Project Management Tasks (to be excluded from the critical path)

[Atreides]

As part of my project, most of the tasks are sequential and inter-linked (as
normal). However, I want to have some tasks sit separate from these tasks
because they are Project Management (PM) tasks. These tasks exists as
"support tasks" to the other tasks. For example, for every week that the
project runs, I will need 2 hours a week assigned to the "Project controls
and reporting" task.

Currently I've got it set up in a basic way. I've budgeted for a 6-week
project so my PM tasks are sitting at the top of the Gantt chart as 6-week
tasks. However, there are two obvious problems:

1. These tasks are set at 6 weeks, and the total duration of the rest of the
project is only about 5.5 weeks at the moment. This means that I am planning
to do 0.5 weeks of PM tasks after the project has already finished! How can I
restrict the end of this task? I've tried setting up a finish-finish
relationship with a "project complete" milestone task (one that is complete
once all the functional tasks are complete) but this moves the whole PM task
along. This seems strange to me since the task is not "fixed-duration".

2. Because these projects have the latest finish date and start on the
project start date, they all make up the critical path. However this doesn't
make sense, since they only are running while other tasks are running. How
can I exclude them from the critical path calculation?

How can I set up Project like this? I would imagine lots of people want to
do something similar to this.

Thanks
Atreides

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

set the duration to 5weeks and you will be OK.

Another alternative is to go to tools menu / options /calculate tab and set
the "calculate multiple critical paths" option.

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Atreides]

Hi Jack,

Although that works, it wasn't quite what I was after. This is a basic
manual approach which means that the PM tasks won't update if the "functional
tasks" change.

I'm looking into something called "hammock tasks" which seems like they
might be what I'm after.

The multiple critical tasks thing looks helpful though.

Thanks
Atreides

 

[smudge20]

Could you not "split the task" over the duration of the project allocating
time during each week and have your last reporting period on the last day of
the project. This way you will not exceed your project end date and will
show a more realistic "activity" for the duration of the project !

 

[Atreides]

Hi Trevor,

When I said that the PM activities will continue on after the end of the
project I meant the end of the "functional tasks". That is, all the work that
you have to do to produce the deliverables, i.e. excluding any work involved
in managing the project. Obviously once the "barn is raised", you don't need
to keep managing the raising of the barn.

So I'd like some way of keeping the project management tasks separate from
the functional tasks so that:
1. The PM tasks are linked to automatically end when the last of the
functional tasks does. That way if change your estimate so that the barn will
now take 10 weeks to build, the management of the project will now last 10
weeks too.
2. The PM tasks don't become the critical path.

Thanks
Atreides

 

[Atreides]

Hi smudge20,

This seems to solve problem 2 - these activites are now out of the critical
path. And they do look more realistic too. Thanks.

Although I still have the problem that you have to set the end date manually
for this recurring task. You can't seem to link the end date to anything.

Thanks
Atreides

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

Display the finish column.
Copy the finish of the last functional task
Select the finish cell for the PM task
From the edit menu select "Paste Special"
make sure the "paste link" option is selected.
click ok.

Now you have a hammock task for the pm work.

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Atreides]

Hi Jack,

This is pretty much what I wanted, thanks! Although a few things were also
required to get it to work:
1. Click "Calculate multiple critical paths" as you suggested earlier. This
means that the PM tasks are marked critical as well as the functional tasks.
This isn't ideal because they PM tasks aren't actually critical - they are
actually more like the recurring, short tasks suggested by smudge20. However
I don't think you can make a hammock recurring task, now can you? I.e. it
repeats until the end date of some other task). But ignoring that, the
functional critical path gets worked out fine.

2. I had to change the PM tasks to "Fixed Work" and link their start dates
to the start date of the first functional task. Otherwise they got pushed
back before the project start date.

So, that seems to have done the trick, thanks:

Atreides