Project 2003 questions predecessors/task completion notification

[Tom L]

I've been reading through the Managing Enterprise Projects book by
Gary Chefetz and Dale Howard along with the Project 2003 resource kit
documentation but have a few questions I hope you'll be able to help
me with.

1. Reading some previous posts here regarding task predecessors, it
seems as if Project 2003 is not capable of only displaying tasks in PWA
which have had all their predecessors completed. Is there any part of
the Project 2003 resource kit documentation which explains this? In
some cases it will be physically impossible to start a task which
relies on it's predecessor being completed, so we don't want to clutter
the users task list with tasks they can not even start on yet.

2. If it comes down to a training issue and the users having to notify
the task successors resource, this will lead to even more
administration and disrupt the workflow of the project. Is there a way
to automate the notification of completed tasks, how about
customisation?

3. Is it possible to view all the tasks in all the projects which are
overdue by customising views? Is this possible in PWA?

Any help with these issues would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
Tom

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Tom:

1. Reading some previous posts here regarding task predecessors, it
seems as if Project 2003 is not capable of only displaying tasks in PWA
which have had all their predecessors completed.

If you're tracking your projects correctly, and rescheduling incomplete work
to the status date each week, this shouldn't be a problem for the users in
their timesheets. With the current tasks view applied, they should see only
the tasks that are overdue, due to be worked on now, and due to start in the
number of days you set as the administrator. It sure sounds to me that the
training issue you have is with the Project managers. If the PMs do their
job correctly this shouldn't be a problem for end users.

3. Is it possible to view all the tasks in all the projects which are
overdue by customising views? Is this possible in PWA?

It's a snap to do this in Project by opening all the projects and applying
the Slipped/Late Progress filter to a task view. This presumes that you've
properly baselined your projects, otherwise Project has no idea what's on
time or what is late. You can do something similar by applying a filter to
the View Resource assignments view reached from the Resource Center. This
may or may not be satisfactory depending on how much data you have in the
system.