Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with gantt

Timeline Charts on Steroids

Inkoate — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:33:29 -0800

I am tasked with preparing a multi-category, filterable timeline as a work project. I think Access is probably the best way to do this, but I need some help with the mechanics, or suggestions on where to find a template. The final product will look similar to a gantt chart, with the primary difference being that milestones need to be shown as text, not progress bars. The top horizontal axis needs to display dates, the left vertical axis needs to display 5 different categories of milestones (for example, "events" are in the top section, "deliverables" in the second section, etc). I have over a hundred milestones (all associated with a date) to display.

If it were only this requirement, I would just build it by hand in Excel or Powerpoint or something. However, the timeline needs to be filterable by another set of categories (not the same as the ones on the left vertical axis), so that I can tailor the end product to different audiences--this ability to filter on a third set of variables makes me think a database approach is going to be easier than just using Excel.

Does anyone know if someone has done this sort of thing in Access before? Is there a template somewhere that I can rip off? Failing that, does anyone have any advice regarding the sort of structure that might make sense to represent this data, if I have to build this from the ground up?

Lovely, simplified project plan tools?

daisyace — Wed, 21 May 2008 11:04:35 -0800

Is there software or a website that supports working with nice-looking, chunky, color-coded blocks to build a plan? Kind of like Microsoft Project for aesthetically attuned kindergarteners? I work for a consultancy, and we have a bunch of ideas that a client company could develop. They won't take on all of them at once. So, we want to put each in a block that our client can rearrange and stretch on screen, to stage development over time. I'm imagining this as a group activity (probably projected), so I don't want anything nearly as detailed and full-functioned and ugly as Microsoft Project. Do you know of shareware, a website, an application, or other digital solution that would support this?

Help me find simple project scheduling software that does automatic resource allocation and can shorten timelines based on resource availability

farmersckn — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:10:27 -0800

Help me find simple project scheduling software that does automatic resource allocation and can shorten timelines based on resource availability My main goal in finding this software is to be able to forecast our labor over or under commitments for 1 to 3 months out so we know when to take on more work or to be careful about taking on too much.

We have two types of work for each job: installation, and programming work. Technicians can program and do installations, but installers can only install. Each job will have a certain number of hours for installation and hours for programming. I want to put in our start date and a "must finish by X" date. I want to do this for multiple jobs, around 20-40, that may be scheduled from today up to about 3 months out. I will typically assign a specific technician to each job, but any technician should be able to do the work. Then I want to hit a button that will calculate what the work load will be like and maybe automatically assign my people to jobs as they are available and point out to me when I am overloaded.

What is important, is that if I have 80 hours of device work on a job (10 man days), and 10 installers, it should be able to try and allocate those 10 installers to bring the duration down to 1 working day. But then, if I add another job that is due at the same time, it should re-allocate installers to that job so as to get them both completed on time, even if it means taking more working days for the first job to finish.

I think it should support dependencies, because the programming work typically can't start until the installation work is done.

I have played around with MS Project, Gantt Project, and various other software programs, but it does not seem that any of them get this quite right, unless I am doing something wrong. I have searched for quite some time now and I just can't seem to find the right product.

Thanks in advance.

I need something like dotProject but better.

markmillard — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:09:33 -0800

In my quest to find a project management application that fits our situation, I've been evaluating dotProject. This app ended up not being viable for us for a number of reasons, so I'm wondering if any of you out there have experience with a project management app that meets the following requirements... Requirements:

- Uses Mac OS X or is platform-independent
- Enterprise (web based) and internally hostable (within corp. firewall)
- Somewhat lightweight, easy to learn
- Editable Gantts
- Hierarchical project formatting
- Dependencies among tasks
- Resource tracking/reporting across multiple projects

Most of the solutions that fit GUI-wise, like OmniPlan or iTask, are document-based and have to be exported for sharing. We need something that is server-based groupware.

Any suggestions welcome. Solution doesn't have to be open sourced.