finish grouped tasks first

[chicory]

Hi,

I'm new to Microsoft Project and have been working my way through all the
tutorials but haven't come across an answer to this yet.

I entered tasks, durations, resources, and then linked tasks and set
dependencies. Then, I realized it was difficult to discuss the schedule with
others (with 40 tasks), so I started grouping tasks into phases with summary
task names.

Now, what I'd like is for Project to re-order the work so that tasks in a
phase finish in order, making the duration of each phase as short as
possible. If there's a good reason for doing something from Phase 2 right
away, that's fine, but if there's no reason to do a task from Phase 2, I'd
like to work my way through all the tasks in Phase 1 before moving on.

How would you deal with this? Set priorities? Create some (not really
accurate) dependency? Or something else?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

 

[davegb]

Hi,

I'm new to Microsoft Project and have been working my way through all the
tutorials but haven't come across an answer to this yet.

I entered tasks, durations, resources, and then linked tasks and set
dependencies. Then, I realized it was difficult to discuss the schedule with
others (with 40 tasks), so I started grouping tasks into phases with summary
task names.

Now, what I'd like is for Project to re-order the work so that tasks in a
phase finish in order, making the duration of each phase as short as
possible. If there's a good reason for doing something from Phase 2 right
away, that's fine, but if there's no reason to do a task from Phase 2, I'd
like to work my way through all the tasks in Phase 1 before moving on.

How would you deal with this? Set priorities? Create some (not really
accurate) dependency? Or something else?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

Normally, Project schedules tasks to get done in the quickest possible
order, regardless of where they are in the WBS. It tries to get the
total Project done in the shortest amount of time.

There's really no problem if you want the tasks in certain summary
areas to finish earlier when possible, if you're using Resource
Leveling. You can just set the Priorities field to a higher number on
the tasks in the Summary areas you want completed first. It helps to
use "Priority, Standard" leveling to accomplish this. While Priority
does influence "Standard" leveling, it is well down the list and the
impact is usually pretty diluted. Using "Priority, Standard" leveling
puts Priority at the top of the list of factors and greatly increases
the impact on the leveled schedule.

Of course, you have to have resources assigned for this to work.
You're post didn't mention whether you have assigned resources or not.
If you haven't, I don't know of any way to do what you want.

Hope this helps in your world.

 

[chicory]

Thank you for your help, dave.

Resources have been assigned. Next, I'll try assigning priorities, and
thanks for the tip on the "priority, standard" setting. I still don't quite
understand how one would use priorities to keep tasks in order. Set "999" to
the first one, "998" to the second, and so forth? Is there any other way to
say "do things in the order listed unless there's a good reason not to?"

To give a bit more background, I'm writing a report, and I want to write all
the sections in Chapter 1 before I move on to writing Chapter 2. But I don't
*have* to do them in order, if there's a good reason not to. And at some
point, there might be a good reason (other people are helping with ch. 2, and
if their date of availability moved up, I would need to do some of ch. 2
before finishing ch. 1), so I don't want to add dependencies or linkages that
aren't really necessary.

Normally, Project schedules tasks to get done in the quickest possible
order

I looked for this, but I couldn't find any reason why it would be quicker
for me to skip back and forth between writing sections from Chapter 2 and
Chapter 1. The tasks dependent on both those sections are currently far in
the future from when I'd finish both chapters if I wrote them in order. So
unless something changes, there's no reason I can find that I would want to
skip back and forth, leaving me unsure why Project auto-scheduled it in that
way.

Thanks, I really appreciate your help.