Delay in external dependency

[rasivasu]

Hello,

I have scheduled a list of activities and among them I have also
scheduled a few customer review milestones. My questions are as
follows:

- Since I don't know who in the customer organization is going to
review the deliverables and what their schedule are, I have scheduled
these reviews as milestone. Is it the right way of scheduling a
customer review?
- If I schedule a customer review as milestone, how do I reflect
customer induced delays in my schedule? Milestone are supposed to be
delayed by predecessor tasks right?

Note: I understand that in MS Project context, the term "External
Dependency" is used to refer to the dependency on tasks schedule in
another MS Project Schedule. In my case, I don't want to have another
schedule.

Regards,
Ravi

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

The first part is you need an agreement with the customer how quickly they
need to respond if you have deadline dates to meet or even if you don't. So,
schedule in a duration that fits the agreement and yes the customer review
signed off milestone should be driven by task links.

 

[rasivasu]

Hi Rod,

I do publish the external review schedule upfront and they do commit a
timeline for review. But they don't always complete the review as per
their commitment and I need to reflect the delay in the schedule. I
can create a task called "External Review" but if I do so, I need to
assign a resource to it. As I don't want my customer's resource in my
schedule, I don't want to schedule the external review as a task with
fixed duration and resource.

There are other external dependencies as well which I can't figure how
to reflect in MS Project. Example: If some of the tasks are dependent
on arrival of a new hardware, how do I track the delay induced by late
arrival of the hardware?

Regards,
Ravi

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

This is where I'd suggest using a lag time. You submit the proposal or
whatever to the customer for review. You're agreement with them is they
need to repsond within 2 weeks of receiving it. Create two milestones. You
preparation process ends with a "Submitted to Customer" milestone. That is
the predecessor to a "Customer Review Completed" milestone. If you estimate
and/or your agreement is that it will take the customer 2 weeks to complete
his review after receiving your materials, insert a 2 week lag time in the
link between the two milestones. If your submission is earlier or later,
the review complete milestone will move with it.