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User's Questions
- Our company works on Saturdays, but the Calendar always shows
Saturday as a non-working day. Can I change that?
Yes. Any day-of-the-week can be designated as working
or non-working. To do this, use the menu for Options and
Overall and Set Calendar (or click the Calendar symbol on
the Toolbar.) Now click the name of the workday, at the
top of the column, for the day you want to change. In this
case click “Sat” at the head of that column. In the box at
the right-hand side click “Set Standard Working Day.”
Note; if all occurrences of a workday (i.e. all Saturdays)
are set as non-working, you cannot then change individual days (i.e.
just Saturday November 18th) back to working.
- I can’t edit the Start Date for a task. Why not?
This is most likely because the task in question has a
predecessor. That is, it is “linked” to another task or
task. The Start Date is always calculated as equal to the
End Date of the last-to-complete of all the Predecessors
of a Task. If you want a task to start on a Specific Date,
it shouldn’t have any predecessors. To remove a task’s
predecessors, click the Task to highlight it, the click
the button labeled “Links” in the upper display area (or
click the button that looks like a chain link in the
Toolbar). Select each predecessor and click DELETE for
each, and then DONE when finished.
-
In the Outline View, or the PERT Chart, I get all the tasks
arranged just where I want them, and then the program moves them around! How do I stop that?
By default, the program “left-justifies” all tasks.
(Usually this happens when recalculating dates) Each task
goes to the left as far as it can without “passing” its
predecessors. This results in a more compact view that
tends to show the flow of work better. You can shut off
this automatic left justification. Use the menu entries
for Options and Overall and click/toggle “Automatic
Reposition Tasks.”
-
Why is it that in the Outline View some of the boxes are Red and some are Blue? Can I change it?
Red is used to indicate tasks that are on the
Critical Path. Blue tasks are those that aren’t on the Critical Path.
The Critical Path is a standard term in Project Management defined as the sequence of tasks for
which changing the duration of any one task, on the path, changes the completion of the last task in the
project. This is important if you are trying to shorten a project – the best way to do it is to focus on
shortening those tasks on the Critical Path. You can use the menus for Options and Overall and Critical Path to
make all tasks Red (mark as Critical) or Blue (mark as Non-Critical) or back to the Standard Practice of
indicating both Critical and Non-Critical
Note: MinuteMan does not support, at present, a means to
selectively highlight some tasks as being “more important” than
others. Sometimes people seeing the term “Critical Path” take it to
mean “Selected as Important” but that is not what the Critical Path is about.
- Why can’t I delete the Task labeled “Start” in the upper left corner of the Outline View?
This task serves as a starting point for all Critical
Path and Date calculations in the present task. You can
just leave it in and ignore it, or you can edit it to be
part of something in the beginning of your project.
- I need to create a link from one task to another that
is not on the presently viewable screen. How do I do that?
Click the latter task, the “Successor” to highlight it.
Then click the Links button. A “Predecessors” window will
come up. Use the drop-down menu to select an eligible
predecessor. Then click “Add” and then “Done” when finished.
- I tried creating a link, but it got rejected with a message
“This would create a circular dependency.” What’s that?
A circular dependency is when you’ve got a circle of
tasks all dependent on each other, where it is impossible
to determine the start and the end. As a very simple
example, consider just two tasks A and B where A is to
start after B is complete, and B is to start after A
completes. Obviously this is an impossible situation, and
a schedule could not be calculated. When you get a larger
project, with a lot of tasks already linked, it becomes
easy to inadvertently attempt to create such a loop. The
program automatically detects this and prevents it.
- When assigning people to a task, I have some people who only
work part-time on a given task. How do I handle that?
If the person is going to work part-time on the task
for the duration of the task, you can assign them to that
task on a fractional basis. Click the task, and then click
the Costs button on the Toolbar (it looks like a US Dollar
Sign - $). Select a resource from the pull-down-menu and
then under Quantity type the fraction as a decimal; .5 for
50%, .33 for 33%, etc If the person is going to work
full-time for part of the task, and not at all for the
rest of the task, you should break the task into two
separate tasks and assign the person at 100% to one, and
0% to the other.
- Speaking of US Dollar Signs, we’re not in the US. How can we use a different Currency Symbol?
Use the menu entries for Options and Overall and
Currency Symbol. You can select from the US Dollar Sign,
the UK Pound symbol, or a single alphabetic character. You
can also select “No Currency Symbol”.
- Is there a networked version of MinuteMan?
There is not a networked version in the sense of having
a central “Server” program and then separate Client
applications running on each of multiple users’ PCs.
However, you can approximate this using file-sharing. Put
the commonly used project files on a central file-server
location in your network. Users, each with a copy of
MinuteMan on their PC, can then access the project files
and work on them. It will be dependent upon the
file-sharing privileges of your network to control who has
access to the files, and to prevent multiple workers from
using the same file at the same time. Also make sure your
network administration has periodic centralized backup
procedures.
- I need to send status reports with the Timeline or PERT Chart
to people in my department. Do they each have to have a copy of MinuteMan?
Not at all! This is a very important feature of
MinuteMan. You can send the Timeline, Outline View, and
Pert Chart, to a graphics file “.bmp” output instead of a
hardcopy printer. (Also, the output of the Report
Generator can be sent to a “.txt” text file on your
system) You can then just insert the graphics files or
text files into a word processor document or email, format
them as you wish, and distribute them to anyone. To obtain
a graphics output of the TimeLine, Outline, or PERT, click
Print as you normally would. In the Print Dialog, under
the list of available Printers, select Graphics File. The
just print it. One file will be created for each page and
sent to a sub-directory /GRAPHICS off the directory where
MinuteMan is installed. They will have names like
OUTL01.BMP. OUTL02.BMP, etc.
- My PERT Chart, when printed, takes up too many pages! I don’t
like taping them together. What can I do?
PERT Charts inherently use a lot of space, and paper,
but there are a few things you can do to minimize this.
You can print on bigger sizes of paper, up to US size “C”
(17”x22”) if you have a printer or plotter that supports
it. That will cut down the number of pages to be taped
together. Another, maybe better, way is to send the PERT
chart as size C to a graphics file as above. Then, read
each page into a word processor and re-size it so it fits
onto a single “A” size page. This results in a 4:1
compression of the PERT Chart, and a corresponding
reduction in the number of pages.
- In the Timeline, why does each task get repeated? It shows up
on two rows. How can I stop wasting all that space?
First some background; In the Outline View, you can
have one or more related tasks in the same row. The text
in the “Work Outline” on the left is intended to serve as
a general description for the activities in that row. If
you only enter one task per row, by typing the text in the
Work Outline area, then that one task will by default have
the same Description as the Work Outline Text. (Y can
easily edit it to be something else. Just highlight the
task, and edit the Description Field.)
Proceeding to the timeline, it is set up by default to display
the Work Outline text on one row, and then on succeeding rows the
descriptions of all the tasks in the same row in the Outline View.
So, if you only have one Task per row in the Outline View, and each
task has the same Description as its associated Work Outline text,
then it is going to look like each Description is printed twice.
There are two things that can make this look better. One is to
enter multiple tasks on the same row in the Outline view. The other
is, just shut off the Display of the Work Outline Text in the
TimeLine View. Do this using the menu entries for Options and
Timeline and then click/toggle “Display Summary Information.”
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