Removing Constraints between Tasks

[Arashazadeh]

I was advised to minimize constraints between tasks and allow the "A
Soon As Possible" to prevail. Now some of my resources have 156 hou
days at the beginning of the project. Have I taken the advice to
literally? or should I be using lag time and leveling delays to adjus
the schedule? Using the Gantt chart relationships (FF, FS,..) seem to b
the easiest way of doing this. What is the principle/rule of thumb tha
you would go by?

Thanks in advance

 

[Dave]

You have done the right thing.

The links should only show the physical impossibility of changing the
order that the tasks are executed in. They should not show the order
you want to impose.

Having got a reasonable plan, you should level it. There is a levelling
option within Project (Tools/Level Resources). You need to set the
granularity to something that represents your work patterns (most people
seem to be happy with week-by-week).

You can also also level "by hand" by inserting the "Levelling Delay"
column and increasing the delay on individual tasks. This might be a
useful learning exercise.

This might seem to you as though it results in the same result, but it
actually allows the schedule to be updated dynamically and as a result,
you can let the application do a lot of the legwork.

 

[Arashazadeh]

Thank you all for taking the time. Is the "auto leveling" feature o
MSP, as Dave suggested, preffered over the manual leveling methods? Wil
it affect the tracking of the project

 

[Dave]

Thank you all for taking the time. Is the "auto leveling" feature of
MSP, as Dave suggested, preffered over the manual leveling methods? Will
it affect the tracking of the project?

It is almost universally recommended that you do not use "Automatic
levelling".

I was referring to the "on-demand" levelling feature. You can go to
Tools/Level Resources/Level Now. This can also be undone by the "Remove
levelling" button.

I use the on-demand feature above, but it isn't a magic solution to all
of your problems. It takes time to learn how to use it and what the
options it offers mean.

I would suggest that, as a learning exercise, you insert the "levelling
delay" column and add some delays in there to see how things can move
around.