Windows Phone Thoughts: Make A Plan And Go: Twiddlebit's Pocket Plan Reviewed

Views
Pocket Plan provides two views of the plan, a Task List and a Gantt Chart. These two views correspond roughly to Microsoft Project's single Tracking Gantt view. Due to the limited size of the Pocket PC screen this works much better than trying to display both views at once. Additionally, two separate views are available to examine resources and their utilization, plus a calendar view to allow for configuring work and non-work days.


Figure 5: The Task List View.

The List View displays a table of all tasks in the Plan. Information included is the description, start and end dates, amount of work (hours, days, etc.), allocated resources, dependencies, % complete, saved start and end dates, early start and end dates, late start and end dates, resource, fixed and total costs, work breakdown structure codes, and the user value. The columns can be resized but not reordered. This can result in a lot of scrolling if you are interested in viewing specific the columns of each task, such as the description and the total work columns. Column resizing is not saved with the application either, so if you make any changes to the width of the columns they will be lost when you close the plan file.

Icons are used in the Task List View to represent the presence of notes on a task (a yellow "sticky-note") and to represent a constrained date (a pushpin) on any of the date fields. Tasks that are 100% complete are displayed with a green check mark next to the ID. Summary tasks are shown in bold face, and their subtasks are indented. Summary tasks can be collapsed to hide their subtasks or expanded to show them as desired.


Figure 6: The Gantt Chart View.

The Gantt View displays tasks as colored symbols on a timeline with each task on a separate row. Different task types use different symbols: normal tasks are shown as bars, milestones are shown as circles, and summary tasks are shown as half-height bars with dropped ends. Baselines can be displayed as separate bars along with the actual task and progress is shown as a colored fill within the task's bar. Dependencies between tasks appear as thin, arrowed lines pointing from a task to its dependent tasks. Two independent text fields can be configured to display with each task in the Gantt View, one on the left and one on the right. These text values can be selected from any of the task's fields and different fields can be selected for tasks, milestones, and summaries as desired.

The Gantt View does a good job of squeezing a lot of information into a limited amount of space. Color is used effectively to differentiate between normal tasks, summary tasks, critical tasks, baseline tasks, and progress. Work days and non-workdays can have different colors on the timeline as well. All of these colors can be modified by the user and are global to the application. The colors are retained between executions of the application. If the screen is too cluttered for your tastes then most of the displayed items can be turned on or off from the Options dialog box.

In many situations you may want to focus on a specific subset of the plan's tasks. For these cases Pocket Plan provides a Filter tool to allow you to select from a group of predefined task sets. Options are limited to displaying tasks that use a specific resource, or tasks that are complete, in progress, not started, or are critical tasks. Users accustomed to Microsoft Project's wealth of built-in filters such as Summary Tasks, Milestones, and Late Tasks may find the filters available with Pocket Plan limiting and there is no means to define custom filters in the application.

Moving through the tasks and time range is accomplished by use of vertical and horizontal scrollbars, respectively. Additionally, two buttons on the toolbar allow for jumping to the current date and to the date range of the currently selected task. The toolbar also contains zoom-in and zoom-out buttons that allow for displaying time ranges from a length of twelve hours to the entire project length on the width of the Pocket PC screen.

Tasks can be sorted according to a main field and a secondary field. The sort affects the display on both the Task List and the Gantt View, though it has no effect on the actual scheduling of the tasks. The hierarchy between summary tasks and their subtasks is also unaffected by the sort, although the subtasks within a summary task will be sorted. Finally, the recalculation of the Work Breakdown Structure code can be turned on or off. This is handy if you want to retain this code throughout the plan's lifetime.


Figure 7: The Resource Graph View.

The Resource Graph is used to show resource utilization for a single resource across time. Since Pocket Plan doesn't support automatic resource leveling, this is the only way of determining over allocation. The graph is simple enough, dates where the resource is allocated at 100% or less are shown in green. Dates where the resource is allocated at over 100% are shown in red. Like most of the application, color values can be selected for the two states. Two buttons on the toolbar allow for easily stepping through the resources, and a pair of zoom-in and zoom-out buttons allow for viewing more or less time on the timeline.


Figure 8: The Resource List View.

The Resource List offers a simple list of all resources with most of their attributes. Like the Task List, columns can be resized but not reordered, and changes to the column widths are not saved upon exiting the application. Also like the Task List the Resource List View allows for editing records by double-tapping on a list item.


Figure 9: The Holidays View.

The Holidays View allows for setting up multiple calendars of work/non-work days. The Holiday View appears as a year-long calendar and tapping-and-holding on a date pops up a context menu that allows you to set the date as a workday or as a holiday. Also available from the context menu is the ability to edit the working hours of the workday for that date, as well as an option to open the resource itself for editing.


Figure 10: The Plan Summary View.

The Plan Summary view allows for setting or viewing the start and end dates of the plan as well as setting or viewing a baseline for these two dates. The differences between the baseline dates and the current dates are displayed as well. Also, this view displays overall progress in terms of work performed, work remaining, percentages for both these values, and the total work included in the plan. Costs for the plan are also displayed as a sum of the resource costs, a sum of the fixed task costs, percentages for these two values, and the total plan cost.