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Overview: PM Procedure

The PM procedure is an interactive procedure that can be used for planning, controlling, and monitoring a project. The syntax and the scheduling features of PROC PM are virtually the same as those of the CPM procedure. However, because the PM procedure is interactive, there are a few extra options that are available and a few other options that have a default behavior that is different from the CPM procedure. These differences are noted in the section "Syntax: PM Procedure" and the section "Summary of Differences". One major difference is that only the Activity-On-Node representation of the project is supported in PROC PM. In other words, TAILNODE and HEADNODE statements from PROC CPM are not supported.

For a complete description of the syntax and the scheduling algorithm for the CPM procedure, see Chapter 2, "The CPM Procedure."

When PROC PM is invoked with the activity network representation, an interactive window is opened that displays a Table View of the project on the left and a Gantt View of the project on the right. You can add activities and edit the project data by using the Table View. You can also use the Gantt View to move activities, change the durations of the activities, and add precedence constraints between the activities. These features are described in the section "Details: PM Procedure".

The PM procedure is designed to facilitate its inclusion in a Project Management application, such as PROJMAN. Any changes that are made to the activity network or to the activity durations, resource requirements, alignment specifications, and other activity information need to be saved in the resulting Schedule output data set. Further, you should be able to use this output data set as input to a future invocation of PROC PM and continue to manage the project. Thus, there are some differences in the design of the Schedule data set (defined in Chapter 2, "The CPM Procedure") to enable the integration of PROC PM into a Project Management application. The differences between the Schedule data sets in the two procedures are described in the section "Schedule Data Set".