There is no such thing as a perfect plan ¬and project management is no exception to that rule. However, it’s a project manager’s foremost duty to create a plan which uses resources optimally to deliver a high quality project while minimizing the associated risks. The project outcome is at stake and there’s little room for error. Therefore, it’s a must for project managers and organizations to be able to explore multiple planning variations in order to take a well-educated decision. In real world, hypothesis is easier said than done. Though leading project management tools such as Microsoft Project provide state-of-the-art planning, their simulation capability leaves a lot to be desired.
Cool Feature - Simulation
From a project management perspective, a simulation refers to the status of a plan containing projects, resources, calendars, coefficients and constraints.
Simulation Benefits
It is typically used for simulating the following scenarios
- What-If – Using simulation, Project Managers to perform a risk analysis on multiple what-if scenarios. What-If scenarios are often helpful in conducting a comparative analysis of new opportunities for a project.
- Best-case vs. Worst-case – Using simulation, Project Managers can efficiently benchmark a project by clearly identifying the best-case and worst-case scenarios. Identifying such schedule variations is important in order to ensure that project deliverables are met on time and deviations (if any) are within permissible limits.
Project simulation also serves as an invaluable educational tool to control/ monitor the progress of a project and helps managers react appropriately in typical project management situations.
Simulation Role Levels
A simulation role level refers to the grade or an experience that can be associated with a designated level of efficiency.
Simulation Snapshots
It’s advisable to keep a backup of your original plan as well as simulations in order to avoid losing your latest changes.
Multiple Simulations
Each plan can have one or more simulations. Inevitably, managers would prefer to run multiple simulations simultaneously in order to cover multiple permutations for a given project scenario.
Simulation Tools
Simulations are meant to produce real-life situations and problems which can occur in any project. PlanningForce is one such project management tool having advanced simulation capabilities that allows managers to perform multiple scenario simulations and get an adjusted plan immediately.
How to create Simulations in PlanningForce?While simulations often represent complex project planning scenarios, they are surprisingly easy to create using PlanningForce. A plan usually consists of one or more simulations which contain your data (projects, resources and results). For starters, simulations can be created using
- New File – It’s possible to create a new plan and then subsequently create a new simulation using a simple two-click process.
- Existing File – If you are new to PlanningForce, there’s an option of using an existing file to create your first simulation. This would create an exact replica of the existing simulation which can be modified without altering the content and results of the original simulation.
The demo of above mentioned simulation creation approaches can be viewed here.
How to deal with multiple Simulations simultaneously in PlanningForce?
PlanningForce provides you with the flexibility to view and run selected simulations as well as the ability to run all simulations associated with a plan. All simulations are neatly organized in a tabular view as part of the PlanningForce Simulation Manager.
It’s easy to switch between multiple simulations and do a comparative analysis of data and results in order to explore various possibilities. Further, it’s possible to select/ unselect multiple KPIs in the Program Window to see how it affects the performance of each simulation.
How to create a simulation snapshot in PlanningForce?To create a simulation snapshot in PlanningForce, click the ‘Take a snapshot’ option for the current simulation. Simulation snapshots can also be created automatically by activating the ‘Automatic Snapshot’ feature. Then, create and save a new simulation each time you run the scheduling process. This feature is handy in order to create on-the-fly simulation snapshots which are then used for real-time calculations in order to generate the new KPIs for your plan.
To see a demo of how to create multiple simulations and know more about snapshots in PlanningForce, click here.
Conclusion
Simulations serve as dry-runs for any project plan and serve as an effective risk mitigation tool. It allows managers to see the consequences of their decisions early enough in the project planning phase, thereby helping to avert major risks to the overall project outcome. If you are looking for a project management tool with powerful simulation capabilities, we recommend in this project management software review that you explore PlanningForce.
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