Re: [taskjuggler-users] Forcing Taskjuggler to generate a Plan Report even though a certain Milestone is not met

[John Hendy]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 4:27 AM, Philipp Forsthuber
<philipp.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am trying to schedule a mid-sized development project with Taskjuggler. I
> have defined all my tasks, and everything gets juggled nicely, as long as I
> do not add any milestones depending on certain supertasks. My setup is
> attached, although it is drastically shortened and made high concept. But it
> should get the point across.
>
> The problem with this setup is that all the tasks that constitute task B.B3
> can not succesfully be scheduled until the milestone M4 that depends on it.
> That milestone is fixed, so I can`t change the date. But not being able to
> schedule all the tasks according to that deadline is not as problematic as
> it sounds, as this will be developed in a highly agile team working with
> Kanban, so we definitely manage to hit those dates by shifting resources as
> the time comes.

Not quite understanding the wording here.

You're saying that "B3 (including B31 and B32) cannot be scheduled
until the milestone M4 that depends on it(B3)." But that would imply
that B3 is dependent on M4, not that M4 is dependent on B3 (as it
appears in the code), or am I misunderstanding?

> What I really would like to do, but have not yet been able to figure out
> how, is to generate a report in which this deadline is not met, yet the
> information that it is not met is demonstrated in the report. At the moment,
> I get a message like this one "./tasks.tji:235: ←[31mError in scenario plan:
> Task Milestones.M4 (2013-05-20-00:00-+0000) must start after end
> (2013-05-27-11:00-+0000) of task B.B3.←[0m
>

Deadline not met = M4 being completed after 05-20-2013? Or something else?

If so, you might consider:
- Change M4 to "task milestone4 "M4" { milestone start 2013-05-20}"
- Add a new Milestone like "task milestone4.late "M4 delayed"
{milestone depends B.B3}

Then perhaps tweak the css or html manually to color that milestone
red or something. Then you've shown both the hard deadline of M4 as
well as the late version in which it was not met. Kind of hackish, but
just what came to mind (again, based on the premise that I've
understood what you're trying to do).

Another idea that occurred to me was to use the scenario project option.
- http://www.taskjuggler.org/tj3/manual/index.html

You can define a delayed scenario and perhaps use it to accomplish
your goal with:
- "task milestone4 "M4" { milestone start 2013-05-20 delayed:start
2013-05-xx}" (fill in actual start)
- Or define tasks B3 and subtasks with both "effort xd" as well as
"delayed:effort xd"

Then you can use your report to show you both scenarios so you can
compare the effects of the delayed milestone start or the delay in
underestimating task effort required.


Hope there's something useful in there...
John

> I know of the option -f/--force-report, but using it does not help at all.
>
> Is there any way to accomplish my goal, or do I have to finetune the
> priorities of my task in order to achieve a successful report?
>
> Kind regards and thank you for your time,
> Philipp
>
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[Bas de Bruijn]

Hi,

You can also use maxstart yyy-mm-dd within the milestone task. When compiling you get a warning
like this:

Scheduling scenario Plan [ Done ]
./src.tji:54: Warning in scenario plan: The start time (2013-09-16-00:00-+0000) of task src.milestone_test is too late. Must be before 2013-05-15-00:00-+0000.
Checking scenario Plan [ Done ]
Preparing scenario Real life situation [ Done ]
Scheduling scenario Real life situation [ Done ]
./src.tji:54: Warning in scenario actual: The start time (2013-09-16-00:00-+0000) of task src.milestone_test is too late. Must be before 2013-05-15-00:00-+0000.

Else to get it schedules would be to add a resource "Unknown_1" or something like this to the task. You can tell your co-workers and your chef that you expect to make more hours unless the schedule is quicker than you know now. If they cannot make more yours then you'll need extra resources when that period comes. It shows you'll know the problem areas in advance.

I think in the end that's what you'll do in reality (more hours/extra resources, unless there is less effort), regardless of techniques like kanban and agile.

Hope this helps.
Bas

[Philipp Forsthuber]

Hi John,

thank you for taking the time to write an answer.

I indeed did try to accomplish my goal with scenarios. The result was too cluttered to be used effectively. But I will keep scenarios in mind, if the requirement arises.

Thanks again for commenting!

kind regards,

Philipp

[Philipp Forsthuber]

Hi Bas,

the maxstart attribue actually did the trick I wanted to accomplish! Now I get the warning while generating the reports, but the report is generated as well.

The reason that I need this convoluted system is that we plan 3-4 effective work days per week to account for meetings, conf calls etc. in an engineers workday. This is normally too much leeway, so a milestone that is missed by a week in a plan that is three months out is more than fine.

Thank you for your help,

kind regards,

Philipp