Manual Load Profiles with Time Interval New from S 39.5.22

New load profiles for manual distribution of effort in time intervals

• PM_DAY
• PM_MONTH
• PM_WEEK
• PM_QUART
• PM_YEAR

Effect

• When using the PM interval load profiles, you can choose between two procedures.
  • Procedure 1
    • Effort and requested dates ( Attention: no remaining duration) are allocated on the resource assignment. Scheduling allocates this effort automatically, but only initially, like for the respective interval profile (PM_WEEK with WEEK; PM_MONTH with MONTH, PM_QUART with QUARTER, and PM_YEAR with YEAR). Afterwards, load profiles can be edited manually. Load profiles remain unchanged after further scheduling. Only the remaining load is recalculated (e.g. actual effort subtracted in opposite to MAN load profile) and summarized to the resource assignment.
    • This procedure can e.g. be used as an input assistance.
  • Procedure 2
    • Initially you manually create load records in accordance with the selected interval. In this procedure, the manually created records are not changed from the first scheduling on. The data is only summarized upwards and marginal dates are possibly changed to decrease the duration (please also see the Calculation section). For any other scheduling, scheduling is done as in procedure 1.
    • This procedure is recommended when using PM_interval load profiles.

Limitations

• A task that possesses a resource assignment with PM interval load profile is automatically set to
  • Split = and
  • Fix = 1.

Due to these limitations and in order to guarantee the correct functionality of the PM_ interval load profile, you are recommended to use requested dates instead of remaining duration in both cases mentioned above.

• Reason: If you use remaining duration instead of requested dates, scheduling has to be run twice. In the first run, scheduling calculates “top down” in order to create load records. In the second run, scheduling calculates “bottom up” in order for the load records to be scheduled correctly. I.e. final dates are only created in the second run. When editing remaining loads or when creating actual loads, the marginal dates are always recalculated to keep the duration to a minimum.

Specialties of the PM Interval Load Profiles

Details

• The margin planning load records are dated with the calculated dates. The records in between are
  • created for PM_DAY on each working period
  • created on the 15th of each month for PM_MONTH
  • created on each Wednesday for PM_WEEK
  • created on the 15th of the mid quarter month for PM_QUART
  • created on 07/15 of each year for PM_YEAR
    • Please note that in scheduling the 15th is not treated as a real date but only as an interval marker. I.e. in case the 15th is a non-working day, loading is executed on that day anyway.
• There is only one planning record per interval.
  • If another record is created in the same interval, it is summarized with the first created record, i.e. the load is added to that of the first record.
• The actual records are created per day in accordance with the work reportings, regardless of the selected interval.
• Manual load profiles with interval enable you to pause resource planning in a task. See the screen shot below.

Details on work reporting

• If the entire planned effort is reported to an interval as actual, the remaining effort is set to 0, the respective planning record, however, is retained.
• If more working hours are reported in an interval than planned, the remaining effort is set to 0 as well, but the total effort is increased as those hours are not subtracted from the planned effort of other intervals.
• If hours are reported in an unplanned interval, the total effort is increased since the hours cannot be subtracted from the effort planned in other intervals.

Example

• before work reporting

• after work reporting

Notes

• When planning with PM interval load profiles > PM_DAY, there may be differences in overloads in DT472 and DT468 to be considered. If there are, e.g., overloads on period level, they may be compensated in the week or month planning data and therefore not be specified in DT472.
  • Reason: The loads are linearized to interval granularity, since the saving only contains the total effort, etc., over the respective period, and not the number of affected working days. Overloads are therefore only specified on interval granularity. In a load record, overload only occurs if the remaining effort exceeds the availability in the entire period in question.
• The Allocate effort function cannot be used for resources with manual load profiles with interval, since it is not clear from which interval the effort is to be subtracted.

Calculation

• If requested dates are defined,
  • they determine the task duration and
  • the scheduling of the marginal load records.
• If requested dates are not defined but the remaining duration instead, the load-based approach is used to calculate the marginal plan load records in order to decrease the duration:
  • Thereby, the first record at the end of the interval is calculated to the left and the last record at the last of the last interval is calculated to the right.

Differences Between MAN and PM_DAY