Planning - Gantt - Dependent Tasks Display, Dates & Work

Hello,

this is my first post. First of all I want to thank a lot the developers and the administrators for providing a tool with such great potential and a very helpful support to the users community. Congratulations!

Now, my experience is based on the Demo, this my issue:

In the Planning, I cannot understand how to adjust Task Start/End dates according to the Predecessor activity (Dependency).
I read all the related instructions from the Guide and the Forum, and my understanding is that the scheduling of Successor elements is based on the scheduled dates of the Predecessor (which are based on the Assigned Work, since the tool is effort driven). This is logical, as all the advanced scheduling assistants works this way.

From the Guide - Planning 3/5:
"All the left work is planned, from starting date, to the max date to be able to plan the work.
Calculation is executed task by task, ordering thanks to :
- dependencies (if an activity has a predecessor, the predecessor is calculated first)"


However, I tried for hours, I assigned resources and work, changed all possible parameters, but cannot see the dates of the Successor adjusted according to the Predecessor's.
Also, on the Gantt the bars of both Successor and Predecessor are displayed independently from the Assigned Work: they seems to be based only on the Dates, which are independent from the Assigned work. This would mean that they are Duration driven, are they? How can this be changed please?

e.g: a task with 3d between Start/End Date, 5d of Assigned Work (100% Resource Allocation), and asap Planning rule (Effort/Work driven), should automatically adjust dates and duration to 5d; instead 3d duration (or start/end dates difference) is displayed.

Please see the attached screen.




As expected behavior I had in mind the usual scheduling assistant: if in MS Project, OpenProj, or ProjectLibre, you make a task dependent from another, and work/effort driven, its start/end date will automatically be calculated based on the end date of the predecessor:




I have to say that the tool potential is amazing, but this scheduling difficulty could kill the usability.
If you can please help with this mistery, it would be very helpful.

Thank you very much for your help!

Well, I guess you understood quite well the philosophy of the tool, and things should run as you expect.

Thanks, unfortunately the display is still independent from the work. The Predecessor for example: I set 2d duration and 5d work, and the bar is 2d only; even if I set 50d work, it will still display 2d; if I do not set anything on the Progress start/end dates fields, it will not display anything (empty row).

There is one important restriction : if successor has some real work, the task starts at first real work input. So it may be before predecessor end date.

I also considered that, I checked and there is no Real Work. If you have a look at the screenshot, it's from the Successor details and the "real (d)" field is 0,00.
I also removed the date from the "handled" field but it did not change anything.

Now it leads to my question : did you run planning calculation ?

Thanks but I knew that, I run it many times (just not mentioned it as the post was already long)


Is there maybe a Demo Project where the scheduling works fine?
I tried on many projects and I cannot schedule in any of them: items are scheduled only according to dates.

Dear Babynus,

thank you so much for your prompt help!
You have just been so much helpful.

Now, this is a completely different story, the scheduling works just as fine and logically as you would expect from a traditional scheduling assistant.
It is great, this fixed the greatest issue I had about using this sw.

A feedback for you and the developers:
I am running a huge (many many candidates) evaluation of Project Management applications, to choose which to use long-term for our organisation, and I actually had a very high opinion of Project'Or RIA. The only reason why I did not put it on top of the list was this incredible difficulty I experienced in scheduling by dependencies (as I tried everything with no results). Because I had such a good opinion of the tool and I saw the forum was quite supportive of the users, I decided to login and ask about my specific issue. This positive resolution increased significantly my rating and the possibility of the software to be actually chosen (both because dependencies work and the support behind the tool). The problem is many others won't simply ask and assume the tool is buggy, messy or cumbersome, because there are so many alternatives out there that these tools sometimes get a very quick look (if any) before being excluded.

To make it short: first impression counts a ton, people have few time, the first thing project managers will look at is how dependencies are handled. So please consider reviewing the demo, that's how you show people what your baby is capable of.

As for me, just thanks again!