Learn scheduling with a free app

The fastest way to learn the critical path, float and a quality check is on a real plan. Onplana Schedule comes with five sample schedules, each about 50 rows, with progress, a baseline and two problems planted on purpose.

Open a sample

1. Choose Help > Sample schedules, or on Home, under Try a sample schedule, pick one by name.

2. Pick one of the five: Office building construction, Software release, Office move, Clinical study or Plant maintenance shutdown.

3. The note What to look at opens over the plan. Read it, then press Got it.

A sample opens as a new plan that is not saved yet. Change it as you like. Save asks where to put it, and it does not join your recent files until you do. If the plan you had open has unsaved changes, the app asks about them first.

What is in each sample

• A work breakdown four levels deep, with a mix of link types and lags.
• A baseline on every task, and a status date with progress and actual dates, moved so the status date is today or the last working day before it.
• Six to twelve resources, constraints and a deadline.
• Exactly two problems that Plan > Schedule quality finds.

Walk through the Office move

The note has four parts. Follow them in order.

1. The critical path. Turn on View > Critical path. It runs from the landlord approval through the fit-out, the furniture, the move itself and handing back the old office.

2. The float. Turn on View > Float labels. The staff communications have the most float, about 19 days, and the furniture order about 16.

3. What the quality check finds. Open Plan > Schedule quality. Four tasks carry hard constraints from the lease and the building (Start No Later Than and Finish No Later Than dates). And “Staff communications and move packs” shows progress although it is not due to start until after the status date. Show N tasks narrows the chart to them.

4. The slip against the baseline. Turn on View > Baseline. The furniture is four days behind its baseline, and its float absorbs it, so the move date holds.

Then change the plan and see what moves: the samples are yours to edit.

The other four

Sample	What the quality check finds
Office building construction	A lead, and a Must Start On date that fails the critical path test
Software release	Tasks that lead nowhere, and a task with nobody assigned
Clinical study	Too many links with a lag, and negative float
Plant maintenance shutdown	Too few finish-to-start links, and long-lead orders over 44 working days

Notes

• A sample saves as Project XML, like any plan you save from the app.
• Everything here runs on your computer. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.

Related

• Open Microsoft Project files with Onplana Schedule
• Check schedule quality
• Set a baseline in Onplana Schedule
• Estimate your finish date in Onplana Schedule