Effort driven scheduling

On Monday morning, I awoke to an email that read:

“I would like the end date to be impacted based on the number of resources I assign to each task.

For example: Task A will take 2 weeks to complete with 1 resource but it will take 1 week if I assign 2 resources.  Thanks”

I replied “I propose that we add this as an option in the plan properties. I know there will be other users who will appreciate this option as well.”

He replied “Thanks! Do you have any idea on when this change can be done?”

I replied “I’m hopeful that we can get it through design, development, moderation and testing so that we can release it by the end of this week.”

Today (Wednesday) I sent him an email saying “I’m pleased to let you know that the enhancement that you requested on Sunday evening has been released.”

At GamePlan we strive to put customer service first. I’m particularly proud of this one because he asked for a significant change to how the scheduling engine works. Yet Phil Martin has architected GamePlan in a way that allowed us to implement this enhancement quickly and safely.

Today’s release now contains the following option in Plan Properties: “Does adding more people to a task make it finish faster?”

Here’s a simple example: two tasks, 8 hours of work each, and the second task cannot start until the first task is finished.  With one person working on each task, the milestone will be 2 hours late.

Adding a second person to the first task makes it finish in half the time. The milestone will now be achieved 2 hours early.

It’s actually fun to drag and drop team members onto tasks and watch the Gantt chart project timeline change in a smooth animation.

Try it yourself and you’ll find that you want to plan your projects because GamePlan makes project planning a fun user experience. And we all know that improved project planning leads to improved project success.