VisiLean now allows automatic task splitting to easily create commitment plans during the Last Planner/Collaborative planning sessions.
In VisiLean, creating new tasks is possible in the Gantt view as shown in Figure 1. This is good when refining Gantt’s master plan. Now it’s possible to go from high-level tasks in phase view to low-level tasks for look ahead and weekly plans.
Now during the collaborative look ahead planning meeting, it’s easy to create a detailed level plan by automatically splitting tasks with one click.
As the Last Planner process actually talks about “translating scheduled activities into assignments” and “detailing master schedule activities”, it is important to create tasks which are no longer than a week in order to increase predictability and reduce variability.
OLD PROCESS – ADDING TASKS THROUGH GANTT
Adding new tasks in the master plan (higher level) and also refining the tasks as per the Last Planner process.
PROCESS
Adding tasks manually in the Gantt chart by creating subtasks one by one as shown in Figure 1, is the only way to add new tasks. This is a little tedious as the user has to navigate back to Gantt away from the collaborative scheduler.
RESULT
The newly added tasks can be seen in Gantt.
AIM OF THE NEW PROCESS
Refining master plan based on Last Planner process.
THE NEW PROCESS
For example, if a planned task as shown in Figure 2 is 14 days long and needs to be further refined to make accurate assignments, it should be refined into 4 shorter tasks.
The new process allows adding tasks directly into the scheduler view (Phase, Lookahead and Weekly planning) by automatically creating multiple subtasks at one go. Figure 3 shows four subtasks created automatically using the new split task feature.
RESULT
The newly added tasks can be seen in the scheduler view. So the process of refining plans can be directly achieved in Scheduler instead of switching between Scheduler and Gantt and adding tasks one by one in the Gantt. This simplifies the process of creating short-range plans from milestone or high-level plans during the Last Planner/collaborative planning sessions.
