What changed? Why did my Milestone Slip?

[LJI]

I have a massive project plan, some 6000+ tasks, that is tracked weekly. Due
to the breadth of the plan, it spans several functional managers, who I have
given access to the project file for ease of updating.

Problem is that when I open the file, and notice a major milestone has
slipped, it is a painful and timely process to detetmine which tasks caused
the slip.

Despite the fact that I beleive that there should be only 1 person making
the updates, me, it seems if we try to get the functional managers together
for a single update, it takes forever and wastes other peoples time.

Is there an easy method to debug this situation? Traversing Preds is
painful, and often leads to several dead ends.

 

[JulieS]

Hi LJI,

You may have more success tracing the predecessor to the milestone using
Jack Dahlgren's Trace Macro at:

http://masamiki.com/project/macros.htm

--
I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information about
Microsoft Project.

 

[davegb]

I have a massive project plan, some 6000+ tasks, that is tracked weekly. Due
to the breadth of the plan, it spans several functional managers, who I have
given access to the project file for ease of updating.

Problem is that when I open the file, and notice a major milestone has
slipped, it is a painful and timely process to detetmine which tasks caused
the slip.

Despite the fact that I beleive that there should be only 1 person making
the updates, me, it seems if we try to get the functional managers together
for a single update, it takes forever and wastes other peoples time.

Is there an easy method to debug this situation? Traversing Preds is
painful, and often leads to several dead ends.

I haven't done this before, so I'm shooting from the hip here. What if
you made a special baseline of the project before each update. Then
created a calculated field with the difference in the dates between the
updated dates and the special baseline. You could filter on that field
and find only those tasks that had slipped in the latest update. And if
your milestone slipped by 3 days, you could find which tasks had
slipped by 3 days, or 3 days or less, and they would be the ones you're
looking for.

Hope this helps.

 

[LJI]

Julie,
Thanks for the tip. The link seemed to be a good source of macros,
however when I downloaded, installed and RAN the TRACE macro it really didn't
do much, htat I could tell to help in the debug.

The macro asks for pred, succ, or all FAN type, and/or to include summaries.
It also indicated that it would 'mark' tasks and filter, however it didn't
appear to do a whole lot.

Tried to select the task that slipped, #1035, and after running the macro it
essentially showed EVERY task above it, and below it?

I'll keep playing with it, but I think I tried all combinations of options.

 

[LJI]

davegb,
THis may actually wrok, but I was hoiping there was a more automated,
built-in, means to trace.

The macro that Julie suggested seemed promising, but it didn't really seem
to do a whole lot.

I did hear, from a relaible source, that MS will be making an update soon,
which has something to work this very same problem. I hear it will color
code various tasks that are Pred/Succ of a selected task - if it filters them
as well, it may be just what I was looking for. Have no idea when it may be
available though.

 

[JulieS]

Hi LJI,

I'm glad you found Jack's macro. His macro will show which tasks *may*
have been changed, but you're right, it won't pin-point the task or
tasks for you. I have found it macro very helpful and I'm sorry it
didn't suit your particular needs.

It sounds as though Dave has given you a good option.

You are correct, Project 2007 has "change highlighting" but it sounds as
in your circumstance, it would still require some very strong
coordination between your multiple people who are updating the project
file. If I open the project file, make a change, and Project shows the
affected tasks, it is still up to me to communicate the change to
others. With multiple people changing a project plan and not leaving
some sort of information about what tasks they have changed, I'm afraid
you are still in for a lot of work.
--
I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information about
Microsoft Project.

 

[Steve House]

The problem is that you may have a chain of hundreds of tasks that are
linked in sequence with the chain ultimately ending in your milestone. If
ANY of the tasks upstream from the milestone change, either start later than
planned or take longer than planned, the milestone's date will change in
response. Unless the person making the change documents it, there's no way
to tell later which task or tasks were changed. Perhaps require your
functional managers to submit a report if any tasks they're updating have
actuals that differ from the baseline plan could help monitor the process.