Admin project: 'Use it or Lose it' planned work.

[Ted1234]

On MSP Pro 2003, in a true 'admin' project, I'm looking for a simple way to
set up recurring 1 hour weekly meetings using a fixed duration task, say from
Jan 1 to December 31. I want the work to be automatically 'use it or lose
it', without the Project Manager manually deleting uneeded work. Hopefully,
there is a simple answer I missed.

If I use an MSP recurring task, and if the resource doesn't charge the
planned amount of work (example: work = 2 hours, actual work = 1 hour) , the
resource must remember to zero the remaining work, or MSP will move the
uncompleted work (1 hour) to the next week. I realize this 'push forward' is
part of MSP, but in this case we need to 'user it or lose it'. Granted, if
the resource remembers to zero the horsu remaining, there is no uncompleted
work, but too often they forget.

I find a similar situation with fixed duration tasks.

In either case, it seems the project manager must manually delete the
uneeded work. Is there a better way to handle 'use it or lose it' work?

Thanks.

 

[Steve House]

That's a tricky one. A task produces a finite output. You've either
produced it or you haven't. Work is what produces the output, not time.
So work undone just doesn't vanish - unless the required deliverable
itself changed or was finished with less work than originally estimated,
undone work must still be done at some point in the future in order for
the project deliverable itself to be completed. As such, removing
budgeted work that proves unnecessary is always going to be a manual
process as when project sees a task with work remiaing it has no way of
knowing on its onw if that work is still needed or not.