excluding tasks from the critical path

[JulieS]

You're most welcome and thanks for the feedback.

Julie

Thanks Julie,

Yes, you managed to translate my post correctly

I have a hammock task linked to two milestones. I was reluctant to
reduce
the days, for obvious reasons, but your suggestion to reduce by 1
hour should
work and not change the overall calendar days for the project.

Thanks again for your help.

Hello scutzer,

Not sure if I understand exactly what your question is, but I am
guessing that you want to create a hammock task which does not show
as
on the critical path.

A suggestion would be to enter a milestone linked F to S with the
final task in the project and lead the milestone by 1h. The use
the
milestone's finish as the finish for the hammock. The milestone
will
still adjust as the project dates change but the -1h lead should
keep
it off critical path and keep the hammock with total slack as well.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information
about Microsoft Project

I believe I've identified an exception to this argument in that a
"hammock"
task will assume a "critical path" and it should not. By
defition
the
hammock task will move with the movement of other tasks and
therefore doesn't
change itself and thus should not be considered critical path.

I have a project right now where this is the case. Not sure if
the
work
around described will take it off the critical path, but do
believe
this is
an example of a task you do want in the plan, but should not be
in
the
critical path.

FYI, the tasks that are hammock in my case are those that run the
length of
the project like governance, status reporting, etc...

Thanks!

:


Andrew Lavinsky wrote:
[Minor change to the last post for clarification]

You can't turn off the CP calculation, but you could do a
workaround as follows:

1) Create a custom flag field (Flag1) w/ a default value of
"Yes." Instruct
your client to flag the tasks that shouldn't count as a "No"

2) Create a second custom flag field (Flag2) and use the
following formula:

IIF([Critical]=Yes AND [Flag1]=Yes),Yes,No

Then format the Gantt chart by first making sure you have used
the Gantt
Wizard to display the Critical Path, then doubleclicking on
the
chart, and
then configuring the critical path bars so they will only show
critical path
if the following criteria are met:

Normal, Flag2

Change the Normal Task bar criteria to:

Normal, Not Flag2

And that should more or less do it. I might recommend color
coding the excluded
tasks as green or something like that, but it should be more
or
less the
same principle. You may need to play w/ the Gantt formatting a
bit to achieve
the desired effect.

-A


This is a very clever workaround. It reminds me of the time some
years
ago when a truck driver delivering hydrocloric acid to one of
our
facilities in South Texas couldn't get the nozzle on the truck
to
fit
to the nozzle on the tank he thought he was supposed to fill.
That
tank
happened not to be an HCl tank, but a hydrogen peroxide tank! If
your
chemistry knowledge has faded, mixing these 2 chemicals causes a
very
powerful reaction. Like in explosion!

Our company operator, apparently not paying any attention to the
various safety markings on both the truck and the tank, offered
to
and
did fabricate a custom made fitting in the shop to connect the
two
together. It worked! Fortunately for them both, the operator
noticed
the storage tank "humming" and felt that it was rapidly heating
up.
They both took off just before the peroxide tank blew, sending
the
8'
diameter aluminium dished end over a hundred yards across the
leach
field and barely missing the oxygen storage tank on the far
side.
Luckily for everyone involved, no one was hurt. Fortunately,
with
software, the damage usually can't be physical. But it can be
severe.

This workaround is a very clever way to defeat the purpose of
Project,
which is to help us find which tasks are "critical" and make
carefully
thought-out decisions based on that knowledge. I salute your
knowledge
of the software, but with concerns about your understanding of
scheduling!

Hope this helps in your world.


Is it possible to flag a task to be excluded from the
critical
path
calculation?

I want to flag tasks to be noncritical irregardless of the
slack.
Basically, I have customers who are adding tasks to project
files that
ruin the critical path calculation.

Thanks in advance