A couple of questions

[Jaime]

Hi, as the title says I have a couple of questions.

First of all, I must say English is not my mother language, but I will try
and explain myself as best as I can. For those of you who wonder why I don't
post it in the Spanish community, well I think the English one is more active
and therefore have more probabilities of getting a reply.

My first question would be, is there a way to change the duration of a
project, and by doing so, change the duration of the tasks and the links
between the end of one task and the beginning of the next one in the same
proportion?

I have some project files that suit me for several projects, depending if
they are for the construction of a railroad, or a highway, or the writing of
a project... And I only have to adapt them to the duration I want each time.

For example, say I have a project with duration of 12 months where task one
takes place during the first month and after four days task two begins and
continues on till the end of month two. And now I would like to adjust the
project to duration of 6 months, where month one should be 15 days, task two
start two days later and take place during the next thirteen days. Get what I
am looking for?

I can do this, and actually this is how I do it, by a 3 rule calculation,
but it would save me a lot of time if there was an easy way of doing it
inside MS Project.

And my second enquiry, is there any way to tell MS Project that I would like
connecting arrows between tasks to be displayed in red only if they go from
one critical task to another one, and not as it does right now displaying red
arrows all those that come from a critical task?

Thanks for reading and looking forward to getting some answers.

Best regards,
Jaime

 

[Steve House]

Question 2 first ... I'm afraid there's no way to do that. The arrows take
on the colour of the task where they originate and there's no way to change
that behaviour. So if they come from a critical task (and the tasks are
formatted so critical tasks are red) the arrows will be red regardless on
the type of task they're going to.

Now to your first question ... what you describe is behaviour that is
completely backwards from the way Project works. In fact, there is no
mechanism whereby you can directly set the duration of a project ... that is
always a calculated value based on the durations of the individual tasks,
their link relationships, the availability of resources, etc. You set the
task durations and Project calculates the project duration. You can set a
start date and Project will calculate the finish or your can set a finish
date and Project will calculate the latest start that will achieve it, but
it is impossible to set BOTH a start date and a finish date and have Project
calculate and distribute the tasks between them. Task durations, in turn,
are determined by physical forces, the nature of the work itself and the
deliverable that they are required to produce. If I have a kilometer of
hiway to pave and our crew is able to pave 100 meters a day, it will take 10
days to complete that task. That's not a number I get to choose - it is
chosen for me by the physical nature of the paving process. So the process
is that you discover the required duration of the individual tasks that will
produce their deliverables, you analyze the workflow the overall project
process requires, and when you provide Project with that information it will
tell you how long the project will last.

HTH

 

[davegb]

Question 2 first ... I'm afraid there's no way to do that. The arrows take
on the colour of the task where they originate and there's no way to change
that behaviour. So if they come from a critical task (and the tasks are
formatted so critical tasks are red) the arrows will be red regardless on
the type of task they're going to.

Now to your first question ... what you describe is behaviour that is
completely backwards from the way Project works. In fact, there is no
mechanism whereby you can directly set the duration of a project ... that is
always a calculated value based on the durations of the individual tasks,
their link relationships, the availability of resources, etc. You set the
task durations and Project calculates the project duration. You can set a
start date and Project will calculate the finish or your can set a finish
date and Project will calculate the latest start that will achieve it, but
it is impossible to set BOTH a start date and a finish date and have Project
calculate and distribute the tasks between them. Task durations, in turn,
are determined by physical forces, the nature of the work itself and the
deliverable that they are required to produce. If I have a kilometer of
hiway to pave and our crew is able to pave 100 meters a day, it will take 10
days to complete that task. That's not a number I get to choose - it is
chosen for me by the physical nature of the paving process. So the process
is that you discover the required duration of the individual tasks that will
produce their deliverables, you analyze the workflow the overall project
process requires, and when you provide Project with that information it will
tell you how long the project will last.

HTH

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visithttp://project.mvps.org/faqs.htmfor the FAQs

Hi, as the title says I have a couple of questions.

First of all, I must say English is not my mother language, but I will try
and explain myself as best as I can. For those of you who wonder why I
don't
post it in the Spanish community, well I think the English one is more
active
and therefore have more probabilities of getting a reply.

My first question would be, is there a way to change the duration of a
project, and by doing so, change the duration of the tasks and the links
between the end of one task and the beginning of the next one in the same
proportion?

I have some project files that suit me for several projects, depending if
they are for the construction of a railroad, or a highway, or the writing
of
a project... And I only have to adapt them to the duration I want each
time.

For example, say I have a project with duration of 12 months where task
one
takes place during the first month and after four days task two begins and
continues on till the end of month two. And now I would like to adjust the
project to duration of 6 months, where month one should be 15 days, task
two
start two days later and take place during the next thirteen days. Get
what I
am looking for?

I can do this, and actually this is how I do it, by a 3 rule calculation,
but it would save me a lot of time if there was an easy way of doing it
inside MS Project.

And my second enquiry, is there any way to tell MS Project that I would
like
connecting arrows between tasks to be displayed in red only if they go
from
one critical task to another one, and not as it does right now displaying
red
arrows all those that come from a critical task?

Thanks for reading and looking forward to getting some answers.

Best regards,
Jaime- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree with everything Steve said above, and will add another aspect
to this query. There are no projects I can think of where if the
overall size of the project changes, every task in the project would
change in proportion. Even highway and railroad projects, which are
pretty linear, have many activities that aren't dependent on the
length of the highway or railroad. Mobilization and demobilization,
for example. ROW issues depend much more on location (urban, rural,
local laws, etc.) than on the length of the road. So stretching your
schedule like a rubber band for longer projects is pretty unrealistic
for many of the tasks. This can be a very dangerous pitfall to
consider them this way, and will most probably lead to missed
schedules.

Hope this helps in your world.