Project 2002 weighing subtasks

[RachelN]

Our problem in Project is that we have a main task and several
underlying tasks that carry various weights that add up to 100% of the
main task. We are looking to apply some kind of weight to a subtask
that when it adds up to 100% of the subtask it will affect a weighted
percentage of the main task. We want each subtask to be adjustable
based on its' weighted value.
Example:

Main task 100% when five subtasks are completed. We are using %
Complete column to track inside Project.

Subtask one is worth 10% of the total main task
Subtask two is worth 20% of the total main task
Subtask three is worth 15% of the total main task
Subtask four is worth 20% of the total main task
Subtask five is worth 35% of the total main task

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Rachel,

Forget % for a minute.
Assign Work to the different subtasks and when you put them to 100%
complete, %Work complete for the summary task will show what you want.
HTH

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

A fact of life you have to deal with is Project uses duration as its key
metric. Duration is the length of time from when work begins until work
ends. It is not the same thing as work and relates to work by way of the
resource's effort units. When you have a summary tasks with several
subtasks, its duration is from when the earliest subtask begins until when
the latest subtask finshes. As such your weighting of the contribution of
subtasks has no meaning when taken simply as it stands. You can't say that
THIS 10 day task contributes 10% of the duration of the summary while THAT
10 day task constributes 30%. What you can say is that task A requires X
hours of work, Task Y is 1.5X hours of work, Task Z is 3.5X hours of work
etc which gives you ratios I think you're looking for. But the fact that
Task Y contributes 15% of the total work on the summary task does not mean
necessarily that it contributes 15% of the duration of the summary task.
The effort units of the resources assigned, the resource calendars
controlling when each task takes place, and the linking between the various
subtasks will also enter into that equation. For example, it's completely
possible that your 5 subtasks aren't linked sequentially and so will take
place concurrently. If that was the case, the summary task duration is
going to equal the duration of the longest running task, most likely your
Task 5 if all the resources are assigned 100% and have the same calendar,
and so in that sense Task 5 would contribute 35% of the work but 100% of the
duration.
--
HTH

Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[RachelN]

Steve,
Thanks, your information was very useful. We are planning an upgrade soon
to Project 2003 enterprise solution. Will Project 2003 still use duration as
its key metric or will Project 2003 allow tasks to carry a weighted measure
of some sort?
Rachel

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

2003 is identical to 2002 in that regard regardless of whether you're using
the enterprise features and server or just the stand alone desktop and I
wouldn't expect that to change in the forseeable future either for Project
or any other PM software. Duration is fundamental to all project management
software as far as I know or even manual scheduling methods for that matter.
Think about it for a moment - what are we doing with scheduling software
(which is what Project and all other PM software is)? We are looking at the
process required to produce the project's deliverables and the assets we
have available to accomplish them. We are trying to answer the question of
when we need to have the resource's deployed to perform the required tasks
so we complete the project in the most efficient and cost effective manner,
how long will it take and how much will it cost. That's duration because we
are dealing with how long it takes to perform each step in the project.

I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out just what kind of metric
you could even use in a weighting. We are already tracking how long a task
takes, how many man-hours of work each task requires, how those man-wours
are distributed over time, how those man-hours are distributed if more than
one resource is required on the task, and how much it costs us to accomplish
that work. What else is there about the task that we can measure? If we're
going to track it, it has to be something observable that we can measure - a
subjective quality such as "importance" is not a measureable attribute.

Just a thought, if you need to weight the tasks in order to set an order
that they will be worked when they do not have a process drivne mandatory
sequence, that's done with the task priority.


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs