Are Fixed Duration tasks flawed?
- From: SpiroT <SpiroT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2007 16:04:00 -0800
I believe that there is a flaw in how Microsoft Project Fixed Duration tasks
behave!
The main problem occurs when resources of type Work are assigned to a Fixed
Duration tasks. After such an assignment is in place, if a change is made on
the resource working calendar which conflict with the assignment dates, MS
Project leaves you no choice and adjusts the duration for those FIXED
duration and thus forces it to behave like a FIXED Work task. In addition,
If there is more than one task that is impacted by an assigned resource that
has had its resource calendar changed in this way, the warning MS Project
supplies you will only be for one task and not all affected tasks, nor does
it tell you which resource has caused the change! As such, you are not even
advised that this has occurred beyond one task.
Other anomalies with how Microsoft Project Fixed Duration tasks behave has
to do with how one goes about assigning resource to such tasks. If you were
to use a Task Form like Resource Work or Resource Schedule to assign
resources, MS Project will go quietly along its way and enter the Work the
resource could provide given their availability. On the other hand, if you
assign resources using the Assign Resource dialog window (Alt-F10), MS
Project responds immediately and informs you that due to the non availability
of a resource the Fixed Duration task will adjust to accommodate the
resource. If you are assigning resources to multiple tasks, again, MS
Project will only one tell you about one of them, so you’ll have to check if
there are others. At this point you may as well undo the operation and try
assigning the resource(s) task by task to find the problem, or better yet use
the Available to Work field to proactively assign the resources! This is the
preferred approach since over-allocations can be avoided. However, it
doesn’t address the main problem where there change is made on the resource
working calendar which conflict with existing assignment dates!
What one would expect from a Fixed Duration task is that it behave like one
and not like a fixed Work task which is driven by effort, (e.g., a meeting is
typical of a non-effort driven type of event)—it doesn’t matter how many
people participate (in theory), there should be a finite start and Finite
end—that’s what is expected of a “fixed” duration task! If you can’t make it
to the meeting, well then let me know but give me the option of going on with
the meeting without you! If at some point you realize you can’t make it to
our fixed duration meeting, don’t let that drive the finish date(s) of our
meeting(s) or other non effort driven fixed duration tasks! Doing so will
delay successor tasks and mess up our project plan.
In MS Project 2007 Beta, the problem persists. Some differences from MS
Project 2003 though is that you do not even get notified that these type of
tasks are impacted by a change in resource available after an assignment has
been formed.
.
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