goal of having a quality robot for the Regionals and, possibly,
later to the Nationals.

Two comments before entering into the 'meat' of the subject. Firstly, when writing this
I am assuming that you have attended the session, either "Project Planning" in
In 2013 SCRA2 Workshop or having read the commented slides from that session period that
are published with this document. The slides cover the introductory material that explains
Why a team can benefit from using project planning techniques, presents
some of the terminology that is used and describes some common mistakes that we expect
may be able to avoid by being aware of them. While the terminology is defined in
in this tutorial, the 'whys' and 'Oops' in the slides will not be recreated here. If you do not
Have you seen them? However, I suggest looking over the slides before continuing.
with this tutorial.

The second comment is one of the thanks. In the construction robot in the spring of 2013,
Team 3511 uses an Excel spreadsheet to see their progress and the word of the sheet
calculation carried out at the project planning session requested in the SCRA Workshop. Jim
Broker, mentoring team of 3511, has given permission for the spreadsheet to be used.
In this tutorial as an example, the tasks or as templates if you wish. Thank you, Jim!

Scope of this Tutorial

It is impossible in a brief tutorial to present all aspects of the management software.

projects whether represented in a free tool like ProjectLibre or tools
commercial software like Microsoft Project4. Therefore, this will not only not be a manual of
exhaustive user of all the options and features in ProjectLibre, the scope of this
The tutorial is intentionally limited to the smallest set of features that is likely.
you will need to manage the construction of robots. In summary, the goal of this tutorial is not to
to impress with the tool, but to help you use this tool in your
construction. If you are intrigued by this software, there is plenty of time after the
construction and the competitions have finished exploring further.

Resources to obtain more information or assistance

There are several resources available to help you learn and use the tool. There is a center
Online help for the tool can be accessed by clicking on the "?" sign in the corner.
upper right. There is also a large community of users

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There is also a large community of [Link] the website [Link] what could it be
useful for them to unite. Considering the short construction time, however, many
Questions will be in urgent time and so while the author of this document is of none
He is an expert in all aspects of project management tools, who is willing
to help as much as possible. You can reach him by sending an email to
cyankes@[Link]. To help your email stand out from others, please put
"ProjectLibre" in the subject field.
As mentioned earlier, this tutorial only scratches the surface of what ProjectLibre can do.
Amazon has books (paper or Kindle) available on ProjectLibre including a user manual.
a tutorial, and other resources. (These books will teach you the areas that may go beyond what you need
for the construction of the robot. As I suggested in the workshop, given the size of the construction equipment
and the duration of the tasks is likely to bypass the added complexity of the 'resources'.
concept of assigning users to tasks.

ProjectLibre was so easy to install on my machine that I will assume you have done that and
We are ready to execute it. The first time you run it, you will see a license pop-up window. If
well this is not a recommendation anyway, I will assume that you have accepted the
license and I want to continue with the tutorial.

Create a project
Closing the 'daily advice' popup will take you to another popup that asks if you want to open
an existing project or create a new project. Select "Create Project".
The 'New Project' panel is simple. You can assign the project name you would like and
"example project" that works well for this tutorial. (Note that if later on
simply 'save' the project, the file name will by default be the name of your project
with a cone extension.. You can, of course, 'save as' to give the project a
name the specific file.) The manager points out that the fields are optional and I will explain the option
"scheduled forward", later on (but for now they only leave it selected). The field of
project "start date" will default to today’s date, but to allow your project to
example to follow this tutorial exactly, change the start date from July 1, 2014. Just like
with the other date fields, you can set this value to be equal by typing "07/01/14" in the box or
click on the down arrow on the right side of the box that will make a calendar appear
where you can navigate to the month of interest and click on the desired date. Whatever the way
choose, set it to July 1, 2014, click on 'ok'.
Normal visualization
What is now visible is the normal task list / Gantt card display screen where it will take place.
most of his time. Since no task has been defined, however, both in the list of
the tasks on the left and the Gantt chart on the right are empty. Before adding any tasks,
Allow me to warn you that it is easy to reach other screens where it is not obvious how to return to the
normal screen. For example, in the upper left section it is currently seeing several options of
file (save, open, etc.), print options and project options. Click on
"Projects" in the Projects section. (You will see a line for the sample project.) It is not
obvious how to return to the normal screen, right? Even on the right arrow of the logo
ProjectLibre doesn't take you back! Getting back to the normal screen is easy once you know how.
do it. Click on the 'View' tab and on the far left you will see the Gantt icon and the word. Do
click on that and they are back to the (currently blank) normal screen for your work. Without
click on something other than the tabs of the toolbar 'File', 'task', 'resources' and
See
a lot there, but don’t worry, there are only a few options you need to know for the
construction of the robot.

Navigating in this Tutorial

As you looked through the tabs, did you notice that the options are grouped into sections? In the paragraph
Earlier I asked you to "click on the tab" View "and on the far left you will see the Gantt icon and the
word. Click on that ... "That's quite tidy. From now on I'm going to shorten this to the tab
/ section / option and thus return to the normal screen is done by clicking on View | Task views
Gantt. If the option I'm asking you to click is shown at that moment (i.e., not
there is a need to switch to a different card), I am going to specify the option by simply saying
section | option. Therefore, from where you are now if you wanted to click on
Resources, I will ask you to click on resource views | Resources. Go ahead and click on that.
Now go back to our normal screen.

The definition of your project

Add tasks
While he urged teams during the workshop presentation and on the slides not to have tasks.
individuals lasting more than a week, for this tutorial I will ignore this suggestion for a
simple reason: Having nine tasks is easier for learning a tool than having
had perhaps 30 to 40 real tasks during its construction. These are the hypothetical tasks and their
estimated duration (amount of time to complete the task) that will be used:

Kickoff, duration 1 day

Considered designs, 8 days

Identify the common design characteristics, 1 day

Decide on the final design, 1 day

Build common characteristics, 15 days

The specific features of the design Generate, 20 days

15-day programming

Tests and rework, 10 days

Practice, 10 days

I am sure many of you are cringing at these tasks and the length estimates.
Well! If that's the case, you realize that it's about raw and realistic. However, they work for the
tutorial. (A real Gantt chart used by the 3511 team in the 2013 build is included at the end of
this document to obtain an example of a true set of tasks.)

Now we are going to enter the first task. In the top line in the Name column, write 'Kickoff' and
press the tab key. Notice how the focus has shifted to the Duration column that is
automatically fill in with the '1 day?' We want the Kickoff to last 1 day, but
from the '?' It means that it is an estimate that we are going to make, it is a stopover site for 1 day. For this,
Write '1d' in the duration box of the kickoff line. (ProjectLibre allows you to enter the number and
the first character of the time, such as hour, day, week, etc., if you do not want to explain it
Note that the Start and End boxes contain 7/1/14 8:00 am and 07/01/14 5:00 pm
respectively. Non-compliances ProjectLibre to a week of traditional work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
from Monday to Friday. You will be shown later how to change this to better match the schedule of
workday of your team.

At this point, you should see the following on the screen:

If this is not what you have, check that you followed the steps indicated in the paragraph correctly.
previous and make sure that when you started this project you specified the start date
as of July 1, 2014 so that our screens will match.
In the lines below the center service line (which now has a '1' in the column of the
left shows this is task number 1), please enter the other eight task names
hypotheticals and durations of our example. Once finished with this, the screen (skipping the
the header section hereafter) should look like this:

Note that the line 'Build specific design features' is the only red line. As
Reminder, the Gantt chart rule (the right side of the screen) is for the red line to
to represent the 'critical path', which means that this set of tasks, although only a single task in the
example, for now, represents the tasks that will ultimately determine whether the project will
to finish. At this moment, since all these tasks are scheduled to start at the same
Day, it is not difficult to see that the longest duration task (20 days long) will determine if the project
it will end. It is, of course, not realistic for all of them to start on the same day so in the
In the next section, we will add some dependencies between these tasks.
Add dependencies
In project planning, a 'dependency' simply means that something must happen before
that something else can happen. If you go to a store alone while driving, it is intuitive that you must
completar la tarea "caminar hasta el coche" antes de que pueda comenzar la tarea de "ir a la tienda."
Then we would say that it leads to thestore 'depends on the completion of' walking to the
car. "As described in the project planning slides, the dependencies
Tasks are not only about the 'beginning when it ends' of the form, but also about
they can start this when that begins or even start this number X of days earlier or
after it starts or ends "0.5
Let's consider the dependency between our first two tasks; 'Kickoff' and 'consider'
designs." Given that it is at the kickoff that teams learn about the competition
from that year, it is reasonable to say that the team cannot start considering designs until the
The kickoff has ended. To get into this in ProjectLibre, scroll halfway.
left of the screen to the right so you can see the 'predecessors' column. We want
to say that the second task cannot begin until the first task has been completed, therefore
that it is sufficient to enter "1" under Predecessors for line 2 Notice that the first part of the
the screen has changed to:

Please note the changes: the Gantt chart line for the second task has been shifted to the
right for a day, now there is an arrow pointing from the first line to the second and the date
the start of the second task has changed. This is the result of counting ProjectLibre that the second
The task cannot start until the first task has been completed.

In this hypothetical example, the team is going to identify the common design features among all
their design options so that they can start building the common elements early. Since
We have 8 days to consider designs, let's say these common design features will be
Identifiable three days beforehand, all design considerations are made. Following the examples of
the slides, the dependency for line 3 will be then "2fs-3", which means that this task can
start three days before task 2 finished. Now, we could say this dependency is '2ss 5' (the
What does it mean that it can start 5 days after task 2 as a title)? Of course. Deciding what
The way to specify the dependency is easy if you ask this question: "What must happen with this
task (# 3) if the other task (# 2) does not finish on time" if "this task" must start on time for everyone
modes, so the best way to express the dependency would be "2ss 5", since even if the task
It is delayed for 2 days; five days after task 3 begins, it can start anyway. Yes, for the
On the contrary, 'this task' has to delay the start if the other task is delayed, then it would make sense.
to express the dependency as "2fs-3", so that if task 2 is delayed, task 3 will be delayed.
together with him, which has not yet started until 3 days before task 2 is finished.

We are going to use both forms in this tutorial so that you can see where the different approaches have.
meaning. In the case of tasks 2 and 3, however, we will answer the question 'what should
happening ... saying that even if the design consideration takes a few days longer than expected,
Five days to consider the design that we should start identifying the common characteristics.
Therefore, this dependency will be '2ss 5' since it is important to keep task 3 to start task 2.
It is that work is being done for at least 5 days. Enter the dependency on line 3.

As when we entered the dependency for task 2, the Gantt chart has shifted.
around to reflect the new schedule of these tasks. Notice one different thing in lines 1 to 3,
however: The arrow comes from the beginning of the task in box 2 instead of coming out at the end of the task
of the chart 1. This visually shows if the dependency is

5 Furthermore, as mentioned in the slides, tasks can be set to finish in

function of when other tasks start or end, but this is an unusual way of looking at
task dependencies and it is unlikely to be needed in something as simple as the construction of
robot. Therefore, it will not be used in this introductory tutorial.
7
a finish dependency (for example, from task 1 to task 2 with the arrow coming from the end of
the task of the table 1) or if it is a starting dependency (for example, of task 2 for the
task 3). In any case, the horizontal length of the arrow indicates how many days must pass
before I can start the next task.
To give you a little more practice with this, delve into the dependencies of the following tasks:
Final design decision: Requires 'considering designs' to complete.
Build common features: Requires 'Identify common design characteristics' to
complete.
• Build specific design features: Requires 'Decide final design' to complete.
•Programming: It can be started 5 days after 'Build specific design features'
it has begun.
Before showing what my screen looks like now for comparison, note that the project has
grown in length and now exceeds what (probably) fits conveniently in the section of
Gantt diagram on the right. You can zoom in and out of the image in the calendar as needed.
Views | Zoom In and Views | Zoom Out respectively. Distant view of a single plant and see if the screen is
will look like this:

Please note that I almost got the line between the data and the sections of the Gantt chart and I
I moved to the right to show more data columns. You can do this by clicking
left on the vertical line between these sections and dragging to the right or left.
The reason I had stopped in 'Programming' is that this task and everything I had before only had
a single dependency. This is not always the case, as sometimes multiple tasks have to
reaching certain points before a new task can begin. Consider our upcoming 'Tests
and rework" task. Let's imagine that the team has decided that testing can start in seven days
antes de completa la construcción básica del robot. La complicación es que dado este "ensayo y
rework
construction tasks and programming tasks. Fortunately, it is easy to describe this type of
multiple task dependency: You simply list each individual dependency and
separate them by semicolon. The key here is simply to take them one at a time. First of all, the
The test task does not start until seven days before the "feature construction" is carried out.
common" tasks, so this is a 5FS-7. It cannot be started until seven days before the task
from 'building specific design features' that is done, which is a 6FS-7 and, for
lastly, it cannot start until seven days before the 'programming' task is done which is 7FS-
7. Put them together and you get the bite '5FS-7; 6FS-7; 7FS-7'. Write this as the predecessor of
task 7 and look at what happens with the Gantt chart:

.
See the multiple arrows that now feed at the start of the test box? This shows that the
the moment when this task can start is closed due to multiple tasks. Now, why
go through the trouble of defining three tasks as precursors for the test task when we can
obviously see that just having the evidence from the beginning seven days before the extremes of
Will programming give us the same date? Be careful not to fall into this trap. The fact that in the
moment of project planning that is 'evident' when things end at the same time
time, the reality of the project can delay tasks. For example, what happens if 'scheduling' goes
although it ends early, while the task of 'building the specific features of
"design" takes three days longer than expected? If you only have this generic verification task available.
closed due to the completion of the programming task, the test could end very soon
early compared to the hardware construction task. While the definition of all the
relationships for a task like this task is Testing a few more minutes, it allows you to adapt the program
correctly for any of the predecessor tasks of finish whether early or late.
Project planning tools will determine the final date of each of the
dependencies and use that as the start date of the task.
Now, did you know that I jumped to the right in the 'fs' types of relationships here? Even though no
I pose the question in the last paragraph as it focuses on a versus multiple predecessor tasks,
Remember the question introduced earlier about 'What needs to happen for this task if the other'
Does the task not finish on time? We could have defined the testing task as the start of a number.
determined days after each of the three construction/programming tasks started,
but the trial is a classic case in which it usually makes sense to postpone the start of the trial, if
The thing(s) being tested has a time slip. Therefore, the test is a type of common task.
closed for the completion of other tasks and not at the beginning.
To complete the dependencies in this example, set the practical task to start the
tests four days after starting. The final initial calendar should look like this:

Adjustment of work days

As mentioned earlier, most of the project planning instruments by
defect in the normal work week. Let's say your team works on the robot from Monday to Thursday.
Every week and due to what we want on Fridays, they will not be considered a working day. Adjustment of
The work day schedule is easy. Click on Task | Calendar and the 'Change of' box will appear.
Work Calendar. Scroll to the July 2014 month in the calendar and click on 'F' on the day of the
week line. See that every Friday has been highlighted (in this and all others
calendar pages whether it is shown or not). On the left side, click on 'non-working time' and
then "Accept" at the bottom. Take a look at the project completion date. Now, in
the end of the week of August 18, the project is now extended in
September and if you zoom in (Seen | Zoom), you will see that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are now all in gray.
to show that they are not working days.
Now let's see how to deal with specific days off. July 4th is a day when the
schools are closed, so we will have to adjust the schedule to show that as a day
not working? Click on Task | Calendar again to check what day of the week July 4 is
2014 is from. It is a Friday, which is already a day of rest for our hypothetical team, so not
You have to tell ProjectLibre to ignore that day. That's boring so we're going to pretend that the
schools are not in session on July 21, 2014 for some reason. In the box 'Change Job of'
Calendar, click on just July 21, 2014, and then click on the non-working time and then on
Okay. The Gantt chart will now show that to be a non-working day and it will change everything.
after the right (of work) days.
If you want to change a non-working day to a working day, select the day before it.
click on 'default use' or 'time is not the default work.' The difference between them is
if the day is one of their normal workdays or not. If it is a normal workday, by clicking on
"Default use" will return to normal again. If it is not a normal working day (a Saturday,
for example), click on "non-default working time". Either way, one of them will
It will convert the holiday from gray to a white background, which is the one you wish to use.
Using Critical Paths
After entering the project tasks and their dependencies, you may find that
the final date of the project is after when it has to be completed. Pretending that the project of
The example we have created must be completed before September 1st. The Gantt chart
the identification of the 'critical path' (the red lines) helps you see which tasks to try to shorten.
This is what the project should be similar to on its screen:

See how the work line 'build common features' is blue? The reason it is colored
Blue is that the closed task for its completion (the test task) also requires others,
completing later, the tasks to complete. To show this, change the duration of the
construction of common features from 15 days to 12 days, and look at the completion date of
project. See how the completion date hasn't changed at all? While the maintenance tasks
that are not on the critical path can free people to work on other tasks, shortening by itself
The project's completion date will not change. (Please return to 'build features')
"common" for a duration of 15 days now.) If you need to shorten the schedule, focus on the red tasks.
critical path

While you are shortening the duration of tasks, do not be surprised to see the (that is, red/blue)
critical state / non-critical of the lines change. As an example of this, changing the duration of the
specific characteristics of construction design (line 6) from 20 days to 18 days. Do this
It shortens a critical path task but did not change the completion date, and additionally, the line turned blue. The
The reason this occurred is that, although it is no longer a critical task element (putting up doors
when the test task could start), another task also the doors of the task of
verification and that is why the project end date has still not changed. (Please note that
It tells that at this moment all the tasks prior to the compilation task can be blue. I have
I noticed an error in ProjectLibre where occasionally a task accidentally turns red blue.
and incorrectly, it sometimes paints previous tasks blue as well. If this happens, you can force it
to recalculate all the colors by adopting the last task, shortly for a day and then
put back to where it was.) at this point, set the duration of line 6 back to 20 days and
save the project file (file | file | Save as). Now you can get
easily back to where we currently are in the tutorial (File | File | Open),
Do not hesitate to play with the duration change of the different tasks to see how the critical path line
criticism moves around and how to finalize the example of the project date changes.

Once you have finished experimenting with how changes affect the duration of the route
critique, please open the file you saved (File | File | Open) so that our shows
they are once again more consistent.
The project monitoring

What we have done so far in the tutorial is create a project to estimate how long it will take.
each task. While it is important for the planning to do this with the best estimates that
tasks can be given, the estimates rarely become perfect. Some tasks will complete more
faster than expected, while others will take longer. Coping with this changing reality is one
of the main benefits of using project planning software. In this section, we are going to
explore the way to update the project's progress.

Finalización de tareas Porcentaje

Although the project is underway, you will gain much more penetration in the project schedule.
if ProjectLibre is updated periodically with the status of current tasks. A can be assigned
percentage of complete passes from 0% to 100% for any task and the program below, use
this information to help give a better estimate of the remaining work and the project deadline
scheduled completion.

Let's assume that in our example the starting kick has finished. The default column
to the left of the 'Name' column, it shows the progress and if you double click on a position, the
The 'Task Information' box appears for that task. Go ahead and open the box for the task.
Kickoff.

There are many things that can be set for the task as it will appear if you click through the
different tabs. (Almost all of which I suggest you ignore for your first use of the tool in a
a project as simple from a project management perspective as building the robot.
I will briefly explain 'resources' later.) Going back to the 'General' tab,
Write 100 in the 'percentage completed' box and press the green checkmark on the line.
Kickoff "search": This shows that the task in that line has been completed. Now, while it is difficult to
seeing from the Kickoff task is only one day, if you zoom in a bit on the Gantt chart you can see a
black horizontal line across the red task box. As will be seen in the next step, the line of
black represents the completion percentage and only appears when the task is completed. To see
this, set the 'consider designs' task to 30% done. The black line for the task
enter on Monday, July 7, as seen here:

7
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the Prussian Army Chief of Staff for many years in the late 1800s, is credited
with saying “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” While he was describing military war plans, project
Planning has the same attribute that reality rarely, if ever, goes exactly as planned, so don’t fear changes.

11
If it is not yet July 7th, congratulations, this task is ahead of schedule, but what happens if
"Today" is July 9, Wednesday, where this task seems to be more than a day late now? This is the
theme of the following section. Before moving on to the next topic, however, I will reinforce and explain
here the message in the slides that smaller tasks are better than larger tasks. The
The benefit of smaller tasks is that it's easier to see if they are completely done or not.
Let's use an example from the opposite ends of the spectrum, when a project has 10 tasks on the third day.
and another project has only one task 30 days doing the same total work. After nine days, it is
easy for the first team of the project to know if the first three tasks are being carried out or
No, since the defined tasks are separate. After nine days, how easy it is for him.
second team to estimate its percentage of completion of a large task? In general, how much
The hardest task may be to easily and accurately keep track of your progress and mistakes.
mayor. Smaller tasks lend themselves naturally to a clearer understanding of what it is, and it
which is not, with everything to do and the errors are less significant. (The estimation of the percentage of
a 10% completion rate in a 30-day task is a significant turnaround when discovered.
but disregarding a task 3 days at 10% is barely noticeable.), Do yourself a favor and try to
keep your tasks small.
Adjustment of late tasks
Adjusting the schedule to account for tasks that are being executed behind the scenes may be one of the
most difficult things to do, since it requires the team to recognize that a part of the project has been
delayed. At the same time, it is one of the most important things 'guardian of the programming' of
team can do. The repetition of myself since it is about the annotations of the set of
slides, the importance of adjusting the planning of end-of-year tasks is difficult
to underestimate since doing this is how the team can recognize what I call the 'reality path'
actual
to discover that a task is delayed longer than the time you have to fix it, so avoid the temptation
to give the team a day or two to make amends before adjusting the schedule. Also, the team is already
You know that the task has been delayed, so not adjusting the schedule doesn't help anyone. (And if the team
makes recovery of work possible, the team can celebrate and the schedule can be readjusted as will be demonstrated
next.)
I'm sorry for what might have seemed like a soapbox, but I hope this conveys the
importance of facing the reality of time. Ok, back to the adjustment mechanics of the
programming.☺
Returning to the example from the tutorial, 'designs are considered' are marked as 30% done and it's a little more than
a day late since today is supposedly July 9. What planning tools
projects tell you it is an easy way to say that any unfinished work must begin on a day.
determined. This allows us to take the remaining 70% in this task and shift it to the right (in
As for the time) to start today. Since this is a setup for the whole project, it does not
find under the "task" tab in ProjectLibre, rather it is File | Project |
Update. Click on this. The 'Project Update' box will appear. WARNING, this
the frame has what I believe is an unusual predetermined shape, that is, the adjustment of each task
the completion must be at the beginning of tomorrow morning's workday.
projects with a small number of tasks that are activated simultaneously, such as the construction of
robot, I suggest talking to the team to find out the true percentage completed for each task.
place to use this default configuration.

To adjust the schedule for tasks that are delayed, select the 'Reschedule Work' that
"After" button and enter the appropriate date.

Now, a note about the 'appropriate date': The date is probably one different from what
it might be expected. Read the text of that button we carefully selected and note the 'work'
after part. If you set it to today's date, the remaining work will be rescheduled to
starting tomorrow, which makes sense if your team reviews the schedule at the end of the activity
construction of the schedule. However, if your team reviews the schedule at the beginning of the
activities of the day, you have to put on the date of yesterday so that the remaining work starts
today on the calendar. You will quickly achieve her downfall.

In more warning. Save the project file (File | File | Save) before adjusting the
remaining work to start on a specific day. Sometimes, especially if you are trying to
undo a void created by a bad date, I have seen the program apparently does not show the
relationships between the appropriate tasks. Save your work before performing the 'update' task.
next paragraph. (And, of course, like with any savings program from your work with
Frequency is good. It's just good to do it before this particular function.
Returning to the tutorial example, let's assume that the team checks the schedule at the start of the
journey and today is the ninth, to adjust the date to July 8, 2014 and press 'OK'. You will now see
this empty space in the Gantt chart of task 2:

Additionally, you will see that the project has been out for a few days since task 2 was on the path.
criticism, because it is longer makes the entire project longer.
Interestingly, the adjustment function also works in the reverse way. Imagine that the team
He has worked hard on this task 'consider designs' on Wednesday the 9th and completed it. Establish your status.
completion at 100% and then update the project for all the remaining work to start
after July 9, 2014. Apart from task 2 which has a filled black horizontal bar in it and
the green checkmark that appears, nothing else happened. The easiest way to get the task done
4 ("decide the final design") to show for being-start power on July 10 is to remove predecessor task
dependency of 4 in task 2 and hit <tab>. This will cause task 4 to move back to the beginning.
of the entire project and then making the update mentioned above to have all the work
remaining to start from today (that is, July 9, 2014). That makes the task of date 4 start
Cover around July 10, 2014, adjust the rest of the schedule accordingly.
The drawback of breaking these predecessors to account for tasks completed on time is
that you will not have in the programming to act as a template for next year. If you double click
in the task status column (the column that has the green checkmarks for the
tasks 1 and 2 at this point), the "Task Information" box has a "Notes" tab in the
far right. If you select that you can make a note for yourself that this task
use it to have another task as a predecessor. This would make the reuse of this project easier
as a template next year.
Temporary leave
At this point, the screen should look like this (the zoom is slightly out).

If so, congratulations! You probably already know everything you need to know about the
project planning tools to apply to a project of this magnitude
construction of the robot. If the screen does not look like this, go back and review the steps with a
particular attention to the dates on the calendar are entered. If you are still having
problems (or I feel that I have explained something in a confusing way), please feel free to send me one
ask at cyankes@[Link] and, to help me see your question more easily among my
Emails, please put "ProjectLibre" somewhere in the subject field.
Deferred topics

Create a project with Forward against Scheduled tasks reversed

Volver al principio de este tutorial, cuando estabas creando el proyecto, les pedí que se fuera de la caja
Scheduled forward program selected and to enter on July 1, 2014, in the Start date field. You
I mentioned that I would like to explain what this "progressive programming" means later. The
The reason I did this was that it could have been confusing to describe the 'overdue' options.
"forward" and before having a little work experience with the tasks.

Throughout this tutorial, we have used what is called 'progressive programming', which is another way
to say "if the project starts on this date and has these tasks, when will it take place"
project?" When we add tasks or adjusted durations, therefore, we were not
changing when the project was starting but they were changing when the project was going
to finish. "Backward programming" is the opposite and essentially asks the question "when
Do we need to start this project with these tasks if it has to be done on a certain day?
backward scheduling, if it is added to the critical path tasks or its duration is increased, the date
The end date of the mandatory project remains fixed, but the start date will be moved earlier in the calendar.

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Both styles have environments in which they make sense. "Forward Programming" is quite common.
in projects with defined start dates, but with undefined completion dates and it is used to
a way to give upper management an idea of when the project could be completed (and therefore a
cost estimation). "Reverse programming" is often used in environments where there are
contract termination dates and the company that does the work wants to know when the
Different parts of the project must begin to fulfill the contract.

Interestingly, the accumulation of robotics at the same time.

You have both a definitive start date, center draw, and a definitive 'build stop' date.
In this sense, whether forward or backward programming can work for the project.
of robotics. In any case, the quality of your schedule depends on the team's capacity.
to identify and estimate the duration of tasks and in both cases adjustments need to be made for the tasks of
to be ahead of or behind schedule. Therefore, one can choose any of the
methods. An important difference between these approaches, however, is the impact of a task
taking longer than expected. In backward scheduling, tasks are delayed the most
possible time and in general, they start at the last possible moment. This works well if you
has a solid understanding of how long something will take. (For example, while the
Construction of a building by a general contractor with experience will probably know up to the day.
How long will it take to pour the concrete foundations? If you choose to use the programming.
I suggest that you start working on the tasks as soon as possible for everyone.
ways to allow for subsequent extensions. Personally, I would like to use the
forward programming for the construction of the robot.

Resources

I have mentioned several times that there are aspects of the management tools
projects that you are probably better off ignoring in the construction of the robot. We have
focused on task definition and management, which is part of project management. The other
It is the programming and management of "resources." Resources include both people and teams.
specials that may be necessary for the project. Returning to the example of construction in the
previous paragraph, if the contracting company has to rent a special piece of equipment for a few
Days, the availability of the machine factors at the time of the task that uses it can be
scheduled.

In most projects, however, people are the resource that the management team of
projects you have to worry about. Imagine a large software development organization (200-
300 people) from a one-year project with hundreds or even thousands of tasks. Among all
these tasks are the next two tasks (and the merging of repair operations / / normally
separated from design of construction tests / in individual tasks for simplicity here):

• Design, Code and function Alpha Test - 8 weeks full time.

• Design, Code and Beta Function Testing - 10 weeks full time.

These tasks have no dependencies on each other, both may start on the first day of the project.
and both open the door to other tasks. Take a "single task" view of the project (like what
we have done throughout this tutorial since this simplification works for the construction of
robot), both of them would be shown as being seized on day 1. However, what happens if
both functions must be written by the same programmer who has a set of
specific skills? Will Alpha be done in 8 weeks and Beta done two weeks later? It is not
probable. This is where the project management resources part is useful: If the program knows
that is going to work on each task, then, the tool can easily identify the one in which
someone is "double booked" (or worse) and change the schedule accordingly. (Or, of course, if you
it deals with a major time slip that may lead the project leaders to hire a
contractor who also has that particular skill set to throw off the schedule
interactive)

Similarly, the people assigned to the tasks allow tools like

ProjectLibre to show when someone is less than 100% full, which allows
project managers to know when they will have a person who can be assigned
temporarily to help with other tasks.

The management of large-scale projects, therefore, it is necessary to balance both the

task planning and the sides of the resources of the image that can become a lot
time. This is why I have suggested staying away from resource scheduling in the
quite simple (from a project management perspective) robot builds. If it does have to
someone with a unique skill that is needed in simultaneous multitasking, one more way
it's easy to deal with her is to create a dependency between the tasks so they cannot be simultaneous or
extend the duration of each of the tasks to account for the person who is divided among them.

During the construction of the 'off-season' robot (that is, perhaps after Regionals /
Nationals), I invite you to make a copy of your team's asset schedule and explore what happens.
when people are assigned to different tasks. The ProjectLibre books on Amazon are very good
resources to help you understand it is about resources.

Apéndice 1: 2013 Equipo 3511 Lista de tareas

As mentioned earlier, Team 3511 uses an Excel spreadsheet for construction.
from 2013 to track your progress. Jim Broker from that team has allowed
kindly the spreadsheet included in this tutorial, as it could help to break through the
robot to be built in tasks. Since later competitions will not involve throwing flying discs,
the details of your team will be different, but this is a good example of a task level that you worked on
for a team.
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