Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site ISM780.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!decvax!cca!ISM780!patrick
From: patrick@ISM780.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: PC Project Managers - Need Advice
Message-ID: <31300009@ISM780.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 23:57:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ISM780.31300009
Posted: Thu Sep 19 23:57:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 23:59:31 EDT
References: <275@aluxz.UUCP>
Lines: 69
Nf-ID: #R:aluxz:-27500:ISM780:31300009:000:3695
Nf-From: ISM780!patrick    Sep 19 23:57:00 1985


I've used the Sorcim product (should be using it now to prepare a project
plan for tomorrow, but I got distracted), and am not entirely satisfied.
It's reasonably powerful, and a great advance over pencil and paper, but
I have some criticisms:

The user-interface isn't particularly easy to use; it is based on
pull-down menus, but everything seems to take 3 times as many
(non-intuitive) keystrokes as it should.  With 1-2-3 you can really zip
through the command sequences once you get to know them - Supercalc
doesn't allow you to enter the first character of a command in order to
start it up, but instead you must use space or backspace to select the
menu, F9 to display it, then cursor up or down to choose your option.
The alternative is to remember that ALT-M means "Increase Task Delay",
and CTRL-F5 means "Make Lead Resource" - impossible.

The reporting facilities are limited.  The latest release (1.1) has added
some simple reports, but they really expect you to purchase "Supercalc",
(a Sorcim spreadsheet), save your data in Supercalc format, and use the
spreadsheet to produce your reports.  I'm told that there are problems in
transferring dates to Supercalc (Superproject uses some bizarre internal
format which is incompatible with Supercalc)  but I haven't got this far
myself.  It is theoretically possible to save data in a format readable
by 1-2-3 (they provide a data-format conversion program), but I'd much
rather have more powerful built-in reporting capabilities.

Sometimes you must manually make a change which could quite simply be
performed by the software.  For example, the Resource Details screen
contains two fields: "billable hours" and "hours".  These are almost
always identical (if I have someone work on a project for 8 hours a day,
and I'm costing their time, I would fill in 8 for each field).  Yet if I
decide to reduce the allocation to 6 hours/day, I must change each field
to 6.  The software should present me with the default (change the other
field), and let me override it on the rare occasion that this is
necessary.  Another example: if I modify something in a sub-project, I
must remember to "zoom out" to the higher-level project and select an
"update" option from the Command menu.  If I don't do this, the changes
will not be reflected in the master project, despite the fact that the
software knows they're linked.

Perhaps my biggest criticism is that it's difficult to construct a model
in which people are shared between projects.  Unless I create a pseudo-
master-project ("my work"), and define all projects as sub-projects of
this, each one headed by a pseudo-resource ("my group") who works zero
hours/day, there's no way to generate a report showing the projects Joe
Programmer is assigned to, nor for the software to warn me that I've
currently allocated 25 hours of his time each day.  This is clumsy, to
say the least, and even so the reporting capabilities are limited.
What's needed is a mechanism to "link" projects together, without
defining one as a sub-project of the other.


Conclusions:  Much better than nothing.  Produces nice PERT and GANTT
charts.  Limited reporting capability.  Clumsy user-interface.
Reasonably fast.  Latest release comes bundled with "Sideways" for
printing loooooong charts.  Good for simple modelling in which all
resources are allocated to a single project, but clumsy otherwise.  A
sound product which will probably mature into a really useful tool, but
which still shows the signs of its newness.

There's probably something better out there.  Anyone care to tell me what
it is?

Patrick Curran

INTERACTIVE Systems Corp.

decvax!cca!ima!patrick
{uscvax|ucla-vax|vortex}!ism780!patrick