Project2002 - Task Duration question

[Tommy T.]

As an OEM, most of my projects are production plans. Most of the tasks
within the plan are building the subassemblies that make up the final
product. Subtasks to these subassemblies are ordering and recieving all
parts necessary to build the unit.

When entering a new project, all the tasks go in initially with an estimated
duration of 1 day. I get a report from purchasing which details the purchase
orders and due dates for the parts. I would like to use the latest due date
as a worst case for the finish date of the 'All parts Received' task.
However, when I enter the finish date into the task, the start date then
slides down the calendar to maintain a 1 day duration. I then have to go
back in and reenter the start date which then calculates the task duraiton
correctly. I have to go in a third time and uncheck the 'estimated' check
box to get rid of the nasty question marks throughout the plan.

What am I missing? Is there any way to maintain the task start date and
enter a finish date and have the program calculate task duration without
having to go onto the task informaiton dialog multiple times per task?

Any help is appreciated,
Tom T.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Tom,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Well, it is never a good idea to enter task dates into Project as that will
set up constraints that will reduce the flexibility of your plan. Project
is designed such that you enter a task and its duration. Project will then
use the project start date for the task's start date and calculate the
finish date based on the duration. Subsequently, further task start dates
are either the project start date or the finish date of its predecessor. In
my view, you should never enter dates - that's what Project does for you.
Always enter the Duration and Predecessor and let Project do its designed
job.

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

 

[John]

Tom,
First, it is inadvisable to directly enter Start or Finish dates into a
Project plan. Doing so automatically sets a constraint - Start no
earlier than if the Start date is directly entered, or Finish no later
than if the Finish date is directly entered. The best way to put a plan
together in Project is to provide, an intial starting point (project
start date), estimated durations for tasks, and task interdependencies.
Given those parameters, Project will calculate all Start and Finish
dates for the plan. However there are some exceptions to this ideal. For
example some tasks may have independent start dates and therefore must
be directly entered.

In your case, you have a Start date for the ordered parts (P.O. place)
and an estimated receive date. Normally the P.O. is preceeded by some
other activity and that will determine its Start date. There are
probably several ways to acheive a desired finish date if the duration
is not immediately known. One very simply method that works well for me
it to simply iterate the duration until the desired finish date is
reached. This may seem a bit backward, but it really works quite well
and is quick. It also avoids setting an undesireable constraint and
automatically gets rid of the "?" in the estimated duration field.

Hope this helps.

John

 

[Gary Chefetz [MVP]]

Tommy:

Try setting the task type to "fixed duration" and enter the duration (in
your case lead-time) for the task, rather than the end date.

--
Gary Chefetz [MVP]
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"

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