Link Deadline

[Riko]

Dear all,

from our users of MS Project 2007 Professional I often hear the request,
that it would be useful to link to a deadline instead of the task/
milestone.

The idea behind it is the following: We have a system of inter-linked
project plans. The time when a project A needs to deliver a certain
component for example depends on when project B is ready to install it.
The installation schedule is driven by other things but not by this
component in project A.

Now project leader A would like to link the "ready for installation"
milestone of project B to a *deadline* in his plan associated to a lets
say "compoment ready for hand-over to project B".

This way, his schedule would not be influenced by project B, however he
would clearly see if his planning for this component in project A is
going out of synch.

Do you think, that would be a useful feature? Or is there another way to
implement that?

Thanks and cheers,

Riko

 

[Jim Aksel]

This is clearly a Giver/Receiver relationship between the two files.

For the moment, let's assume the two files are totally independent (they are
not part of a master project file).

What we do is create a "Givers/Receivers" section at the top of each
schedule. In most cases, we allow the owner of the Receiver to control the
due date and specified parameters for the product. So, if "A" produces
something needed by "B" then "A" has a giver milestone and "B" has the same
milestone as a receiver.

A has predecesors in his schedule that feed to the Giver in "A's" schedule.
In A's schedule, he also places a deadline on his Giver Milestone so that if
the date is driven right by the schedule performance/logic then a red diamond
appears in the indicators column on A's schedule so he knows he has to pull
the date back to the agreed date or negotiate something else with the owner
of Schedule B. It is important that Giver Milestones have no successors
within the "A" schedule.

Now move to Schedule B who has a Receiver milestone of the same name. In
the Receiver schedule, there may be no predecessors within the "B" schedule
to this milestone, only successors from the milestone down into the "B"
schedule where the deliverable is needed. B has a "Start No Earlier Than"
constraint on his milestone and also a deadline date so he can get an
indicator as well. However, since the two schedules are not linked with
external predecessor/successor tasks, there is no way for A to drive B other
than communication among team members at weekly coordination meetings. If
"B" decides has can accept the item from "A" a little later, it becomes his
responsibility to renegotiate the date with A.

****
If you have the two schedules linked, then just make sure that Giver
Milestone in A has exactly one successor which is the external task in the
"B" schedule. Similarly, the B schedule would have one external predecessor
on the receiver milestone with no internal predecessors.

Generally, Giver and Receiver milestones are under configuration control and
cannot change without a bunch of red tape.

Should you wish to get very fancy with the external linking, you could allow
the owner of the receiver schedule B to change his dates on his receiver. If
schedule A is scheduled from the end date (as late as possible) then if B
moves his date right, then A will automatically flow to a later start. Not
recommended since there is no contingency in this approach.

--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Riko]

Hi Jim,

Giver/Receiver sections we already have in our schedules, just that we
call them incoming and outgoing milestones, respectively. And yes, our
project plans are linked via external milestone.

I'm not sure yet, if the scenario you describe actually accomplishes what
our users requested. I'll have to set-up a couple of little toy-plans to
better illustrate what you wrote and probably show it to some users. I'll
report back on this issue but probably not before next week.

Thanks and cheers,

Riko

 

[Rob Schneider]

Hi Jim,

Giver/Receiver sections we already have in our schedules, just that we
call them incoming and outgoing milestones, respectively. And yes, our
project plans are linked via external milestone.

I'm not sure yet, if the scenario you describe actually accomplishes what
our users requested. I'll have to set-up a couple of little toy-plans to
better illustrate what you wrote and probably show it to some users. I'll
report back on this issue but probably not before next week.

Thanks and cheers,

Riko

Riko,

I got the sense from your original posting that there is possibly a
nomenclature issue going on.

Deadline. A property of a task. The date the task, which could be a
milestone, is expected to be done. Not necessarily the date that it will
be done; just when it is supposed to be done.

Milestone. A key deliverable which is worthly of note. Use in Project
plans typically as a task with zero duration which has specific
pre-requisite tasks that collected (if more than one) define the
"milestone".

You were talking about linking to Deadlines. Deadlines are just a date
and in Project it is a date ... a field in the task. A property of the
task. If you link to anything--be they in or external to the
project--you should be linking to Milestone Tasks (or regular tasks if
that's useful). Get people off the notion to linking to Deadlines as
using this confusing nomenclature will just perpetuate the confusion.