Overview of Enterprise Service Managment Project Waterfall Plans

Overview

The Enterprise Service management (ESM) project waterfall plans entail mapping out projects into distinct, sequential phases. The waterfall model is the most traditional method for managing a project, with team members working in a linear fashion towards a set end goal. Each row in the waterfall plan represents a step that needs to be completed for a project, the steps are listed in the plan in sequential order.

Features

Waterfall plans provide more support for a complex task structure.  Since waterfall plans may be more involved to manage, they use a locking feature for editing the plans.  Project managers can create dependencies between tasks and create schedules for when tasks occur.  Milestone functionality allows for identification of key delivery points in the project that may be used in reporting to summarize progress or show upcoming deliverables. 

The following features are specific to Waterfall plans:

  • Check in / check out editing
  • Required start and end dates for tasks
  • Milestones
  • Shifting
  • Predecessors/Dependencies
  • External Dependencies to other waterfall plans in the same or different projects
  • Parent/Child tasks
  • Plan Export/Import
  • Add Time for Other User (available from TDNext Task Edit)
  • Cut/Copy/Paste Tasks
  • Foreground Color
  • Baselining tasks / milestones (available via Windows Plan Manager)
  • Offline editing of plans (available via Windows Plan Manager)

Gotchas & Pitfalls

  • A parent task is a reflection of the children task below it. For instance, the percent complete of the parent is a result of the combination of percent complete of the children task. The same is true with resources, all resources assigned to any child task will show as a resource on the parent task.
  • When establishing Task Dependencies, you will need to reference the Row Number of the item you want to build the dependency with, not the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) number.
  • After updating the percent complete of a task it will be represented at the parent task and plan level. However, using the Est Hours column on a task will cause this calculation use the Act Hours column to track percent complete of a plan.
  • When applying project template plans, project plans will not carry over any custom column names (Fields 1-10), column visibility or column ordering from template plans in the Project Templates application. Applying a plan from the Project Templates app simply builds out the task plan itself as specified from the template. This holds true regardless of when a project template plan is applied.
  • The ordering and visibility of column headers in the Projects application is preserved on a per project, per computer basis. Effectively this means that the settings are user-specific (assuming that one user normally uses the same machine) and can be unique for each project that the user is on. They cannot be unique for a user per project and per plan. Nor can these sorts of customizations be applied to all users at the global, project or plan level.
  • When using the Web Plan Manager in the Projects application, Fields 1 - 10 are preserved for plans within the same project. This setting, while project-specific, does apply to all resources on the project. As a final thought, only Fields 1 - 10 can have their names customized. All other column names are not customizable.
  • There are some scenarios where the user will be presented with a read-only version of a plan instead of the regular full plan manager window. This happens because the user has accessed the plan and one of the following scenarios is true:
    • The user does not have the Projects application. They probably only have the Analysis application and cannot edit plans.
    • The user does not belong to the project associated with the plan. Users not on the project cannot edit plans in other projects.
    • The project is inactive. The project is not workable and thus plans cannot be edited.
    • The project is closed or cancelled. The project is not workable and thus plans cannot be edited.

Need additional help or have issues

For support, requests may be submitted anytime using the appropriate Enterprise Service Management form. Requests generate a Ticket which will be worked in order received and urgency by IT Employees with the knowledge and permissions to assist with the request.

For immediate assistance please review the Contact Us page for the appropriate support group.

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