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Merlin: resources utilization dynamically adjusted

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 8. March 2010

This is a tip of our CEO, Frank Blome, as discussed at the CeBIT 2010 and published on our German MacPM blog:

Supposedly you plan an activity of 5 days work to be accomplished in the duration of 10 days. As an experienced PM and Merlin user you create the activity in your project as follows:

activity

This results to a 50% utilization for the assigned resource

utilization

(more…)

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Merlin on a web browser

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 5. March 2010

The other day we received the following question in support:

We are testing Merlin for project management on the Mac and are very interested to use your solution but there is one functionality which seems to be not covered in the web access; we are not able to add elements (risk, issue, or files)

That’s correct. Merlin in the web module allows users working on other platforms to collaborate on Merlin files using a web browser*. It is not just another implementation of the Merlin Mac OS X application for the web.
While behaving similarly to the native Merlin application, its functionality and graphical user interface  is deliberately minimalized** to insure better usability from web users not having deeper Merlin knowledge.

_

*) Supported web browser: IE7, IE8 in compatibility mode, Safari 4, Firefox 3

**) All differences between Merlin on Mac OS X and in the Web module: here

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Quote of the day

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 4. March 2010

homePageImage

Under a quality system, if it wasn’t documented (according to your own rules), IT NEVER HAPPENED!

Found in a post about Managing Projects in the Medical Device Marketplace

My thoughts in random order:

  • It pays to document things as you do them, it’s a horror to catch up later on
  • There is no such thing as over-documentation
  • Next team meeting ToDo:  Suggest to develop dietary supplements additionally to our Mac OS X project management software; Merlin ;-)
  • When documenting don’t forget localisation aspects

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CeBit 2010

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 2. March 2010

Merlin and ProjectWizards are this year as intended at the CeBit 2010 in the OS X Business Park. According to the organisators, CeBit is

… the world’s foremost tradeshow for the digital industry in Hannover – Germany

If you prefer some independent information about Cebit 2010 ;-)  you may want to check this one.

OS X Business Park: 25 companies with business solutions for Macs and iPhones. A fitting place for your favourite wizard.

OSXBusinessPark

Our CEO, Frank Blome presenting Project Managent on the Mac OS X with Merlin.

Merlin_OSXBusinessPark

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Merlin import of EXCEL files

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 2. March 2010

Merlin can import seamlessly lots of file formats, here a list of the currently supported formats:

  • MS Project (.mpx, .mpp, .xml)
  • OmniOutliner (.ooutline, .oo3)
  • OmniPlan (.omniplan)
  • NovaMind (.nmind)
  • MindManager (.mmap)
  • Merlin 1 (.merlin)
  • Merlin 2 (.xml)
  • Text files (.txt, .csv, .tsv)
  • OPML files (.opal)

So you look on the list above, have project WBS saved in MS EXCEL and don’t know how to proceed?

(more…)

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Applescript: Shifting activity starting dates at once

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 26. February 2010

AppleScriptFrom time to time we get asked in support, how to shift all given planned starting dates at once in Merlin projects to a new date while maintaining the slacks.

If the activities are linked together, the user may use the dynamic shifting project setting, and define a new planned starting date for the first activity. The linkages between activities will shift the successor activities as needed.

If the activities are set to specific starting dates, and you want to shift them all by the same amount of time, you may consider writing an AppleScript to read the given planned earliest start dates of the activities, apply the desired time offset, and write the new date back onto the activities of the project.

But why bothering writing a new Applescript from the scratch, when there is already one which we have just written doing so? Spend your time on managing your projects, not on scripting. Be lazy and productive. Just click here to download it :-)

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Merlin: CSV duration units

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 22. February 2010

Duration unitsThere is a new feature in Merlin 2.7.6 and its CSV reading & writting possibilities.

You can now define the unit for the durations and choose one of the following: Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Calendarweeks, Months and Years.

This is very practical in case you want to import project information in spreadsheets of MS Excel, Numbers, etc and need further calculations referencing duration data.

In this case simply choose the appropriate unit when exporting. Merlin will recalculate project durations if necessary in the output.

(more…)

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Merlin 2.7.6 is available

Frank Blome on 19. February 2010

Today we published another maintenance update for Merlin and Merlin Server.

New features in Merlin

  • When exporting in CSV, you can now define in which time unit the duration fields will be exported. Available options are: Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Calendarweeks, Months and Years. They can be defined in the export dialogue. The same behavior is possible for the import.

(more…)

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Scrum basics

Perri Pappas on 18. February 2010

PerriHi, this is me Perri…

you probably know that during my internship by ProjectWizards, I am not only up to learn how to use Merlin, but also more about project management.

So while searching the internet for understandable documentation to Scrum, I came up with a post listing its basics. I really liked the 3 questions on the daily scrums when doing the sprint:

  1. What did I do since our last daily scrum?
  2. What am I planning to do until the next daily scrum?
  3. What is stopping me to do what I plan to do?

I also see a great benefit in the sprint retrospect with the next 3 questions:

  1. What went well?
  2. What can be improved?
  3. What will we focus on improving in the next sprint?

I intend to plan my work to meet the scrum basics. It really makes sense and I am very curious to see  how it helps me delivering successful projects.

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Merlin: Fractions vs. time units

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 12. February 2010

Merlin creates new activities having the default work specified in the project settings:

MerlinSchnappschuss022

Should you assign a resource to this activity, Merlin will automatically define its work as 100% of the work defined in the activity.

So when to use fractions in work (or duration) and when not to?

The answer is simple: It depends on what you want to do.

(more…)

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