#ExcelPedroWave

In the last article I showed you the skeleton must have a perpetual calendar with minimum performance requirements in order to show the months of any year.

You know "How to make a calendar in Excel" here.

Now it comes to defining the scope of this project (in the image the projector scope by references), defining the features and functions to incorporate into our implementation of a Perpetual Calendar in Excel. The more functional specifications, the more ambitious is the project and most costly in time and cost, despite the redundancy.

If not well defined scope at the beginning of the project we run the risk of occurrence of a scope creep or deviation from the scope due to lousy exchange controls, poor identification of the initial objetives, weak project management, poor communication between developers (the latter is difficult if one is only oneself) or a set of them all.

I like to refer to this syndrome as the kitchen sink syndrome, to warn that if the scope of the project we get out of hand, is like throwing all the resources we use to the drain kitchen sink, or perhaps the program does not seem to follow the recipes of the cooks to get a good menu ...

We will not define here a Work Breakdown Structure - WBS as said before, as there isn't a development team, another day will be, but we're going to define here the scope of this project, summarized in the requirements, the following functional features and specifications:

Perpetual Calendar Project

1. Features common to all calendar sheets
1.1. Encode all dates in internal numeric date format
1.2. Enter the calendar year from a single cell
1.3. Highlight days of the week with appropriate color
1.4. Highlight colors on Saturdays and Sundays
1.5. Allow write notes in the calendar
1.6. Linking with other sheets through the months
1.7. Automatically translate month names
1.8. Automatically translate week days names

2. Features of the perpetual year calendar
2.1. Select a year from 1900 to 9999
2.2. Automatically generate 12 months of the year
2.3. Show the month number
2.4. Show the day of the week number
2.5. Start the week on Sunday or Monday
2.6. Show Sundays at the beginning and/or end of the week
2.7. Hide Saturdays and Sundays independently
2.8. Highlight diary entries in blue
2.9. Highlight holidays in red
2.10. Highlight events in green
2.11. Highlight today in yellow

3. Features of the monthly calendar
3.1. Show the day of the week number
3.2. Start the week on Sunday or Monday
3.3. Show Sundays at the beginning and/or end of the week
3.4. Hide Saturdays and Sundays independently
3.5. Highlight diary entries in blue
3.6. Highlight holidays in red
3.7. Highlight events in green
3.8. Highlight today in yellow
3.9. Show a photo of the before and after month

4. Features of the year mini-calendar
4.1. Hide Saturdays and Sundays independently
4.2. Highlight diary entries in blue
4.3. Highlight holidays in red
4.4. Highlight events in green
4.5. Highlight today in yellow

5. Features of the programmable diary
5.1. Enter 50 diary entries (expandable)
5.2. Enter diary entry name
5.3. Enter date in blue
5.4. Mark the visibility of the individual entry
5.5. Mark the visibility of all entries

6. Features of the programmable holidays
6.1. Enter 50 holiday entries (expandable)
6.2. Mark the visibility of today in yellow
6.3. Mark the visibility of holidays individually
6.4. Mark the visibility of all holidays
6.5. Select holidays from a drop-down country list
6.6. Enter the most important holidays in Spain, USA and India
6.7. Enter country, holiday, celebration and translated date
6.8. Calculate the exact holidays for different years (see Easter Week)

7. Features of the programmable events
7.1. Enter 150 event entries as World Days (expandable)
7.2. Mark the visibility of events individually
7.3. Mark the visibility of all events
7.4. Enter event name and date
7.5. Calculate the exact event date (see Valentine's Day)

8. Create the programmable Perpetual Calendar in 17 Excel spreadsheets
8.1. Create 1 sheet with 12 months of the year
8.2. Create 12 sheets with each of the months
8.3. Create 1 sheet with the mini-calendar
8.4. Create 1 sheet with the programmable diary entries
8.5. Create 1 sheet with the programmable holidays
8.6. Create 1 sheet with the programmable events

In the beginning I was to represent this structure as a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) with the program Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta which I installed for free but, see where, from what I've seen is only possible to install in previous versions, so the interactive graphical representation and the automation with Microsoft Project 2010 is for later.

A total of 57 functional specifications to be met for this first version of the Perpetual Calendar. Do you seem too? Would you add or take away any of them? What would you prefer? Are you eager to see the results of the project?