AnalytiProject
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Project Planner in AnalytiCalc
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	Motivation
	----------
	The idea here is to allow you to express networks of activities
here, one activity to a line (row) and say what the dependencies of
each on others are. You enter the project start date, the name of
each sub-activity, what others it depends on, the duration of each,
and the amount of "resource" used by each. You get back the start and
end dates for each, a plot on screen of resource usage vs. time (with
fixed 24 bins, each 1/24 of the total duration), and information on
which activities form the "critical path". The critical path is the
set of activities that make your project end when it does rather than
earlier. If you alter the duration of one of the activities on the
critical path, it will usually shorten the project. However, since
other activities may then become the critical ones, this cannot be
always guaranteed.
	The plot of resource use vs. time is handy in that it will
let you tell if you're going to be overcommitted. If for example
your "resource" is people and it shows 10 used where your shop
has only 6, you know things are in trouble. You'll need to add some
dependencies to the network to express the notion that some later
activities have to depend on more earlier ones being done then,
due to the availability of people rather than the logic of the
rest of the project.


Detail
------
The project planner consists of the saved spreadsheet file PPLN.PCC
and the two page displayers, PPLNS1.CMD and PPLNS2.CMD. An optional
component is the file APPLN.CMD.
	If you use the APPLN.CMD file, you need only fire up AnalytiCalc
and type @APPLN.CMD with the other files in your default directory.
The command file will load the planner template and set command Q
to run the critical path command file (PPLNS1.CMD) and command Y
to run the screen display of times (PPLNS2.CMD). This will save
keystrokes. (Cells B0, J0, N0, Q0, T0, U0, and Y0 can be filled in
with text commands to be executed by commands B, J, N, Q, T, U, or 
Y respectively if you wish to shorten some extra commands.) 
	To use the planner, load PPLN.PCC with a GP command (or key 
1 on the auxiliary keypad, or APPLN.CMD). Then for the first activities,
modify rows 3 through 6 as needed. You will want to modify column A, the
activity titles, column B, the preconditions, and column D, the
duration of the activity required. Also modify column J if desired
by entering the amount of some resource (1. to whatever maximum
you like) needed for the activity you're describing.
	Also enter the project starting date as YY/MM/DD in cell
F2 where it is labelled.
	To add more activities, use the AR command. Go to the
row you want in the range 4 to 6 and add rows. Note that the
old rows' contents are not altered.
	A sample command sequence to add 8 more activity rows
would be:
L A4		go to row 4
AR 1R		Add one row for starters
AR 2R		Add two more rows
AR 4R		Add four more
AR 2R		Add the last two.

This sequence is used so that the formulas in columns other
than the ones you modify are duplicated; this is needed for
correct operation.
	Once you finish adding as many rows as desired, modify
columns A, B, D, and J as appropriate. The order you enter activities
in is not important. Then recalculate a number of times to get
the dates correct. The R command recalculates.

	To obtain a display sorted by start date the command
DSCA 6
could be used (possibly aftera DB command to reset the display bounds
to area actually used). The VAX display can be set to up to 200
rows long for purposes of a W command to write the sorted
display to the printer or a file. Other columns may be sorted if
desired; in the normal format, column 6 of the display is physical
column F and column 7 is column G, the end dates.

	To see the critical path, use the command @PPLNS1.CMD to
compute the critical path. Column I will have 1 in each activity
that lies on the critical path at the end. (If it doesn't seem to
come all the way back to the project start, use the commands:

L L3
DF P#%DD:D#%DH [*]
R
R
R
R
R
DF P#%DD:D#%DH [A]

to extend the recalculation to get to the start.

	To see a plot of resource usage vs. time (with 24 bins of
time), use the command file @PPLNS2.CMD to set up.
	The critical path is shown in the page with the plots, so
use PPLNS1.CMD first to calculate the critical path. The computation
is not done initially so you can enter your project more quickly,
and because a few global values must be computed from the data
which are "forward references" in the spreadsheet. If the equations
that compute and graph the project activities were initially
enabled, they would blow up the first time through. The use of the
command files to control execution obviates the problem and allows
the system to work.


	Other files beginning with PPLN8 are for an 80-column only
version of the planner. They show less, but leave your terminal
in 80 column mode, making it easier to read.



	Generalizations

	It is fairly simple to make the durations be functions of
a global accumulator (so that one would enter a duration of 5.*G
for example rather than just 5.) and to have that accumulator's
initial value be 1.0. If this is done, the goal-seeking capacity
of AnalytiCalc can be used to vary G to find that set of durations
such that the project is done by a given date. More complex schemes
using several accumulators with boundary conditions could be
devised also.
	Hooks to other saved plans could be added by placing
the links anywhere desired and using their addresses in the
lists of dependencies in column B. Normally one enters addresses
like A4, A5, A5:A11,A15 or similar forms in column B. However,
so long as the values referred to are Julian dates, they can be
obtained anywhere. Simply place an *XV filename,cell somewhere
in the current sheet and include the address of the cell with the
*XV in it in your column B and you have a link to other plans.
If the other plans are saved versions of PPLN.PCC expanded,
cell Am (m being a row number in the saved sheet) would contain a
Julian date value in the needed form, provided the sheet was saved
with values as well as formulas (i.e., saved with PPX, not PPF.)