"Dave" <dave@dave> said:
John
I think you're missing the keyword in my question, I want to "compare" our
proposed schedule against the customer requirements so that we can judge if
we can meet the customer's requirements.
I actually now managed to find how to do this. I firstly put the customers
requirements unduer a separate top level summary task. The problem is, if
my schedule is shorter than the customers requirements, the customers
requirements will then always be calculated as the critical path. To get
around this, all I have to do is to add a dummy task to the end of my
schedule, make it a successor of my real last milestone and then make it
very long, maybe 2 or 3 years in my case. Now my schedule will be the
longest overall and so the critical path is calculated for this.
Incidentally a question here may be if my proposal is shorter than the
requirement, why am I worrid about CP? Well the answer is because the
customers timing is for a number of phases spread over a 4 year program. At
this stage I only want to schedule the first phase of work so my proposal
will therefore always be shorter than the requirements (if it's not then I'm
really in trouble!!!)
Sorry I didn't reply before, your reply has only just appeared in my reader
for some reason!
Dave,
Perhaps you didn't see my reply on your newsreader until now because I
inadvertently dialed up the wrong address on the StarGate. Until you
told me just now I thought I had dialed up Earth but I must have in fact
dialed up P2389 (another StarGate address I use frequently). Or perhaps
the Cylons are messing with our communication structure. You know, they
do have a plan. At any rate . . .
No, I didn't miss your keyword "compare" but the more complete
explanation provided in your current post sheds new light on your
scenario. From what you describe I can see a few different ways of
handling the issue of a near term plan being compared to a long term
project. First, you could only show the customer milestones relevant to
the phase you are working. That is, if your detail plan is for phase 1,
then only show the customer's milestones for phase 1.
A second approach, and one that I have used, is to lay out all customer
milestones under a separate summary. In your part of the plan, lay out
the detail tasks for the active phase (e.g. phase 1). Then in addition,
lay in what is caledl a planning package for each remaining phase. A
planning package is nothing more than a single placeholder task with no
detail. Normally it will have a Duration equal to the complete span of
the project phase it represents (e.g. 1 year). A target budget amount
can be applied to the planning package to allow the whole project to be
costed. When the time nears for that phase to become active, the
planning package is converted into a real plan with all the gory detail.
This approach has several advantages. It recognizes the entire project
without having unnecessary detail before it's needed. It provides a
complete logic network and Critical Path. It allows the complete project
cost to be represented.
If for some reason neither of the above approaches works for you and you
only want to see the Critical Path (for comparison), try this. Identify
tasks you do NOT want to see on the path by using a spare flag field.
Then modify the Critical Path filter to show only tasks that you DO want
to see.
Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
