New Project-user question - best way to track 13 tasks for 1 perso

[Dusty]

Hi,

We have a project that is being performed by 1 person that consists of 13
individual tasks which are not not all dependent upon each other, but all
need to be accomplished in the next 30 days. What is the best way to set up
MS project to track these to make sure all are accomplished in the time
window available? Any templates available?

Thanks for any suggestions - I am new to PM, but my boss is pressuring me to
track this properly in project.

 

[Rob Schneider]

Dusty,

The best way will be to enter the 13 tasks into Project. Since they
aren't dependent on each other, you'll not need to put in any links
(predecessors or successors) to each other. Ensure each task has a
named person responsible to perform, ensure performance, of each task.
Follow-up with that person at regular intervals to find out the status
(perhaps daily for such a short duration project of 30 days). Use
Project to record status, but emphasis should be directed to the leaders
of each task since they are more likely to accomplish the tasks than
Project will. Project won't manage the project.

 

[Sydne]

I had the same question, and came to the same conclusion. However, without
any predeccesors or successors, the tasks are all scheduled on the same day,
and I get seriously irritating overallocation warnings all the time. Is
setting the priority to 1000 on each task the answer?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

The tool Prohject offers is called Resource Leveling.
You can activate it hrough Tools, Level Resources...

This is the only routine oin Project that uses the Priority field.
The thing NOT not do is put Priority to 1000 since that means "Do not
Level".
HTH

 

[Rob Schneider]

I had the same question, and came to the same conclusion. However, without
any predeccesors or successors, the tasks are all scheduled on the same day,
and I get seriously irritating overallocation warnings all the time. Is
setting the priority to 1000 on each task the answer?

As Jan said, resource leveling could be used.

But you said that the tasks are independent of one another. I guess now
you are saying that that's not true. Project only does what you tell
it. If the tasks are independent, then why CAN'T they be done all on the
same day. An answer to that may be that the same resource(s) required
for each task and you have a constraint on the number of resources.
Hence, you need to describe to Project the actual applicable constraints
for your project for it to compute for you a schedule which makes sense.