scheduling issue

[jackie]

What is the best way of scheduling phases that start almost concurrently and
that have a dependency? I will explain the situation in a bit more detail...
Phase A would start and carry on, then after a while Phase B would start as
well and carry on for a bit. Phase B is dependent on Phase A but we are not
waiting for phase A to finish completely before kicking off Phase B. After a
while Phase B would stop again whilst waiting for certain components of
phase A to be completed in order for the outputs of Phase A to be used as
inputs for Phase B. How do I best represent this situation with lag/lead
time and type of dependency and so on
I would be grateful if you could help me. Many thanks. J

 

[JulieS]

Hello Jackie,

I suggest breaking the Phase A and Phase B components of your project
into tasks that help you document more clearly the relationships between
the work packages making up each phase. For example, if there are
particular work packages created in Phase A that once complete can be
used to perform work in a work package in Phase B, create a
Finish-to-Start relationship between the work package in Phase A and the
work package in Phase B. By breaking your phases into smaller pieces
you can more accurate capture the outputs from A which trigger work in B
and not worry about trying to work out links on the summary (Phase)
level. (Linking summary tasks can be a path to file corruption and is
usually recommended against.)

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[jackie]

Hi Julie

Thank you. I understand what you mean, I will break them down in work
packages.
One more thing...What if you dont have a Finish-to-start relationship
between work packages in Phase A and work packages in Phase B?

I have packages that run almost concurrently but not exactly on a finish to
start basis, what I mean is that package Y might start a while after package
X has started, and I need outputs from X to feed input into Y. In this case
what relationship should I use? Sorry for so many questions...
Many thanks
J

 

[JulieS]

Hello Jackie,

You're most welcome for the assistance and don't apologize for the
questions -- that's what the newsgroup is here for

To your new question, you could still create the Finish-to-Start
relationship between X and Y but add lead (a negative number in the lag
field) to the link relationship. Both lag and lead can be set as
regular durations (days, hours, etc.), elapsed duration (edays, ehours,
etc.) or as a percentage of the predecessor duration. For example, if
you want to say that you can begin task Y when task X is 75% complete,
create the finish-to-start link and then enter -25% in the lag field.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[jackie]

Perfect Julie!
That just does it!
Thank you so much again.
J

 

[JulieS]

You're most welcome Jackie and thanks for the feedback. Do drop by
again if you have some additional questions. Just to let you know, this
newsgroup (Project Developer) is usually for questions concerning
programming Microsoft Project using VBA, VB, C#, etc. In the future,
you most likely want to post to the "Project General Questions"
newsgroup.

Julie
Project MVP

 

[jackie]

thanks for letting me know
....ops will do that next time
thanks again
J