LPM® provides all the elements needed to build a planning from workload, constraints between tasks and resources availability.
The Project is the main element of LPM®.
It is also the highest level of visibility and definition of access rights based on profiles .
You can define profiles; some have visibility on all projects, others only on the projects they are assigned to.
You can also define sub-projects of a project and sub-project of sub-projects without limit to this hierarchical organization.
This allows for example to define projects that are not real projects, but just a definition of the structure for your organization.
An activity is a task that must be planned, or includes other activities.
This is usually a task that has a certain duration and should be assigned to one or more resources .
Activities appear on the Gantt Planning view.
A milestone is an event or a key date of the project.
Milestones are commonly used to track delivery dates or force a start date of activity.
They can also be used to highlight the transition from one phase to the next one.
Unlike activities, milestones have no duration and no work.
Resources can be assigned to activities.
This means that some work is defined on this activity for the resource.
Only the resources affected to the project of the activity can be assigned to the activity.
Resources enter their time spent on the Real work allocation screen .
This allows for a real-time monitoring of work.
Moreover, updating the left work allows to recalculate the planning taking into account the actual progress on each task.
The planning is based on all the constraints defined:
• left work on each activity
• availability of resources
• affectation rate of resources to projects and assignment rate of resources to activities
• planning mode for each activity (as soon as possible, fixed duration, … )
• dependencies between activities
• priorities of activities and projects
The planning is displayed as a Gantt chart.
The planning can also be viewed as a Project Portfolio, which is a Gantt planning view restricted to one line per project, plus optionally selected milestones.