Link every task??

[Matt]

I was reading in this newsgroup on a different topic and noticed that
someone stated that every working task (non summary task) should have
at least one predecessor and one successor. I've heard this other
places before as well and am curious if everyone agrees with this
statement. It seems to me like this would very much limit the use of
Project as a scheduling tool and force the schedule to follow a linear
path.

I'm curious to read responses.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Dee]

Hi Matt,

Gald to see this topic here. I've been confused about this as well.

Linking a resources task becomes a necessity for us because
1) A resource does not workon one task at a time.
2) Levelling is tough because a resource is assigned to multiple
projects with diferent project owners and they cannot all get to gather
and work on levelling the resource at a time.

It seems that projet is designed more to support a waterfall method but
in reality that's not how people work. However, I think if we don't go
for too granular tasks, then the resource wouldn't be able to skip
around tasks too much. But, we lose the visibility to more granular
tasks.

So, I;m curios to hear some opinions here too.

Thanks,
Dee

 

[Dee]

Hi Matt,

Glad to see this topic here. I've been confused about this as well.

Linking a resource's task becomes a necessity for us because
1) A resource does not work on just one task at a time.
2) Leveling is tough because a resource is assigned to multiple
projects with different project owners and they cannot all get to
gather and work on leveling the resource at a time.

It seems that project is designed more to support a waterfall method
but in reality that's not how people work(atleast not in my company).
However, I think if we don't go for too granular tasks, then the
resource wouldn't be able to skip around tasks too much. But, we lose
the visibility of the granular tasks.

So, I'm curios to hear some thoughts here too.

Thanks,
Dee

 

[Dan Keen]

Matt,

The main reason I've seen for making sure that every task has a predecessor
and successor is to help with the identification of the critical path,
especially if you're using some 3rd party tools like Risk+ which perform
operations on the critical path. Without a "fully connected network", you'll
never be able to see the "true" CP, or see how the CP changes as the project
progresses. At a minimum, a task could be linked to two milestones: Start
Project and Project Complete. This doesn't prevent you from having multiple
tasks going on in parallel, provided they have different dependencies.

As to Dee's question, leveling resources across multiple projects gets to be
pretty tricky. A lot of people like to use the resource leveling tool in
Project, but I've seen it trash too many schedules. Using the Resource Usage
and Leveling views gives you a lot more control, although it does take much
more time. There's a lot of pretty lively discussion about Theory of
Constraints (TOC) project management, but I haven't come across any TOCPM
tools that work with Project, and that's a bit off-topic for this post.

Hope that helps.

Dan

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Matt,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

This is a big topic! As a starter, tasks generally have predesessors, like
walls need foundations and the roof needs walls. Following such physical
logic throughout your project allows the tasks to follow in correct logical
sequence and thus the assignment of resources will follow in sequence. You
can have "management" logic, though this should be rare - an example would
be if the 2 gas ovens in a canteen were to be replaced with 2 electric
ovens, and management decreed they were to be done one at a time so that the
canteen can remain open - this would be a management decision not dictated
by physical logic. However, there could well be tasks that do have no
physical dependencies and could be achieved any time throughout the project.
Not wrong, but ideally, all tasks should have at least one predecessor - the
project start milestone - and one successor - the project finish milestone.
You don't strictly need the milestones, but it keeps the logic correct and
tidy! This logic structure enables you to keep track of the all important
critical path. If you're not sure of this, please see FAQ Item: 42. Guide
to Network Analysis.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
Project MVP