Work breakdown structure Puns

I'm trying to automate/standardize a process at work for working up labor estimates for large jobs.

• Simplified example file reproduced in Google Sheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Zxjk94Ov7fK2QLUIH2f-lTYGyn8S6YZiDW8fVkYZ71I/edit?usp=sharing

Scenario: We are bidding on a project. To estimate our level of effort for the project, we use a matrix-style Excel sheet, where rows are tasks and columns are staff. We enter the hours of effort into the body of the matrix, which can then be used to calculate cost by task and subtask. See attached example file.

Currently, someone takes a shot at building the work breakdown structure based on the Scope of Work, then there's all sorts of rounds of edits based on input from other people. What inevitably results is someone break a subtotal formula or stomps over a formula and breaks the sheet when trying to make changes, like add more tasks or delete tasks. Ideally, the sheet would allow users unfamiliar with the formulas to add/remove staff and add/remove tasks and subtasks in the work breakdown structure. Just locking down the file and only allowing one person to make changes in structure has been similarly inefficient as fixing errors at the end.

Questions:

• Is Excel the right tool for this, or is there another better existing solution out there?
• Is custom VBA what I need? Any solution I think up seems to get complex fast.
• Is there some way simpler way I'm missing? A flat structure structure doesn't seem to lend itself to users easily viewing or inputting data.

Thanks

I'm preferring Work Breakdown Structure (for project management) as an efficient way to break down a project into smaller tasks, and primarily because I'm a visual person so I prefer it, at-a-glance, than a list. Unfortunately I'm not finding many ways to do it online or on Mac app. Wondering what people are using here.

BEING THERE is one of my favorite films and it always confounds me how and why it works. Our protagonist does go through a roller-coaster so to speak, but he isn't really flawed and he doesn't really experience your typical character growth. Instead it seems like others around him and society at large does the changing. He isn't even actively pursuing a specific goal really, just bouncing around where ever the world takes him.

Does anyone have a breakdown or story map for it? Or perhaps we could all discuss the story ourselves.

Long post - and honestly i don't know what the TLDR is other then my job sucks and I'm looking for some solidarity.

I work in a call center, I'm Autistic and hate/fear talking on the phone. I've tried for years to get promoted or lateral moved off of the phones but have had no luck so far. its work from home so at least i don't have to waste energy masking around bosses and co-workers which is honestly the only reason i haven't quit. There are not a lot of other employment options for me where i live and my degree is pretty much useless. I cant move since other cities are even more expensive. so im basically stuck at this company. trust me if there were better options i would quit in a heartbeat.

So one of the things they measure is how long you take after calls to note multiple systems and do whatever the caller asked of you (ACW). They want us to keep that under 3 minutes but honestly due to the autism i generally need a bit longer then that to decompress from the last call and mental prepare myself for the next one. if i don't do that i tend to get overwhelmed and risk having a meltdown. Unfortunately as soon as you are over 4 minutes you get messages from management "are you okay, high ACW" (No Karen I'm not okay, right now i would rather die then hit the ready button but here we are) but of course you cant say that, and the messages just stress me out further and add to my anxiety.

Now at my job there are people who are in the contact center but don't take calls, they do email and web-chat etc (I've tried to move to that team, no openings of course) anyway theoretically those people are supposed to be pulled to calls if we are queueing but in practice I've never seen it happen.

Which brings us to yesterday. 20 people in the contact center, 7 are taking called and 13 are doing other off phone tasks. We have 10 people in queue. I'm struggling to keep my head above water because all of my calls have been rude people blaming me for things so far above my pay grade its not even funny. (sorry, i don't write the contracts you agreed to when you set up the policy, sorry i didn't design our shitty website, sorry i cant control the processing times of other departments etc, sorry i don't set the cancelation requirements, etc) I've been taking verbal abuse all day and I'm on the verge of tears. (I'm not allowed to hang up on abusive callers i have to "deescalate" them) I get my 10th message that day about high ACW and I'm ready to lose it. so i take a risk a

Title basically. I don't have a lot of time on my hands and I'm about 50 hours in. If I were to take a break for awhile (say a month), will all of the structures that I've (and other people's structures in my world) built be destroyed/unusable when I get back?

Let me preface this constructive rant / criticism with this:

I love this game. I've been at it day one, and despite a rocky launch, all things withstanding I've enjoyed this game too damn much.

That out of the way, I've just read the official "breakdown" on how & why you're downscaling players, and I'm just going to be blunt, it's an absolutely asinine concept.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, is sitting in full level 50 legendary builds and saying, "you know what? I'm going to go run my game on WT3 for all that sweet loot 20 levels below my most garbage item!"

So this ideology that the most bonus we should have is the equivocation of only a +2 average level above it to "preserve gameplay" is pure insanity to 99% of your playerbase.

We don't want nor need to run lower tier content, but more often than not we do so to help out the occasional stuck friend or random player. We don't get anything out of this act. The loot drops are essentially useless, we've maxed out our levels, and even our 4th string gear sets are 20 levels above this, so why is the prevailing sentiment at the studio to punish players for helping others?

What is the point at all, of interactions between players if the person who's min/maxed a perfect build finds themselves stat squished 15 to 20 levels into oblivion with the added perks of getting nothing useful for the run?

There is virtually no scenario and no justification whatsoever that most of this games community will ever be able to digest that will rationalize a God tier character getting killed or even remotely breaking a sweat in content tiers that have an average gear / enemy level FIFTEEN LEVELS BELOW THEM.

It's not a bad thing to let players steamroll through the "easy" mode for fun, or to help friends. Especially when we're doing it for zero rewards or advantage, I sincerely hope you guys & gals at PCF reconsider this system, because I'm fairly certain it's going to become a massive headache for you the further along we go.

Cheers.

I mean in terms of modal changes, etc.

So, I’m trying to write a story where a main character is guilt-ridden by a past event, but I’m having a hard time coming up a solid structure.

For example, let’s say the story is about two brothers hunting for ghosts. They spend years doing this, never finding them. But one night, one brother goes off to a big bad dark house, the other stays inside the car where its safe. (The house creeps him out more than he wants to admit.) The House-Brother dies in that house, (Police are not able to determine the cause of death) and Car-Brother lives with the guilt of not helping him when he had the chance.

A decade later, Car-Brother has gone the route of total denial. No one ever believed that there were any ghosts anyway—and so he chooses not to believe, either. His other brother was nuts, crazy, made up stories, and died due to some terrible accident. Car-Brother HAS to believe that—because if he doesn’t, if he accepts the existence of the supernatural, then he also accepts the guilt of not helping him when he had the chance. So he backs down, convinces himself that there were no ghosts, his brother was just crazy. He lives by that mantra.

But now, the ghosts are coming back. And his brother might still be alive.

So my question now is a structural one. At what point should my Car-Brother protagonist accept the fact that ghosts are real?

The catalyst will have ghosts, and then we’ll have a mentor-style character who comes in and explains the world of ghosts and how he’s the only one who can stop them and that his brother is still alive and yada yada. Am I able to have my main character fully step into this world? If his defining characteristic is this denial/guilt thing he has going on, I can’t resolve that so early in the story. How do you have a character in denial go through this story’s journey in a believable/satisfying way?

In my head, there’s some big brother reunion/acceptance thing at the end of act two, leading into act 3. But structurally, I’m having a hard time figuring out how I can make that work.

I’d appreciate any insight. Thanks!

So first and foremost I feel like the show should stick to adapting the short stories first before branching off into the multi novel long epic that started with Blood of Elves. Below is how I would break down the first season episode by episode with the corresponding title to the short story that it is adapting next to it.

My first season would encompass both Last Wish and Sword of Destiny to tell the first seasons story. 4 episodes from The Last Wish latter 4 episodes from Sword of Destiny.

My meager showrunner idea:

You completely cut out Nenekke and Iola and the Temple of Meletelle. It was used merely as a framing device to collect the short stories together for the first book.

The Pilot episode should be The Witcher. Sapkowskis first introduction to the universe. A great intro for Geralt plus you get a bad ass CGI monster strigga fight at the end with Adda. And you can introduce Foltest, Temeria, and the Northern Realms

Episode 2: The Lesser Evil. You still keep on Geralt as main character so its not overwhelming. You introduce the racism of the North along with the morally grey tone the show has with Geralt getting his title of Butcher of Blaviken at the end. Episode 3: A matter of price. Play it off as another side story like the first two episodes. But it introduces Cintra and has huge ramifications for later on in the season (and series).

Episode 4: The Last Wish. You now introduce two main characters now with Jaskier and Yennefer. Definite Yen nudity this episode to introduce her as the femme fatale. I wanna see those soapy bubbles.

Episode 5: Bounds of Reason. We get a light hearted adventure which involves Jaskier, Geralt, and Yen. Plus you can hammer in how rocky their relationship is by Geralt acting all butt hurt that they broke up. You have the two going at each other like Sam and Diane from cheers (for those old enough to remember). Plus theres a freaking dragon at the end

Episode 6: A shard of Ice. This would be the last Yennefer episode of the season. To really drive home their dysfunctional relationship. Geralt acts all pissy that hes not the only suitor and thers Istredd to deal with. Episode ends on a cliffhanger for next season with Geralt receiving his dear john note at the end.

Episode 7: This one would either be Eternal Flame with Dudu or Sword of Destiny with Ciri. Maybe a light hearted Doppler comedy with Jaskier to act as a balm against the downer ending from the previous episode

-or-

We jump right i

Greetings fellow excel users! So i'm working for a small systems engineering start up company and we are working with excel a lot. We are trying to simplify as much as we can, which brings me to my problem:

We used to create our product breakdown structures (PBS in the following) with XMind or yEd manually, meaning we basically have an excel sheet containing all necessary information and someone has to sit down and draw the PBS step by step. We could save time and reduce mistakes, if we could somehow export the data from excel and create a breakdown structure from it. So thats basically what we are trying to find out. If anyone knows about any software capable of doing this or some other way to solve this, it would be much appreciated!

So thanks to everyone taking their time reading through this!

#Overview

2020 is the year when our conventional sanctions end, this coming October. In order to deal with this, we have already laid extensive preparations to rejoin the process of acquiring advanced new systems beginning in 2021. Our Forces are Diverse, well-deployed, and stretched from years of nonsensical sanctions, which the United States and the Zionists, as well as the heathen Sunnis, have imposed on us unfairly. As such, the Budget will be set for 2020 at $20.5bn, in keeping with the norms of the past few years.

#Budget Breakdown By Organisation

• Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: $8bn
• IRG Ground Forces: $3.5bn
• IRG Aerospace Forces: $1bn
• IRG Naval Forces: $1bn
• IRG Quds: $1bn
• IRG Basij: $500m
• Iranian Conventional Military Forces: $13.5bn
• Army: $4.5bn
• Navy: $4.5bn
• Air Force: $4.5bn

The portioning of the budget into these sections will assist us in creating a budgetary Framework ready to accept considerable new additions to our conventional forces, and sustained investment into the IRG in keeping with previous trajectories. 10% of each budget will be set aside for the acquisition of new systems, and as of 2021, expanded spending will see us acquire large new quantities of advanced systems in the Air Force, and Army, in particular.

#Force Breakdown By Organisation

• Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: 124,000
• IRG Ground Forces: 64,000
• IRG Aerospace Forces: 20,000
• IRG Naval Forces: 20,000
• IRG Quds: 20,000
• IRG Basij: 90,000 permanent staff, 300,000 Reservists, 11m potential call-up
• Iranian Conventional Military Forces: 400,000
• Army: 350,000
• Navy: 20,000
• Air Force: 30,000

Small changes to Force Structure will see the amount of Conscripts we rely upon, to be gradually reduced, whilst the wider pool of recruits is slightly expanded. There will be changes to the organisation of the troops within each organisation as follows:

###IRG Ground Forces

33 Local Commands (32 Regions + 1 Capital District) will see a Tactical Battle Group of IRG Ground Forces in each, centered around 1,000 troops, Motorised in Trucks, along the following fashion:

• HQ Platoon
• IRG Infantry Battalion
• Artillery Battery
• Recon Platoon
• Support Company
• Combat Engineer Platoon
• Logistics and Supply Platoon
• Signals Platoon

These are the true Guardians of the Republic, and they ensure every local region wi

Two Questions, nestled in one another, perhaps better left to social scientists than historians:

1. Is there actually a fatherhood crisis (households without a father present in children’s lives) that disproportionately affects African-American communities?
2. If such a state of affairs actually exists outside of a certain media bubble, can it be linked to social government programs (welfare, the great society, etc.), disproportionate incarceration rates, poverty, or some other factor?

In a longstanding discussion with someone very close to me, I was posed the question, roughly paraphrased, “What caused such a breakdown in African American families if so much of the social fabric of the community is based on their churches?” with the possible culprits being government intervention and a more nebulous disdain for rap and hip hop. While the framing of the question and finger pointing at the culprits were both definitely off, I don’t have the resources available to answer the core of the question.

Forgive me if this belongs in another sub. Thanks in advance!

I know the company is a result of a couple of buy-outs and merges but I'm confused on how the shares are distributed. Did the buyouts and merges affect the companies? I'm supposed to present an economic analysis of the company in two days and the shareholder distribution is still foggy to me.

They have the full structure on their website.

Refer to the pic below as well. I have the information of the major shareholders but I'm confused on why there is a Stichting AB inBev and a AB inBev NV/SA. Is SAB inBev a result of the merge between Anhesuer Busch and SABMiller? Please help, thanks in advance!