Schedule management with AtikTeam

The Planning module offers a complete system for planning, scheduling and monitoring the progress of your projects. It provides automatic assistance for project planning, an automatic calculation of scheduling and deadlines, a Gantt Chart, a PERT execution graph, and more.

How to set up your planning

You must first activate the Planning module from the settings of the project.

Then go to the Planning tab. Start building the structure of your project on the Structure page. This structure breaks down into phases, sub-phases (etc.), actions and events.

Set up your planning, build the structure of your project

Phases, sub-phases etc.

Projects can always be divided into sub-projects, called phases, which breaks the whole project down into smaller units. In turn, phases can be broken down into sub-phases to work on smaller units if necessary. With AtikTeam, you can create as many levels of phases and sub-phases as your project requires.

Empty phases do not make sense from a project modeling point of view: they are primarily used to break down the parts of a project. Their duration and load values only depend on the actions they contain. That is why phases must not remain empty, but must be filled with actions or events.

[zone 1]: description of the phase
[zone 2]: assignment of the phase to a coworker
[zone 3]: automatic scheduling by dependencies (left) / manual scheduling by specifying a start date (right)

Be careful, phases are not "folders" intended to sort actions by theme. Indeed, a phase has a very precise meaning: it defines a sub-project that can have relationships with other planning elements of the same level, and within which elements may depend on each other.

Actions

The action is the base unit of work, and therefore has a strong operational meaning. This is why a planned action should have a person in charge who will make sure it is completed on time, as well as a duration and possibly a load.

the duration specifies the number of days granted to complete the action
the load specifies the actual work time

Therefore, if load = duration, the collaborator is expected to work full time on the action throughout its duration. In contrast, if duration = 2 * load, then the collaborator can work part-time (half time on average) on this action for the expected duration.

[zone 1]: description of the action
[zone 2]: choice of the assignee / choice of the duration / monitoring of progress / assignment of a load (optional)
[zone 3]: automatic scheduling by specifying dependencies (left) / manual scheduling by specifying a start date (right)

It is generally a good idea to notify the assignee of a new action by email, and possibly some other coworkers. To do so, simply use the comment box at the bottom of the action, and AtikTeam will take care of sending the notifications.

Events

Events are simple planning elements defined by their first day and their last day.

Build the structure of a project

The structure of a project looks like a tree. To build your project, you can start by creating phases and then insert other phases (if necessary), actions, or events. It is important that phases do not remain empty: they must always contain some events or actions.

[zone 1]: planning and monitoring tools
[zone 2]: set up the planning structure by creating phases, actions and events
[zone 3]: access to the three planning spaces (actually planned, reserved for optional parts, and canceled for withdrawn elements)
[zone 4]: set the start date of the project / set the calendar of non-working days (weekends, public holidays, closing days, vacations etc.) / inclusion in the cross-project indicators

Scheduling

Scheduling defines the order and the calendar arrangement of planning elements. It is possible to schedule manually in special cases, however it is strongly recommended to use automatic scheduling in general.

Principle of manual scheduling

Manual scheduling implies that you manually enter the start and end dates for each element of the schedule. Consequently, unforeseen events such as delays, blockages, slips, holidays etc. must be handled entirely by hand, which is tedious and error-prone.

Automatic scheduling with AtikTeam

To avoid this tedious work, AtikTeam can calculate the schedule automatically based on key data that you provide. This data is as follows:

for each action or phase you can choose a list of dependencies. These are other planning activities, which are prerequisites that must be completed before you can start this action or phase
for each action or event, the author must specify a duration, for example "5 working days"
coworkers can declare when they are unavailable (holidays...) so that the planning engine can take it into account.

[zone 3]: on the left you pick the dependencies, i.e. the phases and actions that must be completed before starting the current action. The menu is dynamic, and is automatically reduced according to your choices. For example, if B depends on A, and you select B, then A disappears because this selection is implied by B.

Thus, it is possible to build a complete schedule without having to enter a single date, apart from the launch date of the project (see below). Indeed, the interdependencies between phases and actions, their durations, as well as the holidays of employees, are enough for the calculation engine to establish an optimal schedule and help you meet all the requirements of your project.

The only mandatory date is the launch date of the project. It appears in the right column of the structure view [see Structure page: zone 4] and can be changed at any time.

Note that according to the principles of Work Breakdown Structure, relations between planning elements (phase, action, event) are only possible at the same hierarchical level in the structure of the project. It is not possible, for good reasons, to create cross links between planning elements which are not hierarchical siblings (elements having the same parent). Note that this is not a limitation at all, as it is always possible to organize a schedule according to this rule, and this gives better results in terms of organization and follow-up.

Occasional use of manual scheduling

There may be situations in which you wish to choose the start date of your phase or action manually, rather than let AtikTeam deduce it automatically. In this case you can use a special field that lets you choose on which day the activity should begin. Warning: in manual mode, dates will not be updated automatically if the planning changes.

[zone 3]: on the right, if you select "Start from this date", you switch to manual scheduling.

Filling in holidays

From the structure view, click on the "Vacations" button on the right ([see Structure page / zone 4]) to fill in the vacations of your organization, your project, or your own. They are used for the automatic calculation of the schedule.

How to explore your project

Plan

Structuring your project and using automatic scheduling lets you break down, allocate and link elements to achieve a realistic and optimal planning.

In case of a change in the schedule (advance, slippage, new batch), just changing the duration of the element concerned (for example the action) is enough. If automatic scheduling is enabled, the entire schedule is recalculated automatically.

Communicate

Employees can change the properties of elements directly to reflect an unexpected event, ask for help or share information. The changes and discussions remain attached to the activity, and are relayed by email to interested parties if needed. For that, use the discussion section of the actions.

Follow the progress

A Gantt chart, a calendar, and a run chart are calculated automatically from your planning. They let you quickly visualize the general organization as well as the details of your project, and follow its progress.

Gantt chart of your project, you can edit the actions by clicking on it

As the work progresses, collaborators report their progress on the actions by indicating the completion rate, so that the Gantt chart reflects the overall progress dynamically.

The calendar can be connected to your usual calendar software: Outlook, iCal, Android etc. To do this, use the "ICS format" link at the bottom of the calendar.

Load plan

An aggregated load plan, detailed by collaborator, shows you at a glance how busy employees are on the current project. The load rate is given as a percentage, 100% meaning an optimal load.

See also "overall load", in the top projects menu.