Entering a time-phased assignment causes a meaningless warning

[Dmytro Lapshyn]

Hi all,

Perhaps someone can give a reasonable explanation of the following...

So, my project plan is pretty clogged already, so I have to enter
time-phased work assignments to avoid that nasty type of overallocations
where a resource works more than 60 seconds a given minute (as the MS Project
FAQ on mvps.org puts it).

Now, the project start date is Feb 1st, and the Standard calendar indicates
that the working time starts at 8 AM. There are no working time adjustments
for any of the resources on Feb 1st. Given the above, I have reasonably
concluded that it's totally OK to enter a time-phased assignment which starts
at 9 AM on Feb 1st.

But guess what... Microsoft Project gives me this meaningless warning:

"You moved task #xxx of <project name here> to start Fri Feb 1, '08. This is
before the project start date, (Fri Feb 1, '08)."

And I'm like "What?!"

Seriously, why on Earth would such a meaningless warning appear? My educated
guess is MS Project stores the time component of the project start date
somewhere (but doesn't show it to the user), and this time component is
somehow later than the default start of the working day. I'm assuming that's
the case and so I'll let MS Project to move the task before the start date,
hopefully this won't ruin anything...

 

[Dave]

It doesn't seem meaningless to me but you are essentially correct.

You can get Project to show the start time as well as date by going to
Tools/Options/View tab and selecting something you like from the
drop-down list. You then see the start time from Project/Project
Information.

However, why are you entering time/date at all. If you have an
assignment, you should be able to just create the task and let Project
fill the gaps in the schedule.

By entering times/dates, you create constraints which makes it hard for
Project to do its job and which make the plan unwieldy.

Hope this helps.

Dave