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P C - P r o j e c t
User Manual
by
Zack Urlocker
Copyright 1988
The Whitewater Group
906 University Place
Evanston, IL 60201 USA
(312)491-2370
All rights reserved
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Getting Started...............................2
1.0 How to use this manual................................2
1.1 Introduction to PC-Project............................2
1.2 PC-Project features...................................2
1.3 Files on disk.........................................3
1.4 PC-Project installation...............................3
1.5 Installed files.......................................4
1.6 Windows installation..................................4
1.7 Starting PC-Project...................................4
1.8 Suggestions...........................................5
1.9 About Actor...........................................5
Chapter 2 - Using PC-Project..............................6
2.1 An overview of project management.....................6
2.2 Creating a project with PC-Project....................7
2.3 Overriding the calculated early start and late finish.9
2.4 Saving and loading projects...........................9
2.5 Other views of the project............................9
2.6 Assigning costs.......................................10
2.7 Estimating task time with PERT........................11
2.8 The Options menu......................................11
2.9 Tips for managing a project...........................11
2.10 Command reference....................................12
Chapter 3 - Examining the Source Code.....................13
3.1 Introduction..........................................13
3.2 If you don't have Actor...............................13
3.3 If you have Actor.....................................14
3.4 Learning more.........................................15
PC-Project User Manual 1
Chapter 1 - Getting Started
1.0 How to use this manual
This manual is divided into three chapters: Getting Started,
Using PC-Project and Exploring the Source Code. All users
should read chapter 1 for an overview of PC-Project and
installation instructions. For details on managing projects
with PC-Project read chapter two. If you are interested in
exploring how PC-Project works you should read chapter three.
1.1 Introduction to PC-Project
PC-Project is a complete critical path project management
application that runs under Microsoft Windows. PC-Project is
written entirely in Actor, an object-oriented programming
language for Microsoft Windows. Complete source code is
included. PC-Project is freely distributed for non-commercial
use as an example Windows program.
If any files are missing from the version you have or if you'd
like to get the latest version, you can order it directly from
me at The Whitewater Group at the address given below. There
is a nominal charge of $5.00 to the U.S. and $10 elsewhere.
1.2 PC-Project features
PC-Project is a full-featured project management system. It
can be used to plan and monitor almost any type of project.
Features include the following:
--Easy to use pulldown menus and graphical user interface.
--Full mouse and keyboard interface.
--Can optionally use Lotus 1-2-3 style commands.
--Can view a project as a PERT (network) diagram, a Gantt
chart, a list of activities or a list of resources.
--Automatically recalculates the critical path of a project
using CPM or PERT algorithms.
--Can allocate costs to tasks using either fixed costs or by
assigning resources with a fixed and/or variable cost
component.
--PC-Project can use LIM 3.2 expanded memory if available.
--Full source code included.
PC-Project User Manual 2
1.3 Files on disk
The files on this disk are:
READPROJ.TXT -A "readme" file of quick instructions
INSTALL.BAT -Installation program
ZOO.EXE -Zoo compression utility program.
PROJECT.ZOO -A compressed file that contains PC-Project
(The ZOO file also contains the READPROJ.TXT and INSTALL.BAT
file for easy electronic distribution.)
1.4 PC-Project installation
If you received this disk directly from the Whitewater Group,
there is an INSTALL.BAT program on the disk. To install type:
A: INSTALL A: C: C:\ACTOR
If you downloaded this program from a bulletin board system,
then follow these instructions. You will need the ZOO.EXE
utility which should be available on the BBS also.
If you don't have Actor make 4 subdirectories as shown below:
MD ACTOR
CD ACTOR
MD CLASSES
MD ACT
MD RES
Then install the application and the source code by typing
CD ACTOR
ZOO x/ PROJECT.ZOO
Zoo works like ARC but is public domain. Use the command
ZOO h
for help.
PC-Project User Manual 3
1.5 Installed files
During the installation process the following files will be
created on your hard disk.
PMANUAL.TXT -This file
PDESIGN.TXT -A text file describing the design of PC-Project
PROJECT.EXE -Executable PC-Project program file
PROJECT.IMA -Sealed off image file required to run above
*.PRJ -Various test files
If you installed the source code, the following files will also
be found:
PROJ.LOD -A "load file" used if you have Actor
PROJSEAL.LOD -A "load file" to seal off the application
PROJ.H -Header file of constant definitions
CLASSES\*.CLS -Source code to the classes of PC-Project
ACT\*.ACT -Miscelaneous Actor source code methods
RES\*.* -Resource script files and project icon file
FIX_LE.ACT -Fixes to Language Extensions I upto V.1.2
1.6 Windows installation
If you need to create large projects and ever get the error
message "Out of dynamic memory" or "Not enough memory to run"
add a new section to the WIN.INI file:
[PC-Project]
Dynamic=25
By default, the project manager uses 25K of Dynamic memory; if
you need more (or less) just set it as shown above.
If you have expanded memory, (LIM 3.2 or later) you should
include the flag EMS3.2=1 in the [PC-Project] section so that
the object table will be stored in EMS saving 64K of memory.
Note, if you modify the resources in PROJECT.EXE, be sure to
use the -L flag when you resource compile.
1.7 Starting PC-Project
PC-Project requires Microsoft Windows 2.x. To start PC-Project
start Windows and then double click on the PROJECT.EXE file.
DON'T click on the PROJECT.IMA file since this will try to run
Actor and you may not have the resources installed in your
ACTOR.EXE file. You can run PC-Project directly from the DOS
C> prompt by typing
WIN PROJECT.EXE
On some 80386 machines with older versions of Windows/386 it
may be necessary to use the /N option, e.g.
WIN386 /N PROJECT.EXE
PC-Project User Manual 4
1.8 Suggestions
Please let me know if there are any bugs or suggestions by
sending mail to The Whitewater Group at the address below.
Because PC-Project is distributed free of charge, I cannot
provide technical support beyond answering questions by mail.
1.9 About Actor
Actor is an object-oriented programming language for Microsoft
Windows. Actor is a complete development system capable of
creating standalone MS-Windows applications. No licensing fees
are required to distribute applications written in Actor.
For more information about Actor contact:
The Whitewater Group
906 University Place
Evanston, IL
60201 USA
312-491-2370
PC-Project User Manual 5
Chapter 2 - Using PC-Project
2.1 An overview of project management
Project management techniques can be used to plan any "project"
that has a start, a finish and some known steps or activities
in between. Examples of projects include: developing software;
writing a book; hosting a dinner party and so on.
In order to manage a project you must know all of the
activities involved in getting from the start to the end. The
objective of project management is to create a schedule for the
project that indicates when each activity needs to start (and
finish) in order for the project to be completed in the
shortest time possible.
The total project time is the total time of all activities on
the "critical path". If an activity is on the critical path,
it means that any delay in its time will cause a delay in the
entire project. Thus an important part of project management
is to determine which activities are critical, and then focus
our attention on making sure that these activities are
completed in the allotted time. Activities which are not
critical have "slack" time.
An example project might be moving into a house. We can list
some of the tasks and the times required.
--Buy the house (7 days)
--Move in (4 days)
--Paint it (2 days)
--Carpet it (5 days)
--Furnish it (14 days).
Some of these tasks must be done before others. For example,
we must buy a house before we can move in. Also, we should
paint before we carpet. Other tasks have no such dependency
and can be done in parallel. For example, painting and
carpeting are independant of furnishing.
Our first step in managing the project would be to create a
PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Techniques) chart. A PERT
chart is a network diagram of the activities in the project and
indicates the sequence of activities.
A PERT chart for moving into a house might look like the
following.
7 4 2 5
Start -> Buy -> Move -> Ready-> Paint-> Carpet-> End
| |
| 14 |
-----> Furnish -------
PC-Project User Manual 6
Note that an additional activity was included called "Ready".
The activities "Ready", "Start" and "End" are known as
milestones. Milestones are activities that, unlike tasks, take
no time or resources. Milestones are used to mark the start or
end of significant tasks. We use the "Ready" milestone to
indicate that we are ready to settle into our house and begin
painting and furnishing. Although tasks can have only a single
input and output, milestones can have several. Thus, you may
have to introduce "dummy" milestones in a project to have
different paths in a project.
Note that "Furnish" is on the critical path since it's length
(14 days) is greater than the total time for "Paint" and
"Carpet" (7 days). The total time of the project is thus the
time of all Tasks on the critical path which is 25 days
(7+4+14).
The "Paint" and "Carpet" tasks would have slack time of 7 days.
Thus painting (or carpeting) could fall behind schedule by as
much as 7 days before it would become critical and impact on
the total project time.
You can also determine the early start, early finish, late
start and late finish times of any activity or of the project.
Normally these are calculated to determine the critical path.
For activities that are crtical the early times are the same as
the late times.
Sometimes you may wish to specify an overriding early start or
late finish time. For example, you might set the early start
day for "Start" to be 09/01/88, meaning that the project begins
on that date. Conversely, you could set the late finish date
for "End" to be 10/01/88 and then calculate all other dates
based on this end date. You could also override the early
start or late finish for any activity. This is useful if you
know, for example, that painting is scheduled to begin work on
a particular day.
By using PC-Project the critical path, early start and late
finish dates are automatically calculated.
2.2 Creating a project with PC-Project
When PC-Project starts you will have an "empty" project with
just "Start" and "End" milestones. The initial starting date
of the project is 1/1/88. To begin a new project with a
different date, select the menu item File New. You can select
menu commands by clicking the mouse on File then on New, or if
you prefer, by typing [Alt-F] and then N. (You can also use
Lotus 1-2-3 style commands, e.g. / F N.)
A dialog box will come up asking you the name of the project, a
brief description of the project and the early start (ES) and
PC-Project User Manual 7
late finish (LF) dates. Type "House" as the name of the
project and enter the early start date "09/01/88". For most
projects you will specify only the early start and let PC-
Project calculate the late finish. You can move between the
fields in the dialog box by clicking the mouse or by pressing
[Tab] and [Shift-Tab]. When you are finished, click on the Ok
button to accept the dates (or press [Enter]) or click on the
Cancel button (or press [Esc]) to cancel.
Next, you need to create and connect the activities of the
project by using the New Milestone and New Task menu choices.
Since the "Start" milestone is already created, you can begin
by creating the "Buy" task. Select New Task from the menu. A
dialog box will come up. For now, just type in the name of the
task, "Buy", a description, the time, "7", and lastly, type in
the input "Start". This means that "Buy" is connected to the
"Start" activity. We'll let PC-Project calculate the early
start and late finish for us and ignore costs and resources for
now. So just click on the Ok button to accept this activity.
If you followed the instructions the PERT diagram will now show
the "Buy" task connected to the "Start" milestone.
In PC-Project tasks are drawn as rectangles and milestones are
drawn as rounded rectangles. By default, the early start date
is displayed above each activity.
You can then enter and connect the remaining activities.
New Name Time Input Output
---------------------------------------
Task Move 4 Buy
Mstone Ready Move
Task Paint 2 Ready
Task Carpet 5 Paint End
Task Furnish 14 Ready End
PC-Project is "case sensitive" so that "Buy" is not the same as
"buy" or "BUY". Type the names exactly as they appear above.
Note that you must type in the Input field in order to connect
an activity. If you make a mistake, you can click on the
activity with the left mouse button or move the cursor and
press [F2] or [Enter] to edit it. If you want to delete an
activity, select the menu item Delete Activity. PC-Project
will warn you if the activity is still connected.
For tasks "Carpet" and "Furnish" you should also enter "End" as
the output to hookup the last milestone. Whenever you set the
Input of an activity it also sets the Output of the connected
activity. For example, if you click on the "Start" milestone,
you will see that it has as Output "Buy".
When you finish connecting the activities the critical path
should appear in bold. You can then experiment and try
PC-Project User Manual 8
different "what if" scenarios. For example, click on the
"Paint" task (or move the cursor and press [F2] or [Enter]) and
change the time from 2 to 12. Then click on the Ok button.
Notice that the critical path has been recalculated and is now
different. Also, the early start time for "Carpet" is ten days
later. In fact, the whole project has been delayed by a change
in the time it takes to paint.
Remember that tasks take time and resources but milestones do
not. Also, tasks can only have a single input or output. Use
milestones when you need to create different paths in the
project.
2.3 Overriding the calculated early start and late finish
You can specify an early start (ES) or late finish (LF) date
for any activity. If you do, this will override what is
calculated by PC-Project. For example, if you want the project
to begin on day 12/31/87, set Start's ES to that date. If you
want to see when things need to be done by if the project
finishes on day 9/15/88, set End's LF to that date.
All dates are entered in MM/DD/YY or MM/DD/YYYY format.
Examples of valid dates include 09/15/88, 1/1/88, 9/01/1987.
Examples of invalid dates are 31/09/88, 01/01, and so on.
Setting early start and late finish is not recommended for
activities in the project since it may introduce excess
slack time and prevent the critical path from being found.
To cancel an override date, you can delete the date in the ES
or LF field of the dialog box.
2.4 Saving and loading projects
You can save the current project to disk by using the File Save
command or by pressing [Ctrl-S]. By default the extension .PRJ
is used. PC-Project comes with several sample projects on
disk. You can load these with the command File Open or by
pressing [Ctrl-O]. PC-Project will warn you if you try to exit
or load a new project without saving your old work.
2.5 Other views of the project
The PERT diagram is useful for creating a project and seeing
the relationships between activities. The View menu has
choices that convey other information. Select the View Gantt
menu item or press [F6] to see a Gantt chart. A new window
will appear showing a timeline of the project. Tasks are dranw
as bars with the critical time in black and slack time in gray.
Milestones are drawn as diamonds since they don't take any
time. The critical activities also have a "*" next to their
names. You can edit activities from within the Gantt chart by
PC-Project User Manual 9
clicking on them also. You can also press [F1] for a help
screen.
To close the Gantt chart double click on the "system box" in
the upper left corner or press [Alt-F4].
The View Activities command ( or press [F4]) will give a list
of all activities in the project with their name, time, slack,
early start and late finish times.
The View Project summary command (or press [F5]) will give a
summary of the project showing the name, early and late start
and finish dates, the total time, slack and costs. This
command uses the same dialog box as the New File command and
can be used to change the early start or late finish dates of
the project.
2.6 Assigning costs
You can assign costs to a project in two ways. The easiest way
is to assign a fixed cost (in dollars) to each task. You can
do this by filling in the Fixed Cost field when editing a task.
The View Project summary command always shows the total cost of
the project.
A more sophisticated way of assigning costs is to use
resources. Resources are people or objects that can have a
fixed and/or variable cost associated with their use. Most
resources have a variable cost. You can assign resources to a
task by filling in the Resources field when editing a task.
You don't need to create resources before using them. PC-
Project will display a dialog box the first time a resource is
used to allow you to set the costs.
For example, click on the "Paint" activity. In the Resources
field type "Fred Bob Paint". The resources should be separated
by one or more spaces. When you click on the Ok button, a
dialog box will come up for each of the new resources "Fred",
"Bob" and "Paint". You can enter a fixed cost (FC), variable
cost (VC), and maximum for each. For example, we would assign
a variable cost for Fred of 50, meaning we pay him $50 per day.
Since Bob is a friend of ours, we don't have to pay him
anything, so just press [Enter] leaving the fields blank.
Paint will cost us, say $500, regardless of how many days it
takes to paint, so we would have a fixed cost and no variable
cost.
The maximum field can be used to indicate that a particular
resource is only available for so many days. If the resource
is overallocated, a "*" will appear next to it's name when you
View All Resources (or press [F3]). The View All Resources
command also shows where resources are used and how many days
they are used for.
PC-Project User Manual 10
If we assign Bob and Fred to another task, such as "Move",
their fixed and variable costs will automatically be used to
calculate the cost of the task and the total project cost.
You can change the fixed or variable cost of a resource by
using the View Resource command. This will change the rates
and update all tasks that use the resource as well as the total
project cost. You can also delete a resource with the Delete
Resource command. PC-Project will warn you if the resource is
still in use.
PC-Project User Manual 11
2.7 Estimating task time with PERT
Sometimes you may not know the exact time required to complete
a task. You can create a PERTTask which estimates time based
on the likely, best and worst case scenarios. When you need to
create a task with an estimated time, select New PERTTask
rather than New Task. Once you fill in the fields for likely,
best and worst times, you can use a PERTTask just like a
regular task. You can also freely mix PERTTasks with regular
Tasks with known times. The file PERT.PRJ shows an example of
a project with estimated times.
2.8 The Options menu
The Options menu has several miscelaneous choices. For
example, you can turn off automatic recalculation of the
critical path. For large projects, this can speed up data
entry so that you can make several changes and then recalculate
the critical path by selecting Options Recalc or by pressing
[F9].
You can also choose Options Display settings to view the late
finish, slack, time, or cost for each activity. You can select
to view something above and/or below each activity in the PERT
diagram. By default the early start time is shown above each
activity. However, you could change this to suit your own
tastes, displaying perhaps the time on top and the cost below.
2.9 Tips for managing a project
--List all of the tasks and milestones on paper first.
--Remember, tasks can only have a single input and output.
--Use milestones whenever splitting or joining is required.
--Split lengthy tasks into smaller ones for flexibility.
--If costing will be done, identify all resources.
--Create a PERT diagram of the project from left to right.
--Use a Gantt chart to see slack times.
--Focus attention on tasks on the critical path.
PC-Project User Manual 12
2.10 Command reference
All menu commands can be executed by clicking with the mouse.
Alternatively you can use the Alt key and the underlined
letters to execute a command. For example, [Alt-F] selects the
File menu. You can also use Lotus 1-2-3 style commands, e.g. /
F S for File Save.
Some menu items also have accelerator keys that directly
execute the command. For example, [Ctrl-N] (shown as ^N)
executes the File New command. Similarly [F9] recalculates the
critical path. Press [Esc] to cancel a command.
When a menu is not selected, the cursor keys will move the
arrow cursor in the project window. This is handy if you don't
have a mouse. Clicking the left mouse button on an activity or
pressing [F2] or [Return] will edit the activity.
Menu choice Key Description
----------------------------------------------------------
Help! F1 --Display help screen
File
New... ^N --Create a new project
Open... ^O --Open an existing project
Save ^S --Save the current project
Save As... --Save with a new name
Print ^P --Print the project
About Actor --Information about Actor
New
Milestone --Create and connect a new Milestone
Task --Create and connect a new Task
PERTTask --Create a new Task with estimated time
Delete
Activity --Delete an existing Milestone or Task
Resource --Delete an existing resource
View
A Resource --Edit a resources costs
All Resources F3 --See where all resources are used
Activities F4 --See all activities, costs, dates
Project summary F5 --See project start, finish, cost, slack
Gantt chart F6 --Open or close a Gantt chart timeline
Options
Display settings F7 --Select start, finish, cost, etc
Auto recalc F8 --Automatically recalculate the project
Recalc! F9 --Recalculate the critical path
ShowRoom! F10 --Show how much memory Windows has
PC-Project User Manual 13
Chapter 3 - Exploring the Source Code
3.1 Introduction
This section gives a brief introduction to exploring the source
code of PC-Project. This is not necessary in order to use PC-
Project, but it can give you some insight into how programs are
written in Actor. For more information about PC-Project's
design read the file PDESIGN.TXT.
3.2 If you don't have Actor
Actor source code is stored in plain ASCII text files and can
be viewed in any text editor. Source code is stored in class
files (*.CLS) in the CLASS directory and as Actor code files
(*.ACT) in the ACT directory. There is also a header file
(*.H) used for constant definitions. The resource scripts
(*.RC) are in the RES directory.
Class files contain all of the code for a particular class.
For example, the file CLASSES\NETWORK.CLS defines all of the
methods that objects of class Network understand. Each method
definition is separated by two exclamation marks (!!) known as
a "chunk mark". These are placed automatically in your code
when you use the Actor development environment. Each class
file also begins with an "inherit" message. An inherit
statement such as
inherit(Network, #Project,
#(cost /* sum of all costs */
resources /* used by tasks */
autoCalc /* boolean is recalc on? */
), 2, nil)!!
means that a new ancestor of the existing class Network, called
Project, is being created. Project includes three new instance
variables: cost, resources and autoCalc. All of the methods
defined for class Network as well as the instance variables,
are then inherited by class Project.
You will also see "now" messages in the .CLS and .ACT files.
These are also automatically generated by the Actor environment
and indicate the class for which methods are being defined.
Actor code files (*.ACT) are used to hold miscelaneous methods.
For example, PROJ.ACT contains method definitions added to
system classes. The header file PROJ.H contains "#define"
statements similar to what is used in C. The header file is
used both by Actor and by the resource compiler.
PC-Project User Manual 14
Actor source code should be quite understandable to anyone
experienced with C or Pascal. Comments are within /* and */.
Actor has if/else statements, loop/endLoop, select/case etc.
3.3 If you have Actor
PC-Project has been tested with Actor 1.2 under Windows 2.03
and Windows/286 2.1. It should run correctly under Actor 1.1
also, but requires Windows 2.x.
To run the application interactively from Actor, you will need
to include the resources used by the application into
ACTOR.EXE. To do so copy PROJ.RC to ACTOR.RC or cut and paste
the resources into ACTOR.RC and then run the resource compiler
by typing the following commands from the ACTOR directory at
the DOS C> prompt.
CD RES
COPY PROJ.RC ACTOR.RC
RC ACTOR.RC
COPY ACTOR.EXE ..
CD ..
The source code uses the Language Extensions I object storage
facility. If you don't have Language Extensions I you will
have to comment out the file names in the LOD files and you
will not be able to load & save projects. Make sure you have
the latest version of Language Extensions I, since otherwise
you may get a "Bad ID Error" when loading projects from disk.
If you need fixes to version 1.0 to 1.02 of Language
Extensions, use the file FIX_LE.ACT included in this system and
add it to the LOD files.
If you want to examine the code from within Actor, load a
"clean" copy of Actor, then load the load file. In the
workspace type
load("proj.lod");
load();
This takes a while, but will reload all of the classes. You
can then view all of the source code in the Browser. You can
create a new project window by typing
PW := defaultNew(ProjWindow, "PC-Project");
show(PW,1);
To "seal off" the application double click on SMALL.IMA and
type
load("projseal.lod");
load();
This also takes a few minutes.
PC-Project User Manual 15
If you modify the resources to the PROJECT.EXE file you should
resource compile with the -L option so that the application
will continue to make use of expanded memory. For example,
RC -L PROJECT
will recompile the resource file PROJECT.RC into PROJECT.EXE
and set the LIM3.2 flag.
3.4 Learning more
If you're interested in the design of PC-Project, please refer
to the text file PDESIGN.TXT. I encourage you to explore the
source code and learn more about object-oriented programming
and Windows. It's safe to say that if PC-Project had been
developed in C instead of Actor it probably would have taken
about twice as long to complete and the end result would not
have been as good.
PC-Project User Manual 16
