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The Zümmer Predecessor Successor Report

Print a smarter and more efficient Predecessor Successor Report

Print a clear and concise Predecessor Successor Report from Zümmer

A CPM Schedule “Predecessor Successor Report” is a standard and valuable tool for documenting and examining an activity’s predecessor and successor relationships. However, creating this type of report in P6 is not only time consuming and difficult, but the resulting output is typically tough to read and cryptic. Even worse, this type of report, which is typically lengthy to begin with, is even more lengthy when using the formats available in P6’s reporting tools.

Zümmer’s version of the Predecessor Successor Report is not only concise and well organized but also contains more pertinent information than most other Predecessor Successor Reports found in many “How To” articles found online.

Page Header – Project ID Information

The Page header shown above displays the Project ID, Project Name and Data Date for the selected Project.

Group Header – Activity Information

Each Group is sorted alphabetically by Activity ID. The Group header band starts with a light red shaded area and displays the Activity Status, Activity ID, Activity Name, Activity Type and Total Float value. The Total Float is not shown for activities that are completed.

Each Activity ID in the Group Header band is prefixed by “*”. This allows for quick searching within a PDF or other electronic type file. For Example, in the sample above, to find the Predecessors and Successors for Activity “MPBR3590”, type “*MPBR3590” in the search window. This will find the Group Header Activity ID instead of the same Activity ID that might exist in the Predecessor/Successor detail band.

Detail Band – Predecessors and Successors

Directly below the Group Header Band is the Predecessor/Successor detail band. This detail band is sorted first by Predecessor shown in a blue font then by Successors shown in a red font. Within each Predecessor/Successor band, the activities are listed alphabetically by Activity ID and displays the Relationship type (“P” for Predecessor and “S” for Successor), Activity Status, Activity ID, Activity Name, Activity Type, Total Float value, Relationship Type and Lag value.

Page Footer – Legend Information

The Page footer displays a Legend for the Activity Type, a Legend for the Activity Status, the Run Date (date printed) and the Page numbering.

Report Total – Project Logic Count

On the final page, a total count of all the logic relationships is displayed.

Once printed, the Predecessor Successor Report can be directly inserted into a Submittal document with no further manipulation.

Keeping Resource Cost and Schedule in Sync

Use these 4 Zümmer Analysis Reports to keep your Resource Cost and schedule in sync.

Keeping Resource Costs and schedule status in-sync can be a nightmare even in a moderately sized CPM Network. In this type of environment, it is possible to have an independent Cost Engineer and Schedule Engineer responsible for developing and maintaining Resource Costs and schedule making this effort even more complicated.

In an ideal situation, Resource Costs and schedule status are In-Sync when:

1) an activity has not started, and the Actual Resource Cost (Expenditures) is equaled to 0;

2) an activity is in-progress, and the Resource Cost Actual Cost To-Date is be between 0 and the Budgeted Cost;

3) an activity is complete, and the remaining Resource Cost is 0.

Obviously, the ideal situation is rarely the case and, in some instances, can even be justified. Regardless, when schedule and Resource Cost status get Out-of-Sync, these instances should be identified, reviewed, and adjusted accordingly.

There are 4 Out-of-Sync possibilities: (See illustration below)

1) Resource Cost exist on activities that have not started.

2) There is Remaining Resource Cost on activities that are complete.

3) There is no Remaining Resource Cost on activities that are in-progress.

4) There is no Actual Resource Cost on activities that are in-progress.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #1 with Analysis Report – “Expenditures on Not Started Tasks” illustrated below.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #2 with Analysis Report – “Remaining Cost On Completed Tasks” illustrated below.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #3 with Analysis Report – “No Cost to Complete on Tasks in Progress” illustrated below.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #4 with Analysis Report – “No Cost To Date on Tasks in Progress” illustrated below.

Each report lists the Activity ID, Activity Name, and either Budgeted Cost, Cost to Complete, or Expended Cost value. Line Items are highlighted when an unbalanced condition occurs. Unbalanced conditions occur when the Budgeted Cost is not equaled to the Actual Cost plus the Remaining Resource Cost value.

Keeping Expenses and Schedule in Sync

Use these 4 Zümmer Analysis Reports to keep your expenses and schedule in sync.

Keeping expenses and schedule status in-sync can be a nightmare even in moderate sized CPM Networks. In this type of environments, it’s possible to have an independent Cost Engineer and Schedule Engineer responsible for developing and maintaining expenses and schedule making this effort even more complicated.

In an ideal situation, expenses and schedule status are In-Sync when:

1) An activity has not started, and the Expense Actual Cost to-date is 0;

2) An activity is in-progress, and the Expense Actual Cost To-Date is be between 0 and the Budgeted Cost

3) An activity is complete, and the Expense Remaining Cost is 0.

Obviously, the ideal situation is rare and in some instances, can even be justified. Regardless, when schedule and expense status get Out-of-Sync, these instances should be identified, reviewed and adjusted accordingly.

There are 4 Out-of-Sync possibilities: (See illustration below)

1) Expense Actual Costs exist on activities that have not started.

2) There is Expense Remaining Cost on activities that are complete.

3) There is no Expense Remaining Cost on activities that are in-progress.

4) There is no Expense Actual Cost on activities that are in-progress.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #1 with Analysis Report #48 – “Actual Expenses On Not Started Tasks” illustrated below.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #2 with Analysis Report #49 – “Remaining Expenses On Completed Tasks” illustrated below.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #3 with Analysis Report #50 – “No Remaining Expenses on Tasks in Progress” illustrated below.

Zümmer checks for Possibility #4 with Analysis Report #51 – “No Actual Expenses on Tasks in Progress” illustrated below.

Each report lists the Activity ID, Activity Name, Budgeted Expense, Actual Expense and Remaining Expense value. Line Items are highlighted when an unbalanced condition occurs. Unbalanced conditions occur when the Budgeted Expense is not equaled to the Actual Expense plus the Remaining expense value.

Activity Names with Embedded Double Space

…the Filter Killer.

The Filters Module in P6 is a very powerful tool, and arguably regarded as a “Scheduler’s Best Friend”. However, when using – the “Activity Name equals/contains” option, incorrect results could arise when Activity Names contain embedded double spaces. An embedded double space is defined as double blank spaces contained anywhere within an Activity Name. Blank spaces at the beginning of the Activity Name is not considered since the P6 ‘contains’ or ‘Equals’ Filter option can trap this anomaly.

In the illustration below, there are 6 ‘Review Bids’ activities comprised of 4 Tasks and 2 Milestones. Of course, this small set could be a subset of a large CPM Network comprising of thousands of activities.

For this exercise, suppose the Scheduler is required to produce a report or layout identifying all the “Review Bids” activities for Bidding Review Team. The natural approach would be to create a filter as shown below:

Type: (All of the following)
Where Parameter: Activity Name
Is: contains
Value: Review Bids

However, when the Filter is activated, P6 returns the following results:

Unbeknownst to the Scheduler, only 4 out of the 6 activities appear. What happened? Activities EDS1020 and EDS1040 were excluded from the filter results.

Unfortunately, a common and simple typographical error placed double blank spaces between the words “Review” and “Bid”. Not only is this error easy to make, but is nearly impossible to detect especially when you’re dealing with a CPM network consisting of thousands of activities and where activity copy/pasting is used extensively.

In Zümmer Analysis Report: “[02] Activity Names with Embedded Double Space“, shown below, not only lists all instances, but the ‘Set Group’ column even shows you where to look. The report also tracks the Count Per Set and the Activity Count for each Set Group. Additional information on this report includes the Original Duration, Remaining Duration, and Total Float.

Since this is such an easy mistake to make, possibly resulting in erroneous reports, this issue must be checked and resolved by the Submitting or Reviewing Scheduler.

Using Zümmer concurrently with P6 helps identify and eliminate embedded double spaces.

Embedded Double Spaces can be resolved using the following Steps:

Open the CPM Network as shown below, with the P6 Filter set to “All Activities”.

2. Click on the first Activity Name cell so that the Select Marquee is shown around the Activity Name. If the Select Marquee is not highlighted around the Activity Name cell, the solution will not work.

3. Press “CTRL-R” to activate P6’s Replace Window as shown below:

4. In the “Find what:” textbox, enter 2 blank spaces. The 2 blank spaces will not show. The illustration above represents the 2 blank spaces with the gray rectangles.

5. In the “Replace with:” textbox, enter 1 blank space. The single blank space entry will cause the blinking cursor to shift 1 space to the right.

6. Finally, click “Replace All”. The “Replace All” option will scan through all Activity Names replacing every embedded double space with a single space.

7. If an Activity Name contains multiple embedded double spaces, the Find/Replace procedure will pause and redisplay the Replace window. Click “Replace All” to continue the process until all double spaces have been removed.

At the completion of the scanning process, all embedded double spaces have been replace by a single space as shown below. The highlight bar stops at the last replaced Activity Name.

Finish Analysis Profile

How to produce an “S-Curve” type graph when a schedule is not cost loaded.

A “Cash-flow S-Curve” is a very valuable tool that reveals much information about the characteristics of the scheduled Project. However, you may often come upon a schedule that is not Cost or Expense loaded. You can still produce an “S-Type Curve” by accumulating the Actual, Early, Late (and Mid) Finish Dates of the Tasks and Resource Dependent activities.

Although this method may be a rough simulation of an actual Cost Load distribution, the resulting curve, in most cases can surprisingly provide a reasonable model of the Cash-flow as if the schedule was cost loaded. In the resulting curve, instead of defining the Y-Axis as Cumulative Cost, the Y-Axis is defined as the Cumulative Finish Date count.

Astute Zümmer user, Stephen Paterson, notes that these curves can be useful on types of projects where the client does not want it’s costs published out to all and sundry.

Zümmer’s Finish Analysis Profile Report (Illustrated below), completes this tasks by:

Generating and Actual, Early, Late, and Mid Cumulative Finish Curves.

a. The Actual Finish Curve distributes the Actual Finish date of each completed Task or Resource Dependent between the Start of the Project up to the Data Date.

b. The Early Finish Curve distributes the Remaining Early Finish date of each Task or Resource Dependent activity between the Data Date and the latest Finish date in the Project.

c. The Late Curve distributes the Remaining Late Finish date of each Task or Resource Dependent activity between the Data Date and the latest Finish date in the Project.

d. The Mid Finish Curve calculates the midpoint daily value between the distributed Early and Late Finish Dates.

e. The height of the Vertical Data Date line is defined by the Total Count of Tasks & Resource Dependent activities in the Project.

f. The X Axis displays the Profile Date in which the range is bounded from the Earliest Project Start Date to the Latest Project Finish Date.

g. The Y Axis displays to Cumulative Finish Count which is bounded from 0 to the Total Count of Tasks and Resource Dependent activities. This means that Level of Effort, WBS Summary, and Milestone activities are not included in the graph.

h. The Total Task + Resource Dependent count is also displayed in the bottom of the report.

2. Storing the graph and distribution data into a spreadsheet.

a. In addition to generating a Finish Analysis Profile report, Zümmer also generates an editable spreadsheet containing the actual chart appearing in the report along with the supporting daily and cumulative Actual, Early, Late, and Mid Finish distribution calculations.

When the Finish Analysis Profile Curve is selected for previewing or printing, in addition to the printed/preview-able report, Zümmer generates a spreadsheet supplemental file for the curve produced in the report.

The spreadsheet output file is stored in the Zummer/Output folder. In the illustration below, the Project TST-BL1-UP02 was selected for printing with the file listed. Note the file structure prefix consists of “FAP” then the next filename segment consists of the Project ID, “TST-BL1-UP02”. The final filename segment, [97LLK], is a random computer system generated 5-digit suffix.

The “FAP” file in the “Chart1” Tab contains the “Finish Analysis Profile” Curves shown as below:

Since the file above is a generated spreadsheet, the visual content can be customized by the user and/or Cut/Copy & Pasted into another document.

In the “FAP” file chart view above, shown below is a partial section of the ChartData tab and the raw data used to plot the curve shown above: (Note: Rows 3 thru 61 and 66 thru 404 are hidden for instructional purposes).

Column A – “Profile Date” contains the series of dates from the earliest date in the selected Project listing daily down to the latest date in the selected Project.

Columns B, C and D contain the cumulative Early, Late and Mid Finish Date Count Series respectively for the Finish Analysis Profile curve on the graph displayed in the Chart1 tab.

Column E contains the cumulative Actual Finish Date Series for the Finish Analysis Profile curve on the graph displayed in the Chart1 tab.

Column F contains the Total number of Tasks and Resource Dependent activities used to generate the vertical Data Date line in the graph.

Columns G, H, I and J contain the daily total Early, Late, Mid and Actual Count Series respectively used to calculate the cumulative values shown in Columns B, C, D and E respectively.

Total Recall (Part 1 of 2) – Schedule Analysis Summary Module Basics

Your Schedule Analysis Summary results are saved for future recall and variance analysis.

The Schedule Analysis Summary Module is useful in determining how analysis results are trending through the life of a Project. Whenever the Analysis – Include Summary option is checked, a 2-Page Summary Report is printed along with all the selected analysis reports. In addition, the Summary Report containing the resulting totals of each individual numbered analysis report is saved for later recall.

The Schedule Analysis Summary Module is accessible by clicking on the Toolbar Command Button Shown below:

Each individual Analysis Summary is identified by a unique 6 digit “Series ID”. The prefix “SA” is used to designate a series run for Schedule Analysis. The remaining 4 digits is a unique name created from the system date and system time. Every Schedule Analysis series run can be accessed from the Schedule Analysis Summary Module.

In the illustration above, a series run for Project ID: MST-BL1-UP06 designated ‘SAEII3’ was created on 27-Jun-16 at 09:31.

From the History Tab, the Schedule Summary Report can be reprinted containing the totals for each analysis report printed for that Series.

Selecting the Excel Export option prints a spreadsheet format of the Series information. The Variance Tab allows any 2 analysis series to be compared.

The Item History Tab allows individual reports to be printed. The Item History Tab allows a more detailed trend analysis by grouping analysis line items across multiple Analysis Series runs.

Analysis Statistics (2 of 2) – More Information at your fingertips.

The second of two matrix-style analysis reports.

The Analysis Statistics Report is the next level of detail from the Analysis Charts. The second of 2 reports neatly display 4 key Project elements on 1 page. The Analysis Statistic Report is easy to produce and ideal for Schedule Manager reporting.

The illustration above is a sample output of a typical Analysis Statistics Report (2 of 2).

Duration Type: Details the Duration Type of every activity categorized by Activity Type.
Percent (%) Complete Type: Details the Criticality of every activity categorized by Activity Type.
Duration Threshold: Details all Non-Milestone activities and categorizes Activity Type.
Free Float activities count with distribution by Activity Type.

The Original Duration Threshold limits are User defined. The values are entered in the Criticality/Duration Assignment Module found under the Settings menu.

Activities with No Finish Side Successors

The Precedence Diagram Method (PDM) of defining relationships between activities is a powerful tool. Often, however, Schedulers, sometimes unknowingly, misuse the options available when defining relationships between activities.

In the illustration below, Activity “E” is assigned to “B” as a predecessor with relationship Finish-to-Start (FS) and is assigned to “F” with relationship Start-to-Start (SS).

Since “F” has a predecessor and a successor activity, it does not violate the “No Open Ends” rule. In fact, running the P6 Global filters, “Activities without Predecessors” and “Activities without Successors” will display no results.

However, since “E” is related to its only successor, “F” using SS, “E” does not effectively contribute to the CPM network. In fact, when “E’s” status is updated to “In Progress”, it essentially behaves like an “open ended” activity yet still complies with the “No Open Ends” rule.

Unfortunately, in P6, there is no Filter that can be constructed to check for “no finish side successors”. However, Zümmer checks this anomaly with Report #14 – “Activities With No Finish Side Successor”.

The converse to this issue is “Activities with No Start Side Predecessors”

Expense Profile Data – Output to Excel

Improve your Expense Profile presentations through Zümmer’s Excel output feature

When the “Expense Profile With Actuals” Curve is selected for previewing or printing, in addition to the printed/previewable report, Zümmer generates an Excel spreadsheet supplemental file for the curve produced in the report.

The spreadsheet output file is stored in the Zummer/Output folder. In the illustration below, the Project MH-BL1-UP33 was selected for printing with the file listed. Note the file structure prefix consists of “EXP” then the next filename segment consists of the Project ID, “MH-BL1-UP33”. The final filename segment is a 5-digit computer system generate suffix.

Zümmer automatically saves the Expense Profile Data to an Excel File in the Output folder

The “EXP” file in the “Chart1” Tab contains the “Expense Profile With Actuals” Curves shown as below:

Chart1 display

Since the file above is generated by a spreadsheet, the visual content can be customized by the user and/or Cut/Copy & Pasted into another document.

In the “EXP” file above, shown below is a partial section of the ChartData tab and the raw data used to plot the curve shown above: (Rows 6 thru 241 and 247 thru 1076 are hidden for instructional purposes).

ChartData display

Column A contains the series of dates from the earliest date in the selected Project listing daily down to the latest date in the selected Project.

Columns B, C and D contain the cumulative Early, Late and Average Expense Series respectively for the Expense Profile curve on the graph displayed in the Chart1 tab.

Column E contains the cumulative Actual Expense Series for the Expense Profile curve on the graph displayed in the Chart1 tab.

Column F contains the Total Budgeted Expense amount used to generate the vertical Data Date line in the graph.

Columns G, H, I and J contain the daily total Early, Late, Average and Actual Expense Series respectively used to calculate the cumulative values shown in Columns B, C, D and E respectively.

Tasks With Start-To-Start Relationships And No Lag

The PDM (Precedence Diagram Method) method of defining relationships between activities is a powerful tool. Often, however, Schedulers, sometimes unknowingly, misuse the options available when defining relationships between activities. In the illustration below, under Method 1, Activity “A” is related to “B” using Finish-To-Start (FS) and “B” is related to “C” using Start-To-Start (SS) with Lag = 0.

This may appear as a reasonable approach as often, the Activity Name description(s) may provide a false justification for this relationship. Unfortunately, the Forward and Backward pass doesn’t care about your Activity Name description. Therefore, trying to justify the use of Method 1 by using a “real world” situation fails as an argument to promote its use.

The Forward and Backward Pass doesn’t care about your Activity Name description.

By observation, since “B” has a shorter duration than “C”, “B” should have a higher Total Float (TF) value than “C”. However, when calculated, the TF for “B” = 0. Under Method 1, the SS/Lag = 0 relationship between “B” and “C” is causing the critical path to flow through the only the Start of “B” resulting in an incorrect TF value for “B”.

By representing “B” as a critical activity, the result could lead to a possible misallocation of resources. Furthermore, if the correct TF value “B” is later discovered, then this could cause a loss in trust in the schedule.

The solution is to follow Method 2, i.e. “A” is related to “B” using FS and “A” is related to “C” using FS. Not only is this trap avoided but relationships between activities are more clearly defined.

Zümmer checks this anomaly with Report #37 – “Tasks With Start-To-Start Relationships And No Lag” reports all instances. In the illustration below, each Start-To-Start relationship with no lag is clearly and individually paired. In addition, the Activity Status of the predecessor and successor is listed along with each Original Duration, Total Float, type of Relationship and lag value between the two activities.