Gantt-type representation of projects

[Costa G]

Hi All,

Suggested feature: Gantt chart graphical representation of projects.

In my opinion, MLO has all the infrastructure to implement this:

- Task list

- Dependencies

- Due date

Tasks do not have to be arranged into hierarchy according to their dependency.

What needs to be changed:

Commonly on MSproject, projects are constructed by defining the following basic data:

1. Kickoff event

2. Dependencies between tasks

3. Duration of each task.

The most important results of this feature are:

1. A graphical representation of the project's structure, - the Gantt chart.

2. The outcome, - the project's end date, given the task durations and dependencies.

3. (nice to have: )  Calculation of the critical path - branch of the project which is the limiting factor to the completion date.

Thanks and hope to see this come to life!

[David Timpe]

+1 for Gantt view

[Joel]

This would be awesome. 

+1 for me too.

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 9:15 PM David Timpe <dti...@gmail.com> wrote:

+1 for Gantt view

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[Susannah]

Me too on the Gantt view

I thought there used to be one on the phone app but I don't see it anymore.  Would love one on the desktop version.  Would also like a kanban board view but Gantt would be first choice.

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Susannah, your suggestion of providing a Gantt chart view in MLO has been popular. I'd like to discuss some of the factors that could make this into a high-cost low-benefit feature.

If all you were looking for is a task list with horizontal bars showing start date and due date, that's probably available at a moderate cost. But I suspect that most if not all of the people asking for this are actually hoping for much more - I believe that you will be disappointed with a simple Gantt view unless MLO also provides project management features such as resource balancing and dynamic rescheduling.

Let's start with dates. If you follow anything like the GTD methodology for task management, you are not using MLO's Start and Due dates for anything like the date you plan to start and finish the task. Start is the earliest date on which you could start the task, and Due is the date after which the task can no longer be done or is no longer meaningful. For example, if I want to buy tickets to the opera, I might put the date they go on sale as the start and the date of the performance as the Due - If I have not bought them yet on the day after the performance there's no point in doing it now. So maybe they are on sale for three months, that does not mean that the duration of this task is three man-months. Also, you could have a large and complex set of interrelated tasks with complex dependencies, some of which could be running behind schedule, and none of that makes the tickets go on sale any sooner or causes a delay in the performance. MLO is very good at handling dependencies but it does so by managing the active/inactive status of each task. Suppose I am buying the tickets for a group who want to go to the opera together, so I have to put in my order for the tickets, confirm the they are available, then collect money from all of the people, pay for and pick up the tickets, and distribute them. Suppose that takes a month to complete. That means that I really should buy them no later than a month before the performance. MS Project would reschedule the "buy tickets" task to be due a month before the performance. MLO cannot do that because MLO will not reschedule your tasks for you.

In order to handle this simple situation MLO would need four dates instead of two - you would add Begin and End which would reflect the plan for when you will actually do this task. MLO would be free to reset the begin and end dates to reflect your dependencies.

You would also need to know the actual effort required for each task, usually measured in hours (different from the Effort field, which gets a number between 0 and 100, not clear if it's hours, days or just a relative scale where 100 means "very big"). And you would need to know how many hours per day you have available to work on tasks like this. And which days you work and which days you don't work, like weekends and holidays, including obscure local holidays. You might need to also track all of the other things you spend your work hours on, and all of the people who you will need to help you and their availability. If there are scheduled resources, like conference rooms or bulldozers you may need some way of knowing when and whether they are available.

Once MLO can handle all of this, then you need to enter all of this information, and even worse, you have to maintain it - when bad weather or a broken tool or a long phone call from your Mom throw you off schedule you have to remember to update your project plan and see whether the end date changed. That's why most projects that use project management tools effectively have a full time project administrator (different from the project manager) in charge of creating and maintaining project plans and spending little or no time actually working to complete the project. A single person trying to manage tasks on a project management tool usually has an inevitable crisis where you have to choose whether to try as hard as you can to get the project done on time and forget updating the project plan, or spend your time keeping the plan accurate and not actually complete the project.

For your nice to have feature of finding the critical path, a MLO would need further enhancement.

And this brings me to my primary concern. MLO is in my opinion the absolute top of the line in task management apps with tools and features that bring power and flexibility seen nowhere else. If the MLO developers were to invest in all the things described above, the result would be a passable but primitive project management tool missing most of the advanced features found in the many currently available project management apps, like time tracking to feed payroll, or calculating the cost per value added ratio for each task to allow outsourcing or elimination of nonproductive tasks. There would be little reason for anyone seeking a project management tool to select MLO over the established project management apps, and not much chance that the MLO developers could ever recover their investment in these enhancements.

-Dwight

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[Christoph Zwerschke]

Thanks for summing this up so well, Dwight.

-- Christoph

[David Timpe]

I'd just like a basic Gantt chart as a graphical representation of my tasks that mirrors the content / zoom level of the view. Bonus if I could drag the bars to reschedule dates of the task and see notes as a pop up on hover.

I'm not concerned with resources, budget, etc.

[Susannah]

Thanks Dwight for the explanation.  That all makes sense.  I am more just looking for a more visual display of my tasks.  If I need something more than that I would use Microsoft project.  In list views I have a really hard time seeing how badly I am over scheduling myself on one day and underscheduling on the next.  I use the word scheduling loosely here.  If I had something like David Timpe mentioned I think that would help tremendously to better see my work.  I have tried using Kanban flow along with MLO and it works pretty well except for having things in more than one place.

Susannah

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[wa wa]

What about using advanced view to show the tasks in a date range? I have a view set up for the next 7 and 30 days.

[John Hughes]

I'd like to add a request for a due date time picker in the Windows version. When I establish a due date, I can click on the "use time" button, but when I do it shows the current time but no drop down, etc. The IOS version has an excellent time picker.

[Susannah]

Thanks I will try this approach for now.  I need to update my tasks first and move a bunch to next up.  I missed a few reviews and I have way too many active tasks now.  I don't think any view will help until I can get the number under control.

[lewy]

If you are using mobile version, there is a today view to help visualize tasks whether that day is over or under scheduling.

Regards,

LEW

[Susannah]

Thanks.  I haven't had much luck with the app bc I have too many tasks.  I need to do a major cleanup before that will work for me.  Or I need to change the view to only show active actions on in progress projects.  That would probably be the easiest.  When it shows all of my routines and tasks that are available to be done at anytime it becomes unusable.  My contexts need to be revamped too.  I followed suggestions and they just don't work for me.

Susannah

[Stéph]

I feel your pain, Susannah. I've got to work out a nice, quick way of reviewing and archiving all my out of date or someday/maybe tasks, to get back control of my to-do list.

[John Hughes]

Regarding having too many tasks: I was getting messages from MLO telling me I had too many tasks. Now I use a separate MLO file for each year: 2018, 2019, 2020 etc. 

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[The Alsatian]

I may be in the minority, but I am specifically NOT looking for all the sophistication and resource managment built into a full project manager.  That's why I chose MLO over MSN Project or Project Libre.  I don't need all that project management clutter.  I'm not managing a construction project.

What I would like is to be able to display my Tasks organized into Projects with Subtasks  sequenced by Start Date and  Target (due) date.  I know this data is all there because I entered it.  But how do I get a convenient summary view of my Project's status that can show me my start and end dates for dependent tasks in some kind of timeline, so I can tell if I have missed a step or ID where I might have a bottleneck. I don't need resource balancing or budgeting functions or CPM, just an expanded Project view.

Is this something I can create on my own with a custom view, or has somebody already developed a view template that does this?

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[Luc Poitras]

Without having read the responses here, have you thought of grouping your tasks in « « work blocks »?

Ex.: I always loose control of house being clean and stuff...

So, the family and I decided to only allow 1 pomodoro (25 minutes) per day for cleanup and putting back in order.

So, then and only when the cleanup pomodoro starts I will focus on this aspect of my life.

And you figure it out, 1 pomodoro of 25 minutes every day, and you multiply this by a factor of 3 (me, my wife and my daughter) its 75 minutes of it per day.

Also, I have a context that I call « cleanup pomo » so I click on it when the time comes... and the actions show up...

Hope it helps and makes sense to you!

Luc

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