A day-based classical project planner with milestones, resource leveling and a separate CPM reference.
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Project Planner: From Design to Handover Without Hiding the Constraints
An engineering project rarely fails because nobody wrote a task list. The harder problem is connecting design decisions, integration work, verification and handover while respecting the people and facilities shared between them. Project Planner provides a local, day-level workspace for exploring that structure without pretending to replace a full enterprise project system.
What belongs in the plan?
The tool organizes activities into Design, Integration, Test and Handover phases. A task has an ID, title, owner label, working-day duration, dependencies, optional dates, status, progress and notes. A milestone is a zero-duration marker. It does not secretly consume a day or reserve equipment.
Those fields answer different questions. The owner label tells a reader who is responsible. Selected shared resources tell the scheduler which capacity must be reserved. Assigning Alex as an owner does not automatically reserve Alex's time: create and select a matching resource when that availability should constrain the schedule.
When dependencies and resources disagree
Consider a fictional design package followed by a design-review milestone. Integration and test-procedure preparation can both follow that milestone. Verification waits for both. This dependency graph exposes work that can logically happen in parallel.
Logical independence does not guarantee practical overlap. If two tasks both need the same single-capacity bench, one must wait. The tool's classical resource-leveling heuristic looks for working-day slots after dependencies and not-before dates, considering priority and due targets. Holidays and resource unavailable dates remove capacity from the entered calendar.
Due dates are targets in this project tool, not the hard finish gates used by LuniTestPlan. A late result is flagged instead of hidden. A task marked blocked and its descendants receive no forecast dates, while independent work can still be scheduled. The app withholds an overall project finish when unresolved work prevents a complete forecast.
Why there are two scheduling views
The Gantt chart and dated schedule show the resource-leveled forecast. The separate critical-path table is a precedence-only CPM reference. It calculates earliest/latest positions and slack using durations and dependencies, but it ignores resource capacity, blocked status and due targets.
That separation prevents a common misunderstanding. An activity with slack in the dependency-only model may still delay the actual leveled plan because it needs scarce equipment. A zero-slack activity in the reference model is not automatically the critical path of every resource-constrained scenario. The tool labels that distinction rather than converting a useful reference into a stronger claim.
Progress is a report, not an execution record
Status and progress are entered by the user. The project percentage is weighted by task duration, with a separate completed-milestone fraction when the project contains only milestones. These values are not measured from a test system or validated against actual labor records.
The current forecast schedules full scope from the project start date. Marking an activity 80% complete does not automatically shrink its scheduled duration to 20%. This is not a remaining-work calculation from today, an earned-value model or a time-sheet system. Understanding that limit is more important than having an impressive-looking percentage.
Where baseline comparisons help
Capture a comparison baseline after a successful calculation, then change a duration, holiday or resource interval. Recalculate and inspect the date changes for matching task IDs. Save the project file to preserve that captured baseline along with your inputs.
The baseline is a local comparison reference, not an approved contractual schedule. Imported dates are not certified records. It is useful for discussing why a fictional verification milestone moved, but it does not establish who approved a real change.
A useful place beside TestPlan
Project Planner is designed for a common working-day calendar, up to 200 activities and a 365-calendar-day window. Tasks reserve one unit of each selected resource over their working-day duration; weekends and holidays pause work. There are no part-day allocations, per-person shift calendars, timezone conversions or automatic collaboration services.
For whole-project sequencing, start here. For a short campaign that needs minute durations, working shifts, hard deadlines and fixed test slots, use LuniTestPlan. Both are ordinary tools in Engineering & Planning, with explicit local files rather than automatic cloud storage. Use the Project Planner guide to build and inspect a small example before relying on a larger plan.