Steve
Sat Dec 22 01:38:02 CST 2007
Of course you have 'must-hit' deadlines that aren't negotiable - almost all
projects do. But the purpose of software like MS Project is not to document
those deadlines - it's purpose is to provide you with a calculating tool
that will predict outcomes - a what-if modeling tool designed to help you
figure out just how you must organize the workflow and resource assignments
in order to meet those requirements. And for it to do that, it must be
allowed to freely predict the results that you will obtain for any given
trial structure. If Project is insisting on changing task dates where you
don't want it to, it's telling you something very valuable - it's telling
you that it will be impossible for you to meet your required dates with the
workflow and resource assignments as you have entered them. The solution is
not to override Project's scheduling engine with constraints - the solution
is to change your workflow and/or resources until Project's calculated
schedule aligns to the schedule deadlines your client mandates that you
achieve. You cannot fix a task to a certain date by simply declaring that
that is when it will happen - you have to drive it there by some real-world
physical process that insures the preliminary foundation work is completed
in-time for the task in question to begin and the resources with the
required skills are available and in the right place at the right time to do
the work so that the task will be able proceed as you need it to. If
Project's date calculations don't put the tasks where you want them, it
means you haven't discovered the workflow and resource assignments that will
allow them to happen as needed.
In short, you don't tell Project the schedule you want, its job is to tell
you the schedule you'll be able to get with a given workflow organization
and resource loading. If that schedule doesn't meet your business
requirements, you need to experiment with different workflows and resource
assignments until it does.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs
"Jeff" <Jeff@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5EBF2CA6-4859-471C-B2DE-D26C4AE0C94B@microsoft.com...
> Hi Dave,
>
> Thanks, a few people have pointed out that this is Project's big strength.
> It doesn't seem that adapted for my project, which is a consulting project
> with a series of deadlines driven by the client, that are not up for
> negotiation. All I want to do is produce a Gantt chart with many task
> dates
> fixed by me, and see where this creates large resource demands so I can
> bring
> in more people/plan to camp at the office. The problem I keep running
> into
> is that Project will reassign dates of other tasks when I try to fix a
> task
> timeline with constraints, or it will simply refuse my constraints.
> Project's ability to schedule is actually getting in my way at this point,
> unless there is some other way to get around it. Meanwhile, my client has
> asked that we produce all project plans in Project, so I am stuck with it
> for
> now.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Jeff
>
> "davegb" wrote:
>
>> On Nov 26, 12:19 pm, Jeff <J...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>> > Thanks very much, appreciate your time.
>> > one thing that is a little unclear to me is how to finesse durations.
>> > right
>> > now i have many tasks that are not where I want them to be in the
>> > overall
>> > timeline - how can I move them to the weeks I want without limiting
>> > MSP's
>> > ability to level, etc.?
>> >
>> > jeff
>>
>> That's the whole point. Project doesn't schedule tasks to suit our
>> preconceived notions of when they need to happen. If properly used, it
>> schedules them to be done at the earliest possible date to take
>> maxmimum advantage of any availble slack. Of course, you can
>> reschedule them to later dates to put tasks where you want them in
>> time, but why? If there is a complelling reason they can't occur until
>> some date later than their dependencies would dictate, that's what
>> Constraints are for. But most of us here advise against doing so
>> arbitralily. It just decreases your odds of completing your project on
>> schedule and within budget.
>>
>> Hope this helps in your world.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > "Jim Aksel" wrote:
>> > > A few things. First, make sure you are not assigning resources to
>> > > summary
>> > > tasks. Second, hand key a date only as a last resort since it
>> > > creates
>> > > constraints. Instead, finese durations to get things where you need
>> > > them.
>> >
>> > > Fixed work tasks. Key in a value in the [Work] column (work is not
>> > > the same
>> > > as duration). That value should not change regardless of duration.
>> > > What
>> > > will change is the %Units (the allocation of resources assigned to
>> > > the task).
>> >
>> > > See if any of that helps.
>> > > --
>> > > If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.
>> >
>> > > Jim
>> >
>> > > Visit
http://project.mvps.org/for FAQs and more information
>> > > about Microsoft Project
>> >
>> > > "Jeff" wrote:
>> >
>> > > > Hello all - thanks for any help on a probably obvious question. I
>> > > > am making
>> > > > all of my tasks 'fixed work' to reflect the fact that our
>> > > > organization is
>> > > > assigning specific amounts of hours to each resource for a given
>> > > > task. This
>> > > > was working fine, but I now find that many of my summary tasks have
>> > > > total
>> > > > hours that are much, much higher than the total of the hours
>> > > > assigned to
>> > > > subtasks - for example, 3 subtasks worth 22 hours for resource A
>> > > > and 10 hours
>> > > > for resource B have a total summary task of 226.88 hours!
>> > > > I assume that Project is somehow extrapolating from task timelines
>> > > > (which I
>> > > > also sometimes assign, i.e. I manually put in start and finish
>> > > > dates) and/or
>> > > > resource availability, but how to I stop it from doing this?
>> > > > Thanks,
>> > > > Jeff- Hide quoted text -
>> >
>> > - Show quoted text -
>>
>