In this video, we’re looking at Acumen Fuse’s diagnostics in the S2 // Logic tab, in particular, the Relationship types.
So, check out our short video explaining this in more detail or you can read the text below which gives you an overview of the video content.
The S2 // Logic tab
Logic is the backbone of a healthy project, so in the S2 // Logic tab, Acumen has bundled a number of tools to support inspection of the schedule’s logic.
Today we’re looking at the Relationship Types ribbon group.
Relationship Types
The Relationship Types ribbon group is on the upper left.
Acumen lists the predecessor and successor activity connected to each respective relationship type. It also displays the percentage of activities in the schedule that have that relationship type, which is valuable information.
As mentioned, the DCMA 14-point assessment says at least 90% of relationships in the schedule should be Finish to Start to ensure schedule simplicity and transparency.
Finish to Start relationships are more conducive to commencing successor activities based on a completed known scope of work, which is more transparent.
So, shorter well-defined tasks that have Finish to Start relationships are preferred.
The relationship types in S2 // Logic, shows how your schedule matches up to this important requirement, and others. The corollary to the 90% Finish to Start requirement is that Start to Start and Finish to Finish relationships taken together should not be more than 10% of the activity relationships in the schedule.
It’s good to know the percentage of Start to Start and Finish to Finish activities in the schedule.
Inspect each Start to Start and Finish to Finish relationship captured to confirm that the activities truly have the respective Start to Start and/or Finish to Finish dependency. If not, these relationships should not be inserted to simply fast track activities, a common scheduling mistake.
So, S2 // Logic supports a thorough review of activity relationships.
Click the Finish to Start button.
We see the output listed on the right. Note the percentage of FS relationships, 96%, which is a good report: we meet the DCMA 14-Point relationship assessment. You may also group the output list by any column.
Left click Predecessor and drag and drop just below the relationship type banner, Finish-to-Start.
Note the groupings. It groups relationship connections with the same predecessor together.
To remove the grouping Left click the Predecessor button and drag until an X appears, then release the mouse key. Acumen removes the grouping.
Let’s inspect the schedule’s other relationship types.
Click Finish to Finish.
There’s none in the schedule, so that’s good.
Click Start to Finish.
There is one Start to Finish relationship in the schedule.
The Start to Finish relationship.
In this not so common relationship, one activity cannot finish until another activity has begun. This relationship type is confusing and discouraged by most scheduling guidelines.
You most likely will not cross paths with a Start to Finish relationship in your scheduling career, so this is for your awareness.
The Start to Finish relationship is typically used by master schedulers in the proposal and initial planning stages of a project. And it is a valuable tool for the master scheduler. Detailed planners, however, take the schedule Start to Finish relationships and convert them into more understandable network logic using the more usual Finish to Start, Start to Start, and Finish to Finish relationships.
Again, we do have one Start to Finish relationship in the schedule, which is a concern.
Click Start to Start.
Note the Start to Start relationships in the schedule. We have several activities in the schedule that have Start to Start Relationships.
You can also see other Deltek videos by Ten Six here. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive notifications of when we post a new video.
For more Deltek Acumen articles click here.