Teing tasks

[Bita]

I have a problem with tieing tasks together.I have
several summary tasks,each of them has a set of common
subtasks which are internally chained.This way the poject
may finish soon but the related subtasks are not done
joined to each other,and so the summary task takes long
and the duration is much more than the work,and besides I
want the related sub tasks be done serial.
As this is my urgent need,I will be very pleased if you
kindly respond me ASAP.
Thanks.
..

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hello Bita,

Linking two tasks Finish to Start only provides the rule that the second
task CANNOT START BEFORE the first one finishes, so yes, it is utterly
possible that the second one starts later that the finish of the first one.

However, if you experience this in Project, the reason is that you will have
introduced other links or constraints (or that you have done resource
leveling) because Project will normally schedule all tasks asap so a
successor task will start immediately after the finish of its predecessor
unless ther are othe reasons. For instance, when a task has two
predecessors, it will only start after the finish of the latest of the two
predecessors.

So what can you do to see your task chains uninterrupted?

- Go to Tools, Resource Leveling, verify that it is set to manual, and just
to make sure click Clear Leveling

- Verify that your taks do not have date constraints (you can see that in
the indicator column) if necessary go to the task's Information, Advanced
tab, set the constraint to as soon as possible

- Verify that the task which is not adjacent to its predecessor doesn't have
more than one predecessor

Finally, what is useless for your purpose is the grouping of tasks under a
summary task. Summary tasks only provide the information that somehow the
tasks below belong together, they HARDLY INFLUENCE THE SUBTASKS' SCHEDULE.
To the contrary, a summary task's start and finish date are mostly defined
by the subtasks'.

Hope this helps,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620