External timeline dependencies

[Jen B]

I am using Project 2003 enterprise. I have 3 plans linked together, a
resource plan, vendor submitted plan, and master plan. However, it is not
appropriate to link to the vendor plan for submission to management. How do
I reflect the durations they expect and the review/revise cycles that belong
to our staff?

For example; they will write a guide and expect it to take 2 weeks, my staff
must review that guide within 5 days. How do I create a task for our review
designed to start at the end of the estimated 2 weeks without linking but
still showing a 2 weeks and 5 days timeline.

 

[John]

I am using Project 2003 enterprise. I have 3 plans linked together, a
resource plan, vendor submitted plan, and master plan. However, it is not
appropriate to link to the vendor plan for submission to management. How do
I reflect the durations they expect and the review/revise cycles that belong
to our staff?

For example; they will write a guide and expect it to take 2 weeks, my staff
must review that guide within 5 days. How do I create a task for our review
designed to start at the end of the estimated 2 weeks without linking but
still showing a 2 weeks and 5 days timeline.

Jen,
Why is it "not appropriate" to link a vendor plan into your plan "for
submission to management"? Not wanting to provide vendor information to
another contractor or to an end use customer I can understand, but
"management" is part of your company and your management should be aware
of a vendor they have hired.

Nonetheless, if linking the plans together is forbidden they your only
real choice is to create a milestone that is entered manually to
represent the vendor's completion of the "guide".

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[DavidC]

Hi,

If I understand your query correctly you have a need to provide a schedule
to your management but not to show the underlying schedules that provide
predecessor data to your master plan.

The easiest way is to link the two plans together so that if the vendor plan
is to remain outside the master plan, the master plan can still be given to
management but the linking tasks are filtered out using the "external link"
flag. This method is not so easy to make the links since the vendor schedule
is not actually imbedded within the schedule but sits totally separately. To
do this means that you need to write in the dos path link rather than let
project create that link as would be normal if the vendor plan was embedded
in the master project.

There is a further option where you set the schedules up using the vendor
plan embedded in the master, create the links then go to the top level of the
vendor plan and open up the information, and unlink the link to project box
under the advanced tab. Once the project is unlinked you can then delete the
item where the vendor project sits in the master schedule, but the links
remain. You will see that the links are there by looking under tools/links
between projects.

Remember first to keep a copy of your original so that you can always g back
if there is a problem.

Hope this helps

Regards

DavidC