predecessors

[TKeire]

Hi
Hi


I am running Project 2003

For some reason I cannot enter more than 70 predecessors to a task today.
Last Thursday it was working fine...any ideas as to why this would be or what
would cause this change

Thanks

Tony

 

[Rod Gill]

Maybe Project has a headache from the links??)

Why so many links? Remember, if you want a task to follow all the tasks
under a summary task, then link to the summary task. This might save you
many links and create a much simpler schedule.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Tony,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

I'm not aware of a problem. But you could simplify your project by grouping
tasks and put a milestone in front of each group, then link the milestones.

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
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for Project Tutorials

 

[Jim Spiller]

The predecessors field has a 255 character limit for displaying and entering
information so if you using this field to enter the predecessors you may be
hitting this limit. Project can handle much more but you'll need to
doubleclick a task and add predecessors using the Predecessors tab for
this... If that's not it, let us know how you are adding these predecessors
and how it is failing.

 

[TKeire]

Jim

I think you may have found the problem as I was entering the predecessors in
the task information box (Split screen)

I have got around the problem for now using 3 milestones to pull into final
Milestone.

To answer the other questions, I hear what your saying and I don't normally
have projects with hundreds of predecessors but we had a special case here.
We were trying to agree on a date to bring forward a work step (this is a
major change from the original schedule and work sequence) and to do this we
created a milestone for the step and tied in every task that has to be done
if we are to go this route. This is all happening within the main project
schedule so I didnt want to go changing things by creating subtasks etc.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time and we have our date now..

Tk

 

[Dominic]

TK,

Having seen the postings here I would like to add my own comments.

Rod has suggested linking summary tasks - this does work but can sometimes
introduce inappropriate or frustrating delays to some tasks in a schedule if
you are looking to "fast track" a project by having stages/phases/summary
tasks overlap.

If you want to have a more "monolithic" schedule where one stages/phase or
summary task follows another I would suggest using milestones at the end of
each stages/phase/summary task to "close" that part of the schedule and
"trigger" progression to the next stage (shades of "Managing Stage
Boundaries" from PRINCE2 methodology). Project will provide you with the
tempation to create lots of links between tasks, my view is to only link
tasks if there is a logical valid reason for doing so.