Event Scheduling deadline date

[inay]

Hello

I am developing a schedule for a series of events (part of a conference).
The start date/delivery of the events can not move. I want to be able to set
dependencies such that:
- the event start/finish dates do not move;
- any other tasks that directly impact the delivery of the event are linked
such that should slippages in these events cause the start date of an event
to be jeapordised, the lead up activities will flag as red (understand that I
can set the CP to show as red, are there other flag/indicators avaialble?);
- i can manage the critical path and view the changes in slack for tasks on
the CP;
- once we are using the tracking gannt, i can use project to reschedule all
other tasks, other than the actual events themselves, if there are slippages.


I've researched past posts and am trying to work out the best approach.
Should I:
- create links between critical path activities to the events and set
negative lags (I've started to do this, however, am finding it doesn't give
me the flexibility to start tasks sooner than the lastest dates required);
- use deadlines (havent' really used these in the past so don't know how
this will 'flag' slippages and the critical path)
- set must finish on constraints (but my understanding from others is that
this is not optimal as it may not enable me to make use of project's ability
to reschedule tasks down the line)

Thanks - it's a long one!

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Inay,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

No contest - use deadlines. In my view, you need to let Project have free
reign to calculate the dates based on your Durations and Precedence links.
I'd create a Finish milestone and apply a Deadline. Now, as your project
changes and you update and re-schedule it, you can see the relative
positions of the Milestone and the Deadline. If your revised schedule
causes the finish to be later than the deadline, an indicator will appear in
the Indicator column to that effect. You can then crash the project to
bring it back to the required date.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[inay]

Thanks Mike.

So I would combine the 'As Soon As Possible' constraint and use deadlines?
Would I use any 'As Late as possible' type constraints? What is the impact
of using this latter type of constraint should tasks need to be reschedule?
I am only familiar with the 'As Soon As possible' constraint and the use of
lags/leads to push dates around.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Inay,

ALAP constraint pushes the task to the end of any slack it may have, thus
robbing you of any flexibility. Suppose you have a 4 day task with ALAP and
it actually takes 5 days - you've lost a day and everything subsequent to
that will also be a day late. Better to start as soon as you can and any
delay can be taken up by its slack. However, there must be some real life
occasions when it may be suitable. I'd try not to use any constraints,
other than the ASAP, which in practice means no constraint. Others may hve
different ideas


Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Jumoing in - the critical path is the sequence of tasks that drive the
project duration. If tasks are happening in a linear progression and you've
said task A lasts 5 days and task B will start three days after A finishes
and B lasts 10 days etc etc, that establishes the timing of the project as a
whole. If A takes 3 extra days, 8 days, not 5, the lag time says "B still
starts three days after A finishes so push B's start back three days"

Just something to think about here - You said "you (input) dates according
to when you've been told the work will be done." That's putting the cart
before the horse. Your resources shouldn't be telling you when work will be
done for you to then input into Project. Project's job is to compute when
the work needs to be be done, not merely document when someone else has
decided to do it. You don't make it show predetermined dates at all, either
directly by inputting them or indirectly by throwing in lags and leads
arbitrarily. You determine how long each task should take and the way the
various tasks relate to each other and from that Project computes the dates
that gives an optimum work schedule which you then communicate to the
resources so they can plan to do their work according to what Project has
determined they should be doing. The project plan tells them when they need
to do their work, they don't tell it when they want to do it or have decided
they are going to do it.

 

[inay]

Hi Steve

I understand that the situation is not ideal. My problem is that the
project has already started and management want reporting on progress while I
am trying to complete the schedule development process, so, for current tasks
that have started, I am having to 'make the dates' work. On another note, I
am finding that most of the tasks (i.e. 90%) are coming up red (marked as
critical path). Have you ever seen this? Can you suggest what might be
causing this?

Thanks,
Yani

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

That is a very common occurance actually. Consider a simple project
consisting of 5 tasks, each of, say, 5 days duration, all linked one after
the other in a simple sequence like elephants in a circus parade. All of
those tasks will be critical since the delay of any task will delay the
completion date of the project. Remember that all that's required for a
task to be critical is for its slack time to be zero or less. Slack time in
turn is the amount of time the task can be delayed before it pushes back a
successor task start, a successor task finish is pushed past its deadline,
or the project completion is delayed. But note, if you have two tasks
linked FS and you use a lag time to set the start of the successor at some
later time than the link by itself would cause, that does NOT add slack time
to the predecessor task. A 5 day lag time looks like it should mean the
predecessor has 5 days "grace period" that it could delay without affecting
the sucessor but that's not the case - a X day lag time means that there is
some concrete reason that the successor MUST NOT start until X days after
the predecessor has ended, regardless of when that is. Adding lag time into
a link between tasks will not cause a critical predecessor to become
non-critical.

The way I suggest you handle this sort of situation is first to pretend that
nothing has been done and you've gone backwards in time to before when the
project began. Set the project start date to the date work was first done
and build the plan according to proper PM principles, letting Project
calculate all the task dates and letting them fall where Project wants to
place them. Then bring things forward to the present day by posting in
actual work that has been done on the dates that the work actually was done
using the tracking tools as if you had been following the plan and posting
progress all along - if you want to be detailed about it, set the "current
day" entry in the project information page to each Friday in turn since the
project started, post in work actually done for that week, and run the
"reschedule uncompleted work" tool to pull uncompleted stuff forward the
following Monday. Once you have worked your way forward to the present date
you'll have a correct, working project plan that accurately details what has
been done to date and a forecast schedule that you can take to your boss
with "... and here's the revised schedule we need to work from here on out
so we can best complete everything remaining to bring our project in on-time
and within budget."
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Yani,

Another possibnility is that you are scheduelling from the finish. Check
Project/Project Information.../Schedule from: Project Start Date.


Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[inay]

Hi Steve

I've used the reschedule work button to pull tasks forward but notice that
this sets a constraint on the tasks of 'Start No Earlier Than'. The
constraint causes all tasks to then become 'red' for the critical path. Have
I missed something? This in effect produces the same result as using
predecessors to move dates around isn't it?

Thanks,
inay

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

No, it's not the same as using predecessors. When a task that was supposed
to start in the past shows it hasn't actually began, Project doesn't know if
it really didn't start as scheduled or if you just haven't gotten around to
posting the data yet. Using the reschedule work button says the portion
shown as unworked really hasn't been worked. Since we can't go back and do
work last Tuesday that we were supposed to do but didn't do when scheduled,
it sets the date the work will start be way of a SNET constraint.