Task Oriented Gantt Chart

[Adrian B]

Hi
I'm new to Project and am hoping to use it to improve my workflow as a
web-designer. Some of the projects I run for friends are not time-sensitive
and so I promise to work on them as and when I can. Over the last 4 weeks I
have worked 2 days, 1 day, no days and 2 days.

How can I orient a Gantt Chart around tasks and their state of completion
rather than a timeline? By which I mean when I open up project after few
weeks of absence it looks like the project has slipped when in fact I am
dictating an open timescale.

Let me know if that needs clarifying

If there is a particular method or way of setting it up that someone could
point me to, or a decent tutorial I'll send you the recipe to Mamma's special
sauce. Thanks!

Adrian B

 

[John]

Hi
I'm new to Project and am hoping to use it to improve my workflow as a
web-designer. Some of the projects I run for friends are not time-sensitive
and so I promise to work on them as and when I can. Over the last 4 weeks I
have worked 2 days, 1 day, no days and 2 days.

How can I orient a Gantt Chart around tasks and their state of completion
rather than a timeline? By which I mean when I open up project after few
weeks of absence it looks like the project has slipped when in fact I am
dictating an open timescale.

Let me know if that needs clarifying

If there is a particular method or way of setting it up that someone could
point me to, or a decent tutorial I'll send you the recipe to Mamma's special
sauce. Thanks!

Adrian B

Adrian,
Well if you haven't been doing productive work for a few weeks then you
most certainly are "behind schedule" Get off your butt, do something
productive ..... ;-)

Project schedules tasks and the work needed to accomplish them.
Schedules imply time, so there is no way to divorce a real schedule from
a timeline. You can however, set up your plan such that it can track a
"loose" schedule. Then all you do is update the schedule periodically to
show where you are at that point in time.

You asked for a decent set of tutorials. Go to our MVP website at:
http://www.mvps.org/project/links.htm, and click on the link to fellow
MVP, Mike Glen's tutorials. Two other MVPs, Dale Howard and Gary
Chefetz, have also recently written a book on project that covers the
basics of setting up a good project plan. It is focused on Project 2007
but the relevant information also applies to all versions of Project.
You can find out more about their book at:
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Dave]

Hi Adrian

Further to what John wrote, if you can estimate how much work you will
do on average per week, then you could use that to drive your schedule.
For example, you appear to work on average 1.5 days a week from your
figures. So you should probably produce your plan and assume that the
level of effort from you is 1 day a week or something like that. Then
the plan should at least look reasonable. If you do anything other than
this, then your schedule isn't really a plan.

HTH

Dave