Visual Planning Vocabulary

Visual Planning Vocabulary

Visual Planning Vocabulary


vPlanner applies a consistent visual vocabulary to represent the plan and its components so that when users move from one project to the next, they can focus quickly on the plan itself instead of first trying to learn how it is represented. This section illustrates the elements of this vocabulary in the network working views including the Manage View, the Pull View, the Focused View, and the Sandbox view

Task Colors

The default task color is the color of the company or the color of the discipline of the user responsible for the task.  Users can adjust how vPlanner applies task colors from the Preferences menu.  The Affiliation option gives priority to the Discipline color over the Company color if the user is affiliated with a discipline.  The Category color will override task colors to show the color of the Category attribute assigned to the task.


Task Types

The shape of tasks in vPlanner (i.e. their outline shape) reflects their type.  Below are the various visual representations of the task types. The default task size in vPlanner is 288 points by 288 screen points which represents a 3x3 post-it note in real world coordinates. Tasks can be stretched temporarily in a view to emphasize their content but they will default back to their original size when the project is reloaded.  They will retain their adjusted sizes in the Pull and the Sandbox view until they are reset to their default size.

There are two kinds of task types, those that can freely calculate based on their logic ties to other tasks in the plan and those that have fixed dates.

Unconstrained Task Types

Unconstrained task type are assigned dates based on their position in the network.  They will have Forecast Dates (FS, FF) and may also have Last Responsible Moment Dates (LS, LF) when they have downstream targets (note that completed tasks will have actual dates, and committed tasks will have committed dates).
  1. Activity: this is the default task type in vPlanner and represents general work steps.
  2. Lead Time: this task type visually indicates lead time activities.  Use this to indicate long lead time items visually.  
  3. Request: this task type is automatically assigned by the system when non-admin users assign tasks to other users that they are not allowed to manage.  Requests can be edited by any user in vPlanner until they are accepted by the user assigned to the task, then the default permissions will apply.  This provides teams with a flexible way to lets users work freely on a pull plan while it is being developed.
  4. Summary Task: Summary tasks can be used as a way to improve the organization of a complex pull plan and to improve the readability of a complex pull plan.  Use them to describe the state of things so that the next thing is released to start.  For example, once the roof and the skin tasks are complete in a certain work area, the area can be declared "partially dry",  partially dry would be a summary task that now links to the items in the plan that wait for that. Summary tasks as a best practice should have a zero duration.
  5. Production Buffer: Production buffers are special tasks in vPlanner that should be placed before key milestones and after risky parts of the work to shield the targets from uncontrollable variation.  Production buffers will have a duration and that duration will reduce automatically causing late paths to appear for the preceding tasks.  A team can choose to accelerate to regain the buffer or reduce the buffer to eliminate the late path.  When the buffer is consumed then the late path will affect the milestone.  The color of the buffer starts as cyan when it is not being used.  It turns to red as its duration reduces due to late paths.
  6. Production Activity: Production tasks are special tasks in vPlanner reserved to takt activities.  When a task is turned into a production task, vPlanner gives priority during calculations and will restrict its modification to production managers and admin level users.  Users will be able to status Production Activities but they will not be able to modify them. 
  7. Tentative Milestone: A tentative milestone provides a visual way to flag general activities as a potential milestone.  They act like normal activities until the team is ready to set a target date for them using a Start Date, Planning Marker or Milestone type (see below).

Constrained Task Types:

Constrained task types are assigned Required dates by a user.  Those dates will constraint when a task Should Start (Start Date) or when a task Should Finish (Planning Marker or Milestone).   The calculation engine will use those user defined date when performing the backward pass to prioritize the work leading to constrained task types and to forecast any successor activities base on those dates.  Constrained task types can have durations in vPlanner.  If you plan to export to CPM tools, then you should as a best practice, keep them to Zero durations for compatibility with CPM tools.
  1. Start Date:  A Start Date task type has a start constraint fixed to the morning of the assigned Required Start (RS) date based on the time zone assigned to the task.  Start Dates should be assigned to certain tasks if they have a known fixed start date.  Successor tasks will forecast after this assigned date.
  2. Planning Marker: A Planning Marker is a special type of finish milestone and allow users to fix the finish date of the task to the end of Required Finish (RF) date based on the task calendar time zone.  Use Planning Markers to fix dates for certain tasks that are within the team's control and identify them visually as such.
  3. Milestone: A Milestone task type works like a Planning Marker but will have a different visual representation.  Use Milestone types to represent targets that are outside of the team's control (i.e. Major Milestones).  

Task Status Indicators 

The border graphics of the task in the network views represent their status.  Planned tasks have a default thin border.  When tasks are flagged as commitments they will have a thicker border around them.  The color of the border indicates the Status type:
  1. Teal border tasks are tasks that are flagged to be on a workplan. 
  2. Purple border tasks are Workplan Commitments.  They will show a Committed Start and Finish (CS and CF) dates indicating the frozen FS and FF dates at the time the workplan is created.  Committed Pending and OnGoing tasks are switched to Committed tasks once a workplan is created by a team manager.  Users will not be able to assign this status directly.
  3. Light Purple border tasks are Committed Unplanned Constraints.  vPlanner will automatically assign this status when linking something directly to a Committed task.
  4. Orange border indicates OnTrack (or OnGoing) status.  A committed task can become OnTrack to indicate that it progress to finish as Committed and will automatically adjust its remaining duration.  If the task is running early, users can reduce the remaining duration and the task will pull ahead.
  5. Completed tasks - all completed task status indicators will show Actual Start/Actual Finish (AS, AF) dates.  
  6. Not-Completed - the Not Complete task show workplan committed tasks that is no longer on track and cannot finish as promised.  They will automatically convert back to Committed Pending when the team manager finalizes the workplan.  

Task Attributes Display

The below images illustrates the meaning of the various symbols that appear on the task box.  Generally speaking:
  1. Task Header Section: indicates the task ID, its calculation constraint type, go-back status, its edit permissions symbol, and its duration and crew size (upper right).
  2. Task Description Section: indicates the color of the task and its Description.  You can automatically add location information to the description from the Preferences menu.
  3. Task Footer Section: indicates the attributes assigned to the task and its associated dates.

Task Constraint Types

Task Constraint Types symbols visually identify the tasks that are defined as ASAP, ALAP, or Continuous. Those are important for controlling how vPlanner calculates the plan.  The default Constraint Type is ALAP and is shown in task 905 below.  The next (task 904) is ASAP indicated by the triangle symbol pointing to the left.  Task 903 is defined as Continuous work (three dots), and the last task 902 is Keep-with-Next.