Comments for Rule of Thumb

Comment on Extracting Microsoft Project Timephased Data by Allan

Allan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:23:52 +0000

very very useful.. but you have to search and replace the “” and ‘ characters in a text editor before copying it into your project.

I also went to the assignment level by adding another for loop within the Resources loop and looping through all the resource(R).assignments(a).

good good good thanks!

Comment on Extracting Microsoft Project Timephased Data by Thomas Vanparys

Thomas Vanparys — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:55:46 +0000

Hi there,

Great article. I’ve stumbled across your site while researching Monte Carlo simulations and ended up reading this because I’ve run into the same resource export issue myself a while ago.

I have developed a similar module which provides a little more flexibility for the end user but is focused on the work rather than the cost.

I was wondering whether you would mind if I included some of your ideas in my module?

With regards to the flexibility I mentioned the module I’m maintaining allows you to do the following at execution:
- pick your date range for the export
- choose from several data types such as Availability to work, Work Assigned, Remaining Availability, Percent Allocation or Overallocation.
- choose the size of the time units to export (months, weeks, days etc.)
- pick whether you want to export hours or FTE equivalents data
- include any of up to 70 commonly used fields from the resource table in the export.

It’s freely downloadable from http://www.badsoda.com/tools/time-scaled-resource-data-exporter/

Comment on Earned Value Analysis Mysteries by joapen

joapen — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:22:58 +0000

Hello,

so so didactic,

thanks

Comment on The Change Curve by joapen

joapen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:34:44 +0000

Hello,

very valuable,

I’m facing these issues working in an organizational change for an existing PMO, and we are always investing time and effort for involving people to the change.

Thanks

Comment on Extracting Microsoft Project Timephased Data by Sašo

Sašo — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:16:46 +0000

Michale, try commenting the line (put ‘ in front of the line) for a start.

Maybe you could also set a breakpoint on that line. Click on it and press F9. Then run the script and when it stops on the breakpoint, point the mouse to PjTask.Outline and check whether the number, which will be displayed makes sense or not.

Regarding the view, there is no need to be on a particular view.

Comment on Extracting Microsoft Project Timephased Data by Michael Hoare

Michael Hoare — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:03:08 +0000

Also - do I need to be on a particular view to execute the macro, or can I be on the Gantt, Usage or Resource Sheet Views?

Comment on Extracting Microsoft Project Timephased Data by Michael Hoare

Michael Hoare — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 04:09:35 +0000

Hi - this looks like a very useful Module - but I can’t seem to debug the following error. “Run-time error 1004, Unable to set teh outline level property of the Range Class”. This occurs on the line:

XlSheet.Rows(T + 1).OutlineLevel = PjTask.OutlineLevel

Comment on Extracting Microsoft Project Timephased Data by Sašo

Sašo — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:51:04 +0000

Let me know, where exactly does macro crash. It will highlight the line with yellow.

What does the error message say?

Comment on Extracting Microsoft Project Timephased Data by Michael Singleton

Michael Singleton — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:31:58 +0000

How do I call this? Using it as a macro simply throws an error.

Comment on Random Numbers Out of Triangular Distribution by Sašo

Sašo — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:29:48 +0000

Timm, of course I agree with that domain knowledge improves estimates, but at different stages of the project you can expect different levels of expertise. At the initial concept of a project you don’t know yet, whether a task of hitting a golf ball will be included in a plan or not.

Example. You’re planning Olympic Games and you need to fire the olympic flame in the opening ceremony. It might be by fire golf ball hit by Tiger Woods or it might be in any other way. Before you come to this level of detail, there will be hundred checkpoints where different level of estimates will be required. When you apply for the host of the Olympics, you need to provide a cost estimate. You don’t ask Tiger Woods how far can he drive the ball at this stage.

Steve McConnell talks about The Cone of Uncertainty. It charts the level of uncertainty depending on the time / phase into the project.

The bottom line is that every estimate should be made by three points. Uncertainty involved in the estimate should be defined by the width of the range.

Much more important than the width of the estimate is the probability, that the outcome will be inside the range. Using percentile estimates expands the ranges so that they at least to some extent cover for “out of range” errors in estimates.