You can edit any of Acumen’s 300+ schedule quality inspection metrics. Let’s take a look.
Acumen is a robust tool for assessing schedule quality and exposing areas needing improvement. You can review your P6 schedule using the standard Acumen Fuse metrics, modify one of them or create your own.
Knowing a metric’s elements clarifies its results and simplifies editing existing ones or creating new ones. Metric diagnostic results are displayed in the Acumen S2 // Diagnostics tab. You can create or modify metrics in the Metrics tab.
This article introduces schedulers to the Metrics tab so they understand the basic elements that define a metric in Acumen Fuse.
Demonstration
We have in Figure 1 our demonstration P6 schedule imported into Acumen Fuse.
In Figure 2, we click the S2 // Diagnostics tab, select the Schedule Quality metric group on the bottom playlist, and click the Fuse button to perform the Schedule Quality group analysis.
Figure 3 displays the Fuse results for the Schedule Quality metric group.
Review of the Ribbon Analyzer Fuse results will help us understand how Acumen defines and uses the basic elements of a metric. Figure 3 displays the two main results in Acumen S2 // Diagnostics: 1) in the top right is the Ribbon Analyzer results that show how each metric performed for the project life and 2) in the lower left is how each metric performs at specified intervals.
In Figure 4, we select the Metrics tab, and in the top-left navigator pane, the Schedule Quality metric group, choose the Critical metric.
Figure 4 displays the header information for the Critical metric: Name, Description and Remarks. The metric type determines the Filter type. In Figure 4, it is set to ActivityAttribute, which filters by the corresponding task’s attribute. Examples of the two Metric Types are as follows:
Metric type
- ActivityAttribute: attribute formulas, such as critical = true.
- ActivityCount: numerical formulas, such as total float < 5-days.
Primary Formula
The metric tab defaults to display the Primary Formula, Figure 4. Inclusions are grouped into four categories: Activity Status, Activity Type, Time Phase and Prorating.
The Activity Status is where you select the status of the activities you want included. Our Critical metric excludes completed tasks.
The Activity Type in Figure 4, Critical metric, includes Normal and Milestone tasks. Summary tasks, i.e., deliverables, are not included for the Critical metric. Level of Effort (LOE) tasks are also excluded. Refer to the following link for a primer on LOE tasks.
The Time Phase setting lets you specify when you want the activity included in the analysis: All [phases] includes the time range from when the task begins to when it ends; Start, only the phase the task begins in; and Finish, only the phase it ends in. Date basis is the schedule you want to use to determine the start and finish of the task.
Prorating considers phases in activity metric computations. When off, Acumen ignores time phases and analyzes the activity metrics as a whole unit.
Filter: not all metrics have a filter. And it is correlated to the metric type. The Critical metric in Figure 4 has a Metric Type of ActivityAttribute, which is a filter based on attributes rather than numbers. In Figure 4, the filter specifies an ActivityAttribute metric type that captures tasks whose Critical attribute is true.
The results of the Primary Formula appear in the S2 // Diagnostics Ribbon Analyzer, top number in the score boxes, Figure 5.
In Figure 5, the number 9 indicates that 9 tasks in the schedule are on the critical path. This number comes from the Primary Formula inclusions and the attribute-based filter, where the field is critical, the operator is the equal sign, and the attribute is true, Figure 4.
Secondary Formula
The secondary formula for the Critical metric in the Metrics | Secondary Formula tab is displayed in Figure 6.
You can copy the inclusions from the Primary Formula by clicking the ‘Copy from Primary Formula’ button, Figure 6. There are no Filters or Formulas for the Secondary Formula. The results appear in Figure 5 S2 // Diagnostics Ribbon Analyzer, bottom number in the score boxes, Figure 5. This number is a percentage enclosed in parentheses. The percentage is the result of the Primary Formula divided by the number of tasks from the Secondary Formula multiplied by 100. The formula is as follows:
The percentage for the Critical metric in Figure 5 is 53%. From Figure 1 S1 // Projects tab and navigator pane, the number of tasks in the schedule is displayed in parentheses and next to the project name. For our schedule, this number is 18. But this number includes the LOE task, which, in the Secondary Formula inclusions is excluded, so the formula is computed using the number of schedule tasks minus the LOE task, as follows:
Tripwire Formula
The Tripwire Formula, Figure 7, is auto-calculated from the Primary Formula.
This is the default setting for the Tripwire Formula tab, Figure 7. The Figure 8 Tripwire Formula results display in the bottom Activity Browser when the Tabular Activity Browser Mode is selected.
Tripwire Thresholds
The Tripwire Threshold results appear in color in the Ribbon Analyzer scorebox, as shown in Figure 8. When the Use Gradient button is active in the Tripwire Thresholds ribbon group, Figure 9, the scorebox color blends adjacent colors based on how close the value is to each color interval threshold.
The Critical metric at 53% falls into medium orange with a slight bit of yellow. If the gradient is turned off, then the colors are not blended but come straight from intervals.
Summary
So, the main elements that make up a metric are Primary and Secondary Formulas: the Primary includes Inclusions, and either a Filter or an Advanced Formula, and the Secondary includes only Inclusions.
The S2 // Diagnostics tab Ribbon Analyzer scorebox for each metric presents results in three forms: number, percentage, and color thresholds. Be sure to fully review all the inclusions to confirm your scorebox results.
Understanding where these results come from helps you assess the schedule’s quality more effectively. For more insight into the elements of a metric and how to make minor adjustments to the Primary Formula | Formula > Advanced, refer to the following article: