Circular ref in master projects - Continued

[Steve Scott]

Thanks Jan, John thus far.

MS Project only appears to report 1 circular reference at a time, I remove
the offender and then it lets me know I have another one! Is there any flag
set that I can get to eg by saving the data out to excel or access tables
that MSP sets when it cannot calulate - how does it know and report the
offending project and lines?

Also it appears to be creating F-S dependencies between inserted project
summary tasks - that is truly bizarre!!

How does a circular ref occur in the first place? I have tried creating a
simple plan and forcing a circular ref - MSP won't let me do it so how do
they occur?

Is there any material on the web that I can point my PMs at to give them a
better undertstanding of circular references?

Finally - I am assuming with Project Server I won't need a consolidated plan
of 191 sub-plans and therefore individual projects won't be able to
"contaminate" each other's project summary tasks? Can project server be set
not to permit the publishing of plans containing circular references?

Sorry lots of questions - thanks in advance.

Rgds

Steve

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

Go to tools menu, options, schedule tab and TURN OFF autolink inserted or
moved tasks.
Then click the "Set as Default" button. It seems like this may help you to
avoid the summary task links which are likely to be your problem.

I'd probably go through and remove ANY links to summary tasks as a first
step.

-Jack

 

[John]

Thanks Jan, John thus far.

MS Project only appears to report 1 circular reference at a time, I remove
the offender and then it lets me know I have another one! Is there any flag
set that I can get to eg by saving the data out to excel or access tables
that MSP sets when it cannot calulate - how does it know and report the
offending project and lines?

Also it appears to be creating F-S dependencies between inserted project
summary tasks - that is truly bizarre!!

How does a circular ref occur in the first place? I have tried creating a
simple plan and forcing a circular ref - MSP won't let me do it so how do
they occur?

Is there any material on the web that I can point my PMs at to give them a
better undertstanding of circular references?

Finally - I am assuming with Project Server I won't need a consolidated plan
of 191 sub-plans and therefore individual projects won't be able to
"contaminate" each other's project summary tasks? Can project server be set
not to permit the publishing of plans containing circular references?

Sorry lots of questions - thanks in advance.

Rgds

Steve

Steve,
If you truly eliminate one circular relationship and another pops up, it
sounds like your plans are pretty hosed, but I guess you are finding
that out the hard way.

As far as I know there is no field in Project or its underlying database
that can be copied or queried to identify circular relationships. If
there were, it would have been in one of our FAQ on our Project MVP
website. Could such an algorithm be created? Possibly, but it would be
challenging to say the least.

I can't tell you why the finish-to-start relationships on inserted
project are being created but I'd be willing to bet one or more of the
subprojects has links on summary lines. Those need to be removed!

How do circular references occur? Well there are various ways. One way
is when a linked task is outdented so that it becomes a summary line, a
circular relationship may be created. Another is when multiple
contributors to a master file, (this is probably your case), edit their
files in "round robin" type fashion. At some point, the last guy in the
editing cycle may perform an edit that effectively ties links in a
circle. Unfortunately this will not show up when he saves his file but
it may show up the next time the master is opened.

When a large number of project owners are part of a massive master
project with lots of links between files, the setup is ripe for circular
relationships. I recently had just such a scenario with a client's files
and he didn't have anywhere near the number of subprojects that you
have. However, his files were full of reference milestones that were
linked back and forth between subprojects - totally unnecessary and
overdone. It was pretty obvious because many of the milestones had a
predecessor string that was huge, indicating a large number of links.

The best type of link to avoid problems is a "forward pass" type of
link. Avoid links that go backward in time and avoid linking finish
milestones back to another project that may have that link point tied to
something at or near the beginning of the linking logic.

I don't do Project Server, so I can't really comment on whether there is
a better setup available in that installation. I suggest you post to our
sister newsgroup for an answer to that question:
microsoft.public.project.server.

John
Project MVP

 

[Steve Scott]

Thanks, a couple of things though:-

None of the projects have any cross-dependencies - so they are effectively
independent files that just happen to be in 1 x master file so that I can
filter/report on milestones across all the plans. I am therefore at aloss to
understand what the root cause is of these projects ending up with
dependencies between their project summary tasks if they were originally
completely independent?

After sorting 1 x circular reference - another one doesn't just pop up.
What I am suggesting is that MSP will only warn of the first circular
reference it comes across. eg if I have 10 sub-projects in a master project,
if the 1st one has a circular reference issue, then MSP warns me accordingly.
It will not tell me if the 3rd and 8th file also has a problem. I have to
clear the 1st file problem first then try opening the lot again until I
receive any further warnings.

rgds

 

[John]

Thanks, a couple of things though:-

None of the projects have any cross-dependencies - so they are effectively
independent files that just happen to be in 1 x master file so that I can
filter/report on milestones across all the plans. I am therefore at aloss to
understand what the root cause is of these projects ending up with
dependencies between their project summary tasks if they were originally
completely independent?

After sorting 1 x circular reference - another one doesn't just pop up.
What I am suggesting is that MSP will only warn of the first circular
reference it comes across. eg if I have 10 sub-projects in a master project,
if the 1st one has a circular reference issue, then MSP warns me accordingly.
It will not tell me if the 3rd and 8th file also has a problem. I have to
clear the 1st file problem first then try opening the lot again until I
receive any further warnings.

rgds

Steve,
Interesting. From your original description I would have sworn you had
tons of cross-project links. However, I would still suspect that if
there absolutely are no links on summary lines in the subprojects, then
there must be in the master and I have never seen Project apply links
automatically regardless of the Tools/Options settings. Something just
doesn't compute or I'm not understanding what you are saying.

With regard to stopping at the first circular reference, let me ask
this. If there is a linking uncertainty in one place, how can Project
possibly know whether there will be others unless that one is resolved
first? It might be possible to do that with a very advanced algorithm
that went through the whole file and looked for independent logic, but
Project's scheduling algorithm just isn't that complex. Besides, if one
part of the schedule is undefined, why would there be any assurance that
the rest of the schedule, even if it were calculated, would be valid?

As far as Project continuing to calculate the schedule once it finds a
circular reference, I tend to think it would not, but then I've never
tested that scenario.

Have you tried building a new master? Maybe you've got corruption beyond
repair and if the subproject files are all OK, then you might just be
able to resolve the problem with a fresh master.

By the way, how many total task lines are in the full up master?

John
Project MVP

 

[Steve Scott]

Hi thanks, we will keep working through the plans to ensure the circular refs
are dealt with, I think there is probably a dozen plans causing the problems.

Total task count is about 55,000.

thanks

Steve

 

[John]

Hi thanks, we will keep working through the plans to ensure the circular refs
are dealt with, I think there is probably a dozen plans causing the problems.

Total task count is about 55,000.

thanks

Steve

Steve,
Unfortunately it sounds like you have a big mess. Good luck with your
link sleuthing.

John
Project MVP