More on Constraints/Predecessors

One very important feature that most Project Planning web applications out there miss-out on is the concept of defining Constraints or Predecessors.

MS-Project does this; however, it is far too complex for an average user’s understanding or production use. A couple of months back, while searching desparately for some simple easy-to-use project planning tools, I came across the template (pjm_template.ots) prepared by Open Office volunteers. You can also find the same at: http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/ (WordPress does not allow uploads of .OTS files; so cannot upload the same here).

This was pretty simple to use; all tasks had numbers, and one could assign task numbers in a Predecessor column, for defining constraints or predecessors of that task, which had to finish, for this task to start. This is called the Finish-to-Start relationship in academic Project Management terms.

However, this template had two major drawbacks:

1. It does not have facility to enter Resources (ofcourse one could modify the Macros written here to achieve that)
2. It works for only one-project, and assumes that project teams are working dedicatedly on a single project (this is unrealistic in most small company teams; it is these teams which are the targeted users of Resource Mint)

We have used a similar concept and innovated a more user-friendly way of assigning and removing predecessors to tasks or ‘To-Do Items’ in Basecamp terminology.

See the screenshot below to see what we are building.