Re: fixed duration projects

We are saying the same thing - the PM IS the management who's making the decisions that I am referring to.

Are you saying your projects are finished when you run out of time or run out of money (whichever comes first) whether or not their charter objective is achieved? That's a rare project indeed. CPM is based (and MS PRoject is based on CPM) on the notion that there is a specific, tangible, measurable objective that must be achieved and the project is done only if and when that objective is realized. They can't just stop at some arbitrarily defined time or level of expenditure. Yes, you have a deadline that must be met and you have a "must not exceed" cost objective that has to be met but those are not the metrics that determine project completion. Project completion is measured by succesfully creating the mandated deliverable objective. Anything else and the project is a failure.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Norman Goldsmith" <ngoldsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ubzTWEkrJHA.4592@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Steve,

I'm months behind reading the newsgroup, sorry. I disagree that "the best feature of Project is its ability to predict the impact of management decisions on the outcome of your project." I think the best feature of Project is its ability to predict the outcome of MY decisions on how I choose to run the project. PM's are not always the victims of poor management decisions. Certainly if Fixed Work were the best option Eric Uyttewall's book would have been much, much shorter. Removing tasks, effort driven or not, that are in the critical path will always shorten the project. Adding resources will not always shorten the duration - pregnancy still takes nine-months and, as modern science has shown, you can now generate as many as eight children with the same amount of Work.

FWIW, I always work in a two pane view with the Gantt Chart on top and Task Details Form in the bottom. The latter allows me to see and edit almost every aspect of the selected task on the Gantt Chart. Besides the ability to see and enter all three pairs of MS Project dates, I have quick access to the task type, predecessors and resource allocation. Depending upon the need, I find that I often change the task type. Most of the projects I run are research-like. You have a fixed amount of time to spend a fixed amount of money and the results are variable. Fixed duration works well for this case.

Norm

"Steve House [MVP]" <sjhouse at hotmail dot com> wrote in message news:u7dVc%232cJHA.1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You can do it as Sean described but are you absolutely sure you really want to? Project's best feature is its ability to predict the impact of managment decisions on the outcome of your project. That means that for other than tasks like staff meetings and the like, as you adjust the number of resources on them they should get longer or shorter depending on whther you're adding or taking away workers. And how could a project have a fixed duration when you add or remove tasks? The more tasks you have, the more work you have to do. And the more work you have to do, the longer it will take you to do it (unless you have infinite resources to throw at the work as needed). Project is not just there to document your deadlines - it's to give you a "what-if" model to help you figure out the optimum workflow and resource assignments required to meet those deadlines. For it to do that, it needs to change durations in response to the various strategies you are considering so you can predict if a possible plan is actually going to work to meet the project's requirements. Yes, of course the final plan has to fit into a certain timeframe most of the time. The reason to use scheduling software is to help you come up with one that actually will do it.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs



"r2e2s" <r2e2s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:84F5D70C-966D-41B1-8A15-848E255ED7C4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Is there a way to globally make my schedules and any new tasks that get added
Fixed Duration, and NOT Effort Driven? Neither come as default settings.

I have to manually change both settings on all new projects, and each time I
add a new task, by clicking on the propreties icon.

Thanks for any wisdom.
--
r2e2s




.

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