Re: newby question - project hours dramatically increasing on thei
- From: "Steve House" <sjhouse at hotmail dot com>
- Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:38:02 -0500
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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:5EBF2CA6-4859-471C-B2DE-D26C4AE0C94B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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
>
> > Visithttp://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 -
.
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