The PlanMinder Manual - 07 Priority List

This is one chapter from the manual. Access the full manual here.

Priority List

The Priority list page is where you set priorities for your projects, or to be more precise, for your prio points. A prio point is a milestone marked as a prio point, and everything that is to be scheduled must have a direct or indirect dependency connection to a prio point.

The order of the prio points in the list determines in which order activities are scheduled.

On the right side is a timeline showing box and whiskers plots of when the milestones are projected to be reached. You can switch between tabs above to show other information in this area.

Milestone priority list

On the left side all prio points in active projects are listed. The prio number is the priority it has. Number 1 is the highest priority. There are columns for project and milestone names. Right click on a row to open the description overlay. On the right side of the row is a milestone symbol. You can click on the symbol to open the milestone edit dialog.

A red milestone symbol indicates that the prio point is also a deadline, with a fixed date for when it has to be reached. The calculated probability that it will be reached before or on that date is shown as a percentage. If the date has already passed, it will instead say "Late".

To change priority simply drag and drop to rearrange the order of the list. You must have administrator privileges to be able to do that. When you change priorities, The PlanMinder immediately starts the scheduler to create a new schedule according to the new priority order. This will update the information on the right side, and you can see what effect your change has.

You can scroll the list, if it is long, using the mouse scroll wheel.

Reached prio points

Prio points that have been reached will be listed below the prioritized milestones. They will have a check mark symbol instead of a priority number. They will be removed from the list when the project status is changed to completed or closed.

Dependent prio points

You can have more than one prio point in a project to have more control over the schedule. When you click on a prio point row to select it, it will be marked in purple. The circle of any other prio points in the same project will also turn purple.

Prio points in the same project can be dependent of one another. If you make the priority order in the list opposite to their dependencies, they will not make sense. This will be indicated by an arrow symbol on the prio point that needs (and implicitly gets) higher priority. You can click on the arrow symbol to automatically put it in a correct order, or you can drag and drop it manually.

Timeline

The timeline area on the right side displays when a milestone is likely to be reached as a box and whiskers plot. Use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out on the time scale. Hold down the left mouse button to pan.

The X indicates the date it will be reached according to the expected outcome schedule. The box and whiskers plot shows statistical data from the schedulers Monte Carlo simulation run. The middle bar indicates the median date. It is equally probable that the milestone will be reached before as after this date. The green box indicates dates from the first to the third quartile. It is at least a 50 % chance, according to the simulations, that the milestone will be reached at one of these dates. The left whisker indicates the day where it is less then 10 % probability that it will be reached earlier. The right whisker indicates a date where it is 90 % certain that it will have been reached.

For deadlines the deadline date is indicated on the timeline with a red milestone symbol.

Hold the mouse pointer over a day in the timeline area to display the date.

Dates

If you switch to the dates tab, you will see the same information as on the timeline, but in a table format.

Availability

The availability tab displays an overview of when your team members have scheduled work, and when they are available.

The top row shows the box and whiskers plot for the prio point selected in the milestone priority list. Then all users that are developers are listed. For each person, days where they have scheduled work according to the expected outcome schedule are marked with solid green. If the work is for the project of the selected prio point, it is marked with purple. This way you can get an overview of when work is done on a project, and by whom.

You can hold the mouse pointer over a marked day to see what activity is scheduled.

The green background gradient color for each day indicates how likely it is, according to the Monte Carlo simulation, that the person will have any work scheduled on a particular day. The mouse over hint will show the probability as a number. The farther into the future you are looking, the more smeared out the probability for scheduled work will be.

This view helps you discover opportunities to optimize plans, and discover possible bottlenecks.

The question mark symbol is for the Someone Imaginary virtual developer.