Coordinating multiple projects

[Steve]

Hi

Not sure if this is the appropriate newsgroup, but here goes ;-)

There are multiple project plans held on two SQL servers, all managed by
different people, and all linked to a central resource plan. The potential
problem faced is that where tasks are linked, any updates will propogate to
the other plans causing apparantly pain and distress to the plan owners. Is
there a way or mechanism to protect the owners plans from non-owners
levelling or task changes? I've tried the write-reservation and protection
password methods, but that only seems to work for file based plans, and not
SQL server. Is this a problem with MS-Project or SQL server? I can't figure
out which and would welcome any suggestions or ideas from you all

Cheers
Steve

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

If you have tasks in different schedules linked, then you can only say don't
update when you open the schedule. However, if you don't update, then why
link?

What I have done for one client is to in the Source project have a milestone
to represent the source event.
In the Receiving project have a milestone to represent the same task. I then
have one custom field to hold the project's title and a second for the
source milestone's task unique id. I then have a macro that updates the task
on demand. For the receiving milestone I also set a deadline date to
represent the date the event needs to happen by. This works well and
eliminates hard links between projects and works very well in Project Server
scenarios as well.

--
For VBA posts, please use the public.project.developer group.
For any version of Project use public.project
For any version of Project Server use public. project.server

Rod Gill
Project MVP
For Microsoft Project companion projects, best practices and Project VBA
development services
visit www.project-systems.co.nz/
Email rodg AT project-systems DOT co DOT nz

 

[Steve]

Many thanks for that. That's certainly an option I haven't tried, so I'll
give that a go (despite the annoying macro security dialog) and let you know
if it's a success. I've got too many sceptics to have many false starts with
this ;-( but perhaps I'm making a rod for my own back with my approach to
the problem


Each Plan A, Plan B, Plan C has Task 1, Task 2, and Task 3 respectively.
Each plan is managed by a different owner, or team leader and each team is
responsible for multiple tasks which may be dependencies for multiple plans
and their tasks
The reason for the question is that the predecessor for Task 2 is Task 1,
and Task 3 predecessor is Task 2. Each task is an allocated task ie has a
resource assigned and a duration.
In a similiar way to another question in this group 'move linked tasks
together without setting lag time', any of the predecessors can move and
should not affect any successor until the successor plan is calculated. What
I'd like to achieve is that the any dependency task is managed in its own
plan, but would be shown in the dependant's plan (via 'show external
predecessors') and only affect the dependant when that plan is calculated. I
thought that using external task links would be suitable, but it appears
that MSP2000 seems to regard that in a similiar way to a consolidated
project and manipulate the external tasks just as it does with its own
tasks.

btw Why insert the additional milestone when the macro could reference the
actual task itself?
bbtw Do you have such a macro or similar i could use? grovel,grovel

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

I don't understand the logic of not immediately updating. Use deadlines to
show when something in another schedule is needed in yours. I use deadlines,
because showing all tasks swamps the user. Milestones are easier to manage.

The code I've written is for Project 2003 and wouldn't work on Project
2000..

--
For VBA posts, please use the public.project.developer group.
For any version of Project use public.project
For any version of Project Server use public. project.server

Rod Gill
Project MVP
For Microsoft Project companion projects, best practices and Project VBA
development services
visit www.project-systems.co.nz/
Email rodg AT project-systems DOT co DOT nz