Putting tasks on hold indefinitely

[M. Schmidt]

I work on a rather disorganized team. They want me to track all projects and
incoming task requests in Project 2003. This is fine, except that Project
wants dates, and scheduling anything around here is a nightmare. Priority is
given to the most politically influenced projects/tasks and/or the "squeeky
wheel". It is not uncommon at all for projects/tasks to begin, only to be put
on hold when something "hotter" comes along. With that in mind, I have
several project tasks that have been put on hold indefinitely. I don't want
to delete the project/task altogether because if I do it will likely be
forgotten about completely. (We have a formal change request process that
SHOULD track these things outside of Project, but Management doesn't enforce
it, so no one uses it.)

How can I indicate that someting has been put on hold indefinitely in
Project 2003 such that: a) the task isn't flagged as "behind schedule" and b)
doesn't send reminders out to the resource reminding them that the task is
behind schedule when it really isn't - it's on hold? I tried simply deleting
the dates, but Project just inserts today's date and entering a duration of 1
day on it's own.

Any suggestions? Should I just remove them from Project altogether and paste
them into a spreadsheet or something?

 

[Al Gardiner]

You could use Tools-Tracking-Update Project and reschedule uncompleted work
to some date in the future.

 

[Joe]

M.Schmidt, sounds like we work for the same company. I too have always
worked for a "disorganized" team. Frustrating isn't it?

 

[Kevin]

Boy, and I thought I was the only one who had that problem. Guess you know
now that your not. The way I handle it is to give the last activity a "Start
No Earlier Than" constraint and all of the incomplete activites ahead of it
get an "As Late As Possible" constraint. I can control how far it slips it
out that way.

 

[Joe]

Actually, one suggestion would be to use resource leveling. Here's what I
mean. You can set the priority of all task for a specific user to be in the
priority they want, then if they need to put a task on hold, simply change
the priority to a lower number (or the lowest number within all of the task
for that resource). The trick is to perform a manual resource level for that
specific resource only.

For example, lets say I have 5 different tasks, one planned after the other.
The priority can be 900, 800, 700, 600, and 500 respectively. So the
resource is currently working on the one with a priority of 900. Then he
comes to you and says he need to work on a new one, and that current one
should be the last thing he works on. You add the new task, assign it to the
resource, set the priory to say 900, change the current task that was 900,
and change it to say 400. Now level the plan for that resource ONLY (This is
key!!). You will now have the new task as the current task he is working on,
and the one we was working on will be scheduled as the last task item. The
best part is it will not lose the actual work already performed, and only
re-schedule the remaining hours that was left. So if he was already 50%
done, the remaining 50% gets rescheduled.

Try it

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

This is how the maintenance shop for Mainframe applications at my biggest
customer works.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Actually Project doesn't "want dates." What it wants to do, what it lives
for more than anything else, is give YOU dates. <g> As a result it is
impossible to have tasks whose dates are blank. If a task is going to
happen on some date or the other, it is being driven there by a set of
events and conditions - the required parts will arrive when, the necessary
preliminary work has been done by xxx, the resource that will do the work is
available when, etc. If these are tasks "on hold" just consider the dates
Project is showing to be tentative dates when you could start that work if
you wanted to and add a note to the task to that effect. As far as
reminders, perhaps educate your resources that they mean "You put this on
hold back when and said you'd resume work when you were able to or got
around to it. Well, here's your "Round 2it" and according to our records
you should have been able to start up again." If it's really optional
whether they ever do it or not, put the whole project on hold and withdraw
it all from the schedule until the decision to go foward is made. Those
tasks that are being flagged actually are behind schedule because if they're
not done the project isn't done and a project is, by definition, something
you intend on getting completed to a certain level of quality over a finite
time frame.