

Ask HN: Scheduling software. - RiderOfGiraffes

In the coming few months there are several things that I need to plan for.  Abstracting from the details, I've got a bunch of tasks, some with deadlines. Each task has an amount of time it will take, which has an error margin.  Each task has resources associated with it, including a selection of people with the necessary skills to work on it.  There are dependencies between the tasks.<p>I was about to write a small script to offer suggested schedules when I thought - this <i>must</i> have been done before.<p>Assuming that there's too much to just write it all on index cards and do by hand, and assuming it needs to be done more-or-less as I suggest above, what suggestions do you have for software that does this sort of stuff?<p>FWIW, Microsoft Office does not, to the best of my knowledge, do this sort of thing for me.  I want to chuck the description at it and say "you figure it out".<p>Any suggestions?<p>PS: I know this is an NP-Complete problem, but my instances are small enough not to matter.
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olefoo
This sounds like your garden variety project management software. Specifically
one that works with the PERT methodology. [1] [2]

There are approximately 2^8 software packages that do this. Which one is right
for you is going to depend on the selection of output formats, your needs and
desires for tweaking the sorting engine or adding functionality and who your
planning process has to communicate with.

Recent editions of Planner [3] can persist projects to a Postgresql database,
from which you can derive some things in an automated fashion. I believe that
Microsoft Project does similar tricks and has versions that are designed to be
used by midsize engineering groups.

In my experience project management software is more often loathed than loved;
and the best packages are the ones that put the fewest obstacles between you
and the underlying data model.

1\. <http://www.netmba.com/operations/project/pert/>

2\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_T...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_Technique)

3\. <http://live.gnome.org/Planner>

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RiderOfGiraffes
Thanks for the reply. I do know about PERT and Gantt charts, and my sense from
having seen them in action is that they're complete overkill for what I want.
I don't want Gantt charts, and I don't need graphical input. All I want is a
simple text file input, and then a suggested sequencing.

I'll continue to investigate "Planner," but I was looking for something
smaller and more concise. Specifically, I don't need it to talk to loads of
other software.

For all the time investigating other tools, or writing one, I might just get
on and do it all by hand with index cards after all.

