Technique for building Master Projects

[anovaktx]

The classic Master project is a blank "slate" where all the plans
linked together or pulled in for the "big picture".

A colleguage of mine started with one of the plans, calling it the
Master, and then linking tasks within that plan to the other plans.

I've been preaching the "classic" approach, but are there really any
holes in the second approach?

Please share if any.

Thanks,
Andy Novak
University of North Texas

 

[Rod Gill]

Master plans should be blank to start with. If you are not careful handling
sub-projects (never rename, over-write or move a sub-project without
unattaching from the master first or having master and sub-project open and
doing a save as) corruption of one or more files will happen sooner or
later. Master files must be capable of being thrown away so if one of your
precious schedules is only in the master data loss will happen. It is not
safe to restore from backup only the master. If you have to restore, then
restore the master and ALL sub-projects.

My preference is to not have a master or resource pool as both can lead to
corruptions etc. I have a recorded macro that creates a new master (run each
week) by turning OFF the Link option in the Insert Project dialog. This
copies all tasks and creates a resource consolidation and provides a weekly
snapshot and has no risk of file corruption. Only downside is changes in
sub-projects are not immediately reflected in master and vice versa (this
can be a positive).

--

Rod Gill
Project MVP

NEW!! Project VBA Book, for details visit: http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Rod Gill]

Sorry, I forgot this was the project server group, If you have server 2003
do not save a master project to Project server 2003, it causes too many
problems (duplicate assignments etc). In 2007 you can create them, but why
not create suitable resource views?

--

Rod Gill
Project MVP

NEW!! Project VBA Book, for details visit: http://www.projectvbabook.com