Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 UW 5/3/83; site uw-beaver Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!info-mac From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) Newsgroups: fa.info-mac Subject: Macproject Message-ID: <2396@uw-beaver> Date: Sun, 2-Dec-84 15:46:28 EST Article-I.D.: uw-beave.2396 Posted: Sun Dec 2 15:46:28 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 06:31:21 EST Sender: daemon@uw-beave Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 32 From: Sam HarbisonI bought a copy of MacProject this week at my local computer store. It's a spectacular program, with good documentation (manual and Guided Tour). In MacProject you draw boxes representing tasks and milestones, indicate dependencies, and provide times, costs, and resource (e.g., people) consumptions for the tasks. It then calculates earliest begin/latest finish times and critical path information. Results are presented in three major ways: your original schedule "roadmap" with various bits of computed information; a task time line, and a resource timeline (times each resource is occupied). Costs and cash-flow breakdowns are also available. Particularly nice is the ability to write annotations anywere on the schedule or timelines. Editing the project with the mouse is quite powerful and natural; you scroll the main window on the (usually much larger) schedules and charts. There is a built-in calendar facility to note holidays, working hours, etc. I have been using Harvard Project Manager on an IBM PC for the last several weeks, and I consider MacProject superior. However, MacProject is not a superset of HPM's functionality. HPM has facilities for tracking actual versus estimated times and percent-complete data. It also allows a master schedule to be composed from separate smaller schedules (e.g., a company plan from individual project plans). MacProject allows none of this. However, HPM does not allow tasks to consume resources other than dollars, and I find the ability to assign and track people on projects to be a big plus in MacProject. Also, MacProject is more flexible in the permitted interconnections of tasks and milestones, has much sexier displays and charts, and in general has a smoother, less surprising user interface. (Actually, it's a complement for HPM even to be in the same league.) HPM lays out the schedule roadmap automatically (and often awkwardly); MacProject allows (forces) you to sketch the relative location of the boxes yourself. MacProject also prints the charts faster and is cheaper ($120 vs. $400). -------