What are the best practices for taking Planned Snapshots in a Formal Project?
One answer
I have only touched formal planning so far, and thus only limited experience. However, you have three snapshot types available.
Here some documentation I have looked into when poking around: https://jazz.net/library/article/1152
I can't say anything to the scheduled variance.
With respect to plan snapshots, you have the following
1. Regular - you can have as many as you like. You can keep them as a baseline and also compare against them. Proposed and planned snapshots become regular ones if you create a new proposed or planned snapshot.
2. Proposed - the proposed schedule for a plan. You can only have one. If you create a new one the old is kept and changed to regular. The plan keeps the proposed times for comparison.
3. Planned - the planned schedule. You can have only one of it.
You can compare any plan snapshot to see slippage. You can also select to display the current schedule, the planned and the proposed schedule in the Work Breakdown and Schedule and any other plan view configured to show the Gant section.
The current schedule is based on the current data in the plan (allocation, start time etc.) calculated when the plan was last refreshed in the browser, as far as I can tell.
As far as I am concerned, the current plan shows the reality and the proposed and planned snapshots show what was reality in the plan (like your old project plan in any file based tool) which is aging and does not represent the reality after not being updated for some days.
I would probably
-
Create a new proposed snapshot after finding that the reality has changed, looking at the current plan and the originally planned snapshot. Use the new proposed snapshot to communicate the changes.
- Create a new planned snapshot after agreeing with management that reality and plan don't match as usual because the reality has changed and everybody agreed it can't be helped.
- Keep the old planned and proposed snapshots with as regular snapshots with a useful name to be able to compare the currently "planned" or proposed plan against the reality back then.
From my perspective, the reality is fact. If your allocations change, people ask for vacation or are otherwise occupied, you need to re-plan and the plan that was true and ideal in the past is reduced to just some data point in the past useable to better understand what went wrong and reduced it to history.
I shared your questions with others and hope they can provide more insight. There might be others with more experience with formal planning that step up and share their knowledge. This is the best I can do.
Comments
As far as what the 'current data' is, items that have been added to the plan since the last Planned Snapshot was taken have no Planned Start Date or Planned End Date. Refreshing the browser does not fix this.
Michael,
I have been involved with several customers looking into planning - agile and formal. There are several areas where I think we need to improve documentation as well as the tooling. I am currently working with others on gathering the 'as is' of the tool and building an understanding of how this works and should be used. I am just starting with formal after completing basics and agile. There is room for improvement I have identified from my naive perspective. I hope we can address that in future development.
I am looking for practitioners of agile, formal and cross project planning that can provide questions and challenges they have and what they have found works or does not. Anyone who wants to contribute can reach me here (tag planning) or at mailto:ralph.schoon@de.ibm.com. Looking forward for input.
1 vote
With respect to your answer. The planning seems to be done when doing the snapshot. However, in the agile scheduler, it happens when the item has an owner and an estimate. Can you try that? Agile seems to not rely that much on snapshots for the schedule. I will have to look into formal planning as stated above. Good input.
1 vote
Right, all of our items have owners and estimates. But if they were added since the last Planned Snapshot, the Planned Start/End Dates are blank ( ----- ).
Thanks, I will add that to my list of investigation topics.
1 vote
From: https://jazz.net/library/article/1152
I and others in Jazz Jumpstart and development are in violent agreement with your statement and determined to take up the challenge. It will require some time and informed input as much as we can get. Stay tuned.
1 vote
This especially holds true for formal planning. We have widely adopted agile but I think there is lack of experience with formal planning. But also keep in mind that RTC provides you with a life plan and not a file based plan that also hardly reflects reality. You will have to deal with the tool being aware of the time flowing.
1 vote
Yep, that is certainly something that I am aware of and I am working to get my team used to that style of planning. It has a lot of great benefits, but it takes time to adjust to it after years of creating a static plan at the start of a project and then trying to stick with it for 6 months even with changes and work being added (that is never updated in the plan because it is static).