End date for Hammock task

[rasivasu]

Hello,

I read how hammock tasks can be created to span the entire length of
the project. As long as I know the last task to get completed in a
project, I can use its finish date as the link for the hammock finish
date. What beats me is the selection of one task which will always be
the last task irrespect of how the critical path changes during the
course of the project. How do I create this task?

Regards,
Ravi

 

[JulieS]

Hi Ravi,

I suggest adding a finish milestone as the last task in the project. Set
the predecessor(s) for the milestone as all of the tasks that must be
complete for the project to meet the requirements. You could then use that
milestone for the finish date of the hammock task.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.
Julie

 

[rasivasu]

Hi Julie,

I thought of creating a finish milestone and of putting all the tasks
in the schedule as its predecessors. Since it will be very difficult
to do this for a schedule with 400+ tasks, I hoped I will get an easier
option . Thanks for the information.

Regards,
Ravi

 

[JulieS]

Hi Ravi,

You don't need to set all 400 tasks as the predecessors. You could simply
link the last tasks in logical flows as the predecessor to the finish
milestone. So for example: if the predecessor/successor relationship is A

B > C > D, only task D needs to be the predecessor to the finish

milestone.

Hope this helps.
Julie

 

[Trevor Rabey]

Actually, it is very easy to make 400 Tasks each a predecessor of the Finish
Milestone
Just type: 1,2,3,4...400
...provided the Predecessors field will take this much data.
(9 x 1) + (90 x 2) + (300 x 3) characters + 399 commas = 1498 characters

But seriously,
You need to get handy with data editing in EXCEL, WORD, ACCESS etc for big
chunks of data.
This is one of the really useful things about MSP with EXCEL, WORD, ACCESS
etc.

How:
The problem is to get the vertical list of Task IDs and convert it to a
horizontal list with commas between and no spaces.
In MSP, show the ID column.
Copy and paste the whole column to 400 vertical cells EXCEL.
Copy and paste special, transpose to 400 horizontal cells in EXCEL.
(which you can't do in one bite because EXCEL has only 256 columns, so do it
in two bites).
Copy the 256 cells from EXCEL and paste to a Table in WORD.
Convert the Table to Text with comma separators.
If you get spaces with it, run WORD Replace " " with "".
Copy and Paste into the Predecessors field for the finish milestone in MSP.

If you don't want to do it with the whole 400 Tasks you can roll up 1 level
of the WBS and use the IDs of the Summary Tasks as the Predecessors of the
finish milestone.
Normally, never use, or try to avoid using, Summaries as Predecessors or
Successors, but this is a reasonable exception.

 

[Joe]

Just use the Summary line finish date. No adding new task, always will be
the last possible date!

 

[davegb]

Actually, it is very easy to make 400 Tasks each a predecessor of the Finish
Milestone
Just type: 1,2,3,4...400
..provided the Predecessors field will take this much data.
(9 x 1) + (90 x 2) + (300 x 3) characters + 399 commas = 1498 characters

But seriously,
You need to get handy with data editing in EXCEL, WORD, ACCESS etc for big
chunks of data.
This is one of the really useful things about MSP with EXCEL, WORD, ACCESS
etc.

How:
The problem is to get the vertical list of Task IDs and convert it to a
horizontal list with commas between and no spaces.
In MSP, show the ID column.
Copy and paste the whole column to 400 vertical cells EXCEL.
Copy and paste special, transpose to 400 horizontal cells in EXCEL.
(which you can't do in one bite because EXCEL has only 256 columns, so do it
in two bites).
Copy the 256 cells from EXCEL and paste to a Table in WORD.
Convert the Table to Text with comma separators.
If you get spaces with it, run WORD Replace " " with "".
Copy and Paste into the Predecessors field for the finish milestone in MSP.

If you don't want to do it with the whole 400 Tasks you can roll up 1 level
of the WBS and use the IDs of the Summary Tasks as the Predecessors of the
finish milestone.
Normally, never use, or try to avoid using, Summaries as Predecessors or
Successors, but this is a reasonable exception.

I think that to varying degrees, these posts, and particularly this
last one, are missing the point of the Finish milestone, and really, of
CPM scheduling itself. This concept is also overlooked in the PMIBOK
itself and is not commonly known, even though it is central to CPM
scheduling. The concept is Scheduling Continuity. The idea is that ALL
working level tasks (task with no subtask) should have both a
predecessor and successor. At the same time, no summary task should be
linked. Linking summary tasks is merely a short-cut to avoid good
scheduling practice and will eventually, if the capabilities of the
software are fully used, like resource leveling, tracking, EV, etc.,
lead to problems.
In order to achieve Schedule Continuity, you need a Start and a Finish
milestone on every single project. (In software designed by expert
schedulers, they are already there and not removeable!) Any working
level task without a predecessor (can be started as soon as the project
starts, doesn't need any input from any other task) should be a
successor to the Start milestone. Any working task that doesn't
otherwise have a successor (can be finished at the very end of the
project, no other task needs it's deliverable) should have the Finish
milestone as it's successor.
If you have Schedule Continuity, it's relatively simple to link the few
tasks that can actually be at the end of the project to the Finish
milestone.
The only exceptions to this linking are Summary tasks, which should
never be linked, and regularly scheduled events, such as weekly or
monthly meetings, which are not dependent on work being completed, only
on the date. If you follow these rules, you'll eliminate 90% of the
problems people have with getting Project to function at high levels.
Even if you're not using Project at high levels, it makes more sense.
And who knows how you'll be using Project later on? Linking properly,
which means having Schedule Continuity, makes everything else in work
better and do what Project is supposed to do - help you manage your
project schedule with some degree of confidence that what you are
seeing is a reasonable representation of what is actually happening.
Hope this helps in your world.

 

[rasivasu]

Dave,

Though I agree that we need to use Schedule Continuity, I don't agree
to the conclusion that Schedule Continuity will solve my problem. The
reasons are as follows
- "In a large project, there are normally lot of independent tasks and
the sequence in which they are executed are dictated by factors like
management priority/criticality/risk, resource leveling etc"
- Wherever possible the semi-independent tasks are converted into
independent tasks, by making assumption and imposing constraints, so
that the manager has more options and the schedule can be compressed.

In this environment, if we make the assumption that the task sequence
may change, then the final few tasks can't be manually identified and
linked at the beginning of the project. We need to track the schedule
continuously. As and when the tasks change on the critical path, we
need to recalculate the Finish Milestone. It is in this context that I
was seeking some help from MS Project.

Regards,
Ravi

 

[Trevor Rabey]

This is from Dave's post:

"ALL
working level tasks (task with no subtask) should have both a
predecessor and successor. At the same time, no summary task should be
linked. Linking summary tasks is merely a short-cut to avoid good
scheduling practice and will eventually, if the capabilities of the
software are fully used, like resource leveling, tracking, EV, etc.,
lead to problems."

Darn right, too!

Dave is just advocating a good rule of thumb which is that every Task should
have at least one predecessor and at least one successor and the Summaries
should not be linked, either to Tasks or other Summaries.
While you are building the plan this rule of thumb can be half suspended.
Initially, you may have links between Summaries just for convenience but
should plan to change them to links between Tasks in another pass/iteration,
until they are all gone. Initially when you are building the plan some Tasks
may have no predescessor and/or no successor, or only one when there really
are more. Start by finding at least one for every Task for starters and then
add to it as the plan takes shape. Some links are redundant, in that the
Tasks involved are so far off the Critical Path compared to the "driving"
predecessor that they have no effect on the scheduling of the Tasks or the
project.
An example would be the Project Start Milestone which is a predecessor for
every Task but you don't really have to show it as a predecessor on every
Task. But if they are real predecessors, that is, they really are Tasks
which must be done before other Tasks then it is essential to make the links
so that they get done firt, so they are not really redundant.

I don't really see what the problem is that you have that continuity or
anything else will not solve.
Everything you have said that you need so far, in as far as I understand it,
can be done with MSP and "best practice" rule-of- thumb
What do you mean by "Independent Tasks"?

When you say "impose constraints" and "the manager has more options" I can
assure you that these are mutually exclusive. Constraints reduce
flexibility, adaptability etc and take away options.