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» Notes on Microsoft Project 2000

PCTUSELESS

I had an epiphany today. Analogous to Oracle's storage parameters, here is how it looks.

Oracle adds records to Blocks, which are grouped into Extents, in turn grouped into Segments. And Segments are in Tablespaces. Records get filled into Blocks according to storage parameters, viz., PCTUSED and PCTFREE. Consider the hypothetical values of PCTUSED=40, PCTFREE=20.

This means that 20% of each block is reserved for future updates: When the block gets filled(used) to 80%, the block is no longer available for more inserts. As records get deleted from the block, the used space in the block decreases. When the used space gets below PCTUSED, the block becomes available for new insert. This process repeats itself over and over again.

Similar thing happens when you have management processes defined by a committee that doesn’t consider how people work in real life. That can be very easily depicted by using a parameter called PCTUSELESS.

Block Parameters and Management Results

PCTUSED
Resources --people-- spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out the administrative details. People try to answer questions like "what the hell am I doing?", "Is this useful to anyone?".
PCTUSED
The time they are actually productive. Definition of productivity is activity that directly impact revenue generation or cost saving. People find answers to questions like "how do I?".
PCTFREE
The time people get to relax. This is very important for knowledge-centric resources. They need time to relax to let their mind wander. To dream. To ask themselves questions like "what if?" and "why not?".

I believe resources should be managed in such a way that they don’t need to bother too much about PCTUSELESS. Management needs to collect statistics and co-ordinate team building functions. However, such processes shouldn’t be so much as to be perceived as micro-management or evolution of processes with no benefits.

Note to self: write a tutorial on how to benefit from using MS Project in terms of time, resource and cost management.

Posted: December 15, 2003 08:00 AM
oracle , project_management

  1. Hmmm...

    Compiler Error: Variable 'PCTUSED' is defined more than once.

    Compiler Warning: Variable 'PCTUSELESS' undefined.

    Posted by: ives on December 26, 2003 05:32 PM
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