Glossary
The following is a list of terms specific to OmniPlan or project management that you’ll encounter throughout this manual, defined and listed in alphabetical order for easy reference.
- Actual schedule
- The actual schedule, in contrast to a baseline schedule, represents the way a project turns out in real life. Before a baseline is set for a project, the baseline and actual schedules are the same. After a baseline is set, further editing changes the actual schedule only.
- Assignment
- Assigning a resource to a task means that the resource is expected to be actively busy with that task throughout its duration. Assignment amounts are expressed as the percentage of the resource’s time being spent on the task.
- Baseline schedule
- A baseline schedule, in contrast to the actual schedule, is the way a project is planned to proceed. At the moment a baseline is set for a project, the baseline and actual schedules are the same. After the baseline is set, further editing changes the actual schedule only. As a project progresses, multiple baseline schedules can be set to provide updated benchmarks for comparison.
- Child
- A task nested hierarchically within a task group (the group becomes that task’s parent). This is terminology common to outlining software.
- Cost
- A task or a resource can have a monetary cost. The total cost of a task is the sum of the task cost and the costs of the resources assigned to it. A resource can have a per-use cost and a per-hour cost.
- Critical path
- A critical path is a series of dependent tasks which, if any of their durations change, will cause the whole project’s duration to change.
- Dependency
- The relationship by which one task must start or finish before another task can start or finish. For example, the task "Buy paint" must finish before the task "Paint fence" can begin.
- Duration
- Duration, in contrast to effort, is how long a task takes to complete in actual working time (that is, not including off-time). For example, a task which takes 4 hours of effort, and is assigned to 2 resources, has a duration of 2 hours. When you assign resources to a task, the duration or effort may change.
- Efficiency
- The measure of how much work a resource can get done in a certain amount of time. Efficiency can affect duration and effort: 100% efficiency means the resource can contribute 1 hour of effort for every hour of work; 50% efficiency means it can contribute 1 hour of effort for every 2 hours of work; and so on.
- Effort
- Effort, in contrast to duration, is how much work time a task takes to complete, considering all of the resources assigned to it. For example, a task which has a duration of 4 hours, and has 2 resources assigned to it, has an effort of 8 hours. When you assign resources to a task, the duration or effort may change.
- Equipment
- Equipment is a type of resource. It represents some kind of reusable asset, such as some special computer hardware. It can also be useful to consider things like meeting rooms to be equipment, if you need to balance their use between different tasks. For equipment resources, units represent the percentage of the resource that is available. Equipment can have Efficiency, Cost per Use, and Cost per Hour values.
- Gantt Chart
- The Gantt chart is a chronological representation of the project. Each task is represented by a bar, corresponding to a row in the outline, and possibly connected to other tasks by lines representing dependencies.
- Group
- Items in the Gantt chart or Network Diagram can be grouped together hierarchically. In the Gantt chart, a task group appears as a bracket enclosing its members from above. In the Network Diagram, the bracket appears to the left and right of its members.
- Level
- Leveling a project, or leveling resources, means automatically rearranging the project to make sure the resources are being used as efficiently as possible. This prevents a resource from being assigned at more than 100% of its available capacity at any time, and finds the best order for resources to work on tasks in order to complete them as quickly as possible.
- Material
- Material is a type of resource, representing consumable supplies. For material resources, Units represents the number of the resource that is being used throughout the project. This value updates as the resource is assigned to more tasks. Material resources can have Cost per Use and Cost per Hour values.
- Milestone
- A milestone is a task with no duration and no effort whose purpose is to mark some important point in the timeline of a project.
- Parent
- A task group exists at a level of hierarchy above its member tasks, and is considered their "parent". The tasks within a parent group are known as its "children".
- Resource
- Resources are the people and things needed to get a project done. Resources are listed in the Resources Inspector, and can be assigned to tasks. The three types of resources are Staff, Material, and Equipment.
- Resource load / Resource allocation
- A resource’s load is the amount of effort it is assigned to do at various times throughout the project. If a resource is assigned at more than 100% of its availability all at once, it is said to be overloaded or overutilized. Resource leveling tries to alleviate overload of resources.
- Staff
- Staff is a type of resource, representing people who work on the project. Staff units are measured as percentages. A person who is fully available to the project has a unit value of 100%; someone who is spending part of their working hours on other projects would have lower available units; note that this is not the same as having fewer working hours or being less efficient. Staff can have Address, Efficiency, Cost per Use, and Cost per Hour values.
- T day
- The first day of a project that has an undetermined start date. Until the start date is set, all dates are represented by an amount of time after T day, such as T+2w 1d.
- Task
- An item of work that needs to be done for the project to progress, represented by a corresponding task bar in the Gantt chart or node in network view.
- Units
- Units measure amounts of resources in various contexts. For a staff resource, the units value is a percentage representing how much of the person’s time is available to be assigned to tasks. Equipment resources are similar to staff in that units represent the percentage of the equipment’s effort that is devoted to the project. For material resources, the units value is a number representing a physical quantity.
- Violation
- A violation is a problem in the project that represents an untenable logical contradiction in the arrangement of its constituent tasks. Tasks that start before the project start date, tasks that don’t have enough time to complete before their dependent tasks need to start, and dependencies that cause a task to be prerequisite to itself are all examples of violations.
