general newbie questions about MSP concepts

[Mike Project User]

i'm new to Microsoft Project. i can see that Project is very powerful, but
i have a bunch of questions.

as a project manager i find it really confusing that MSP schedules tasks
weeks or months past the date i've set for "Finish No Later Than". i
expected to be able to tell MSP when project needs to be completed by and
give it a list of prioritized tasks and resources. i expected MSP to then
highlight in red which of the tasks wouldn't be completed in time or to tell
me how many resources i would need to get it done by that time. is there
some way to do this?

if i increase the priority of a task, shouldn't it start earlier than those
with a lower priority?

i added the status indicator column. on a couple of tasks i saw it said
"this assignment work has been edited" what does that mean? also, when i
added this column the status indicator indicates that the task is complete
(even though the complete % is set to 0). regular blue (information)
indicator does not indicate the task is complete

what are the dates in the task information screen? why/when would set
these? how is this different from setting constraints?


thanks

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

First lesson: Project and the computer it runs on has an IQ of zero!!
Consequently Project can only calculate solutions based on the information
entered into it.

Second lesson is that planning precedes scheduling.

Entering constraints and dates (same result) is very counter-productive in a
schedule because it leaves nothing for Project to calculate. You have to do
it all manually. Instead you should always schedule from a project start
date and enter links between tasks and only enter dates (constraints) if
absolutely forced to. With links and task durations, project can calculate
critical path. By editing links and durations you can determine what
timeframes you need to be able to finish on time.

Now add resources and you get the hours per week needed from each resource
for eth required work to be done. The things you said you want done can't be
done by a program without specific programming because all projects are
different. In addition the amount of data you would need to enter would take
far longer than if you sat down and thought thru the problem logically.

So Project is excellent at managing the data you enter, but can only come up
with limited calculated resource loadings, dates etc based on the limited
data entered. For example a computer could never know which resource could
easily do another resource's work or whether a task can be readily put on
hold for a week without adding a lot of overhead.

Once a realistic picture has been entered, Project is very good at reporting
on your information and in presenting it in a number of different ways.

Priorities etc only do anything when you level resources and that is only
worth doing on the simplest of projects because any computer tool can only
come up with about 10% of the possible solutions available without knowing
so much information it would take a month to enter it!

Project is a scheduling tool and is very useful and productive, but still
requires someone to drive it and feed it good data: it also rewards you
better and quicker after some good training.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Adding a comment to Rod's answer. A Finish No Later Than constraint is NOT
how you indicate the desired deadline finish, IMHO. You know deadlines -
while you need to hit them, sometimes things conspire that make it
impossible, right? Well, a FNLT constraint tells Project never to place
that task in the timeline later than the indicated date, EVEN IF IT IS
TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR IT TO HAPPEN ON OR BEFORE THAT DATE! There is a
deadline entry in Project that allows you to flag where your task should hit
and if it turns out you're going to be late, it'll red flag it for you to
let you know you have to do something to fix it. But by avoiding the
constraint Project shows you where it really *is* going to land according to
the current plan and by comparing that to where it should be landing, you
have a chance to revise the plan so as to meet your objectives before its
too late to do anything about it except apologize to the client/boss for
missing the deadline.

IMO, predicting where you *will* end up IF you structure the plan in a
certain way is even more important than recording where you should be ending
up. You already know what you need to achieve - the hard part is figuring
out exactly how to get there and MS Project's greatest value is as a
calculator to help you do just that. Constraints of any sort applied
anywhere except the few specific places they're needed for the model to be
valid cripple Project's ability to do that for you because they limit its
ability to calculate the effects when you change the causes.