Programme wide view of high-level dates / phases for several projects

[Clive Long,UK]

Hello,

I need to produce a "program-wide" presentation of the dates for
several (between 5 to 10) projects. What I want is a single page,
where the horizontal axis is time, and each project is represented by
a single horizontal line from start to end. However, each project time
line is divided into its project phases:

Concept
Plan
Build
Test
Accept

And the time in each phase is represented by a different coloured
segment of the project time line. Say: Concept: Blue, Plan: Orange
etc. etc. Tentative project dates represented by dotted lines rather
than solid lines


In this way we can see /show

Number of projects in progress and delivering at certain times in
future
The status of each project NOW
How long spent on average in each phase

So we have a high-level representation of the demand against our
capacity.

MS-Project Gantt would be ideal EXCEPT the different phases would be
represented by lines that weren't "in a line" – and that feature is
important for readability of the presentation.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Clive

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Clive,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You could round up the phases into the top summary and then filter for the
summaries. You could also customise the bars as described in FAQ Item: 31.
Customizing Task Bars

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

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

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Clive Long,UK]

Solution

Open Bar Styles

Create several new lines and call them "Phase1, Phase2, Phase3" etc

Make sure the value in the "ROW" field is set to "1" for all new lines
<< IMPORTANT

Assign "FRom" and "To" dates for each new Bar as follows:

1. Start1 & Finish1 for the Phase1 bar
2. Start2 & Finish2 for the Phase2 bar
3. Start3 & Finish3 for the Phase3 bar
<<IMPORTANT >>

etc.

Assign a different colour to each new Bar "Phase1, Phase2, Phase3"
<<IMPORTANT >>

Close Bar Styles.

In Gantt view insert new columns Start1 & Finish1, Start2 & Finish2,
Start3 & Finish3 etc.

Create a new task for each project

Manually enter Start1/Finish1, Start2/Finish2 etc. dates for each
phase in a new project /task

The resulting bar lines, distinguished by colour and representing each
phase, are concatentated on a single line as required.