Contingency Hammock

[Markarina]

Having read various posts on contingency and hammock tasks, I have
done the following which is probably 90% of the way there to what I am
trying to achieve.

In a single MPP file I have my project plan with all it's tasks I have
then added another project within the same file to hold the
contingency "pot", within that mini project I have a milestone task
linked to the end of the project a "contingency used" task and a
"contingency remaining" task, the contingency remaining task is
"hammocked" between the contingency used and end of project milestone,
such that when I increase the contingency used work the contingency
remaining shrinks accordingly - this all works wonderfully. What I was
wondering is it possible to go one better and have the value for
contingency used to update automatically when the actual hours worked
for a task in the main plan exceeds the allocated work hours ?

For reference I'm using MSP 2007 with fixed units tasks.

thanks

Mark

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

No you can not have it update automatically without some customized code.
But if you are willing to have a macro included in your project, you could
have it do the calculation.

Now that I think about it, perhaps you could link the "work" field for the
hammock task to be equal to a project level custom field which would update
it based on a comparison between actual and planned work... but no... that
would be a circular calculation. Anyway, I think it can be done
programmatically, but would require a macro that you would run.

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Markarina]

Actually Jack I think you are on the right lines, by having a custom
field that does the comparison between actual work and work then as
you say linking the summary value to the work of the hammock task, you
can avoid the circular calculation by not having the contingency tasks
under the main summary task.

...... amazing how things come to you when you're sat in the car
driving home, no where near a computer !!

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

The problem is that the value of the hammock task will be included in the
summary task which then goes back to the hammock task and then the summary
task increases... It is circular.

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Markarina]

hmm was playing with having two top level summary tasks one for the
main project and one for the contingency which has the hammock task,
then linking in the total number of excess hours into the work for the
contingency remaining task, since the two summary tasks are at the
same level then the hammock doesn't feed into the total for the main
project summary task and hence avoids the circularity.

 

[Markarina]

Tried it out this morning, works like a dream, no problems with
circularity

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

Great. As long as you keep the hammock outside the summary it sounds like it
will be all good.

-Jack