Managing a Project

Once work on a project begins, the steps to keep it running aren’t quite as predictably sequential as the ones used to set it up beforehand. The first few steps presented in this chapter are things to keep an eye on regularly, but some of the other tools are more specialized—they aren’t always needed, but when they are, they can be a huge help for keeping work progressing smoothly or correcting the course when unexpected situations arise.

The previous chapter, Building Your First Project, ended after setting the project’s baseline and looking at the Total Cost for the project. The first baseline creates a snapshot of the project in its initial, pre-work, phase, and acts as a point of reference for the original plan when you need one.

If everything is proceeding according to plan, you can use the Catch Up tool in the Project inspector to advance the completion percentage of all tasks to where they should be as of the end of today’s workday.

If you discover that a task requires more time than originally estimated, you can track this in your project. Doing so also reschedules subsequent tasks that are dependent on the updated task, or that are assigned to the same resource.

For example, the artists have come to you and say that they need two additional days to work on the Sketch Concepts before they can create the 2D mockups:

1. Tap to select the Sketch Concepts (Fresh) task.

2. Select the Task inspector, and choose the Task Info tab:

   

3. Change the Duration from 1w 3d to 2w:

   

After changing the task’s Duration, notice how the remaining tasks and milestones have moved forward in the timeline, and are split from their respective Baselines. This allows you to monitor the project status against the original projections, and—if necessary—look for ways to tighten the schedule later.

Remember, your projects can have multiple Baselines, which is helpful for evaluating different stages of a project’s progression. For example, you could always set another Baseline here and give it a name such as Sketch Concepts Extended.

If you set up Automatic Leveling in the previous chapter, your project should level automatically when you adjust the duration. If you didn’t, go to the Resources inspector, tap Leveling, and then tap Level Load at the bottom of the inspector.

If a task is partially complete, rescheduling splits the task and leaves the completed portion in its original position, advancing only the incomplete work.

• Start at earliest: Work on this task may start on or after the date specified.
• End at earliest: Work on this task may end on or after the date specified.
• Start at latest: Work on this task may start on—but not after—the date specified.
• End at latest: Work on this task may end on—but not after—the date specified.

For example:

1. Tap to select the Render Pixel Sprites task.
2. In the Task inspector, tap the Scheduling tab.
3. Tap Constraints.

4. Tap Start at earliest and change the task’s start date to the following Monday.

   

Changing this task’s start constraint causes a ripple effect through the remainder of the project, adjusting the timelines of future tasks, and possibly affecting resource assignments. Adjustments like this can cause violations (see the next section to appear in the timeline, which you’ll need to resolve to get your project back on track.

You’ll also notice that the button for the View menu in the toolbar takes on the warning symbol as well: .

To see what’s causing the problem, do the following:

1. In the toolbar, tap :

   

   Notice that the Violations option is highlighted, showing you the number of violations detected.

2. Tap Violations in the View menu to see what’s causing the problem:

   

   Here, you can see that there’s a task dependency that’s causing a loop. Let’s correct that.

3. Tap the violating task to see more details about, and how to resolve, the problem:

   

4. In the explanation for the problem, tap Remove to remove the dependency that’s causing the loop.

When you split a task, the task duration remains the same (in this case, 3w 3d), however, additional time is inserted to allow the Physics Simulator to be properly tested for bugs.

To split the Build Software Physics Simulator task, do the following:

1. Tap to select the Build Software Physics Simulator task, and then tap the task a second time to reveal its contextual menu.

2. In the contextual menu, tap Split:

   

3. After tapping Split in the contextual menu, the Split Task menu appears:

   

   The selected task's duration is split into equal parts; however, you can change the duration for each segment:

   

   as well as specify a date when work on the second segment resumes:

   

4. When you’ve set the durations for each segment, tap Split Task in the menu to split the task in two.

   

If you have Automatically Level turned on in the Resources inspector, the project should level on its own. If not, it's wise to level your project after splitting a task. Also, you may want to add another Baseline to the project here:

A split task may mysteriously re-merge after leveling. If this isn’t what you want, make sure that Allow Splitting is turned on in the Resources inspector’s Leveling submenu.

When you turn on Allow Splitting, you can also specify a minimum duration for the period of the split. The default is set to one day (1d); however, you can set this to a value that suits your projects’ needs.