Tricky Qs regarding Linkage

[LS123]

This might be a silly Qs to ask but please help me out:-

There are three walls to be painted at different times, lets say one after
the other.
e.g.
A -> B -> C

I need to plug a milestone (D) before these activities for arrival of Paint
before stating of painting on the first wall.

Other points to be noted:-

1) The order priority of painting the walls may change in future, hence I
need to connect "D" with all the walls A,B & C.

2) My programme is scheduled from the Start date.

I have tried my best but in vain.

HOW TO DO THIS?

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

Insert a new task.
Name it "Paint Arrives"
Set the duration of the task to 0 to make it a milestone.
In the gantt chart, drag a dependency from the new task to task A, then
again to task b and again to task c.
You can then link the tasks in the order you think you are going to do them
in.
If you want to change it later you can, but you need to decide what you
think you are going to do. Project is not good at guessing. Just put the
tasks in the order you like.


-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Steve House]

If there is no process-driven reason that the walls have to be painted in a
certain order, don't link them to each other at all. Even if only you have
only one painter so that only one wall can be worked at a time, that is a
resource availability issue, not a dependency linkage issue. Link indicate
a required order, saying the schedule of the successor task MUST be driven
by the scheduling of the predecessor. So set it up like this:

1: Paint Arrives
2: Paint A - 1FS - Joe Painter
3: Paint B - 1FS - Joe Painter
4: Paint C - 1FS - Joe Painter

and resource level to establish the sequencing. If there is a preferred
order to the walls, in contrast to a REQUIRED order, set task priorities in
descending order on the tasks.

If the paint is to be delivered on a certain date, this is a case where a
Start No Earlier Than constraint is entirely appropriate. The earliest date
the painting can start is the date the paint arrives but if the prep work
still isn't done, it's going to have to start later. So the actual
predecessor of the painting tasks would be Prep Work and the painting tasks
themselves would each have a SNET of the date the vendor has promised to
deliver the paint. In that case the Paint Arrives milestone can be dropped
altogether unless it's something important enough to monitor it in the
schedule, like you need to know the date it arrived because that triggers
the payment on the invoice or something like that.

 

[LS123]

Jack / Steve,

Thanks for your replies. I got your views & quite agree to your thoughts. I
guess my Qn was incomplete, I would rephrase that:-

I have a programme of around 2000 activities & its got 20-30 odd activities
for painting of walls and I need a "floating" Milestone up in the Milestones
section to show when the painting of walls will start. The project is
currently at Foundation stage Walls will be erected according to a set
sequence. Can this be possible in MSP?

Apologies for not expaining it in the first go.

If there is no process-driven reason that the walls have to be painted in a
certain order, don't link them to each other at all. Even if only you have
only one painter so that only one wall can be worked at a time, that is a
resource availability issue, not a dependency linkage issue. Link indicate
a required order, saying the schedule of the successor task MUST be driven
by the scheduling of the predecessor. So set it up like this:

1: Paint Arrives
2: Paint A - 1FS - Joe Painter
3: Paint B - 1FS - Joe Painter
4: Paint C - 1FS - Joe Painter

and resource level to establish the sequencing. If there is a preferred
order to the walls, in contrast to a REQUIRED order, set task priorities in
descending order on the tasks.

If the paint is to be delivered on a certain date, this is a case where a
Start No Earlier Than constraint is entirely appropriate. The earliest date
the painting can start is the date the paint arrives but if the prep work
still isn't done, it's going to have to start later. So the actual
predecessor of the painting tasks would be Prep Work and the painting tasks
themselves would each have a SNET of the date the vendor has promised to
deliver the paint. In that case the Paint Arrives milestone can be dropped
altogether unless it's something important enough to monitor it in the
schedule, like you need to know the date it arrived because that triggers
the payment on the invoice or something like that.

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs

This might be a silly Qs to ask but please help me out:-

There are three walls to be painted at different times, lets say one after
the other.
e.g.
A -> B -> C

I need to plug a milestone (D) before these activities for arrival of
Paint
before stating of painting on the first wall.

Other points to be noted:-

1) The order priority of painting the walls may change in future, hence I
need to connect "D" with all the walls A,B & C.

2) My programme is scheduled from the Start date.

I have tried my best but in vain.

HOW TO DO THIS?

 

[Steve House]

Milestones are ALWAYS floating, if I understand your meaning. They may have
a date when they're supposed to occur or a date by which they ought to occur
but it's important not to forget that a "milestone" is an observable
physical event, NOT the date on which the event takes place. As such it
takes place on whatever date it is driven to by the factors that control it.
The date it occurs may be before, on, or after some date requirement but the
date it happens is the date it happens. So ask what task(s) are the drivers
that determine the date that painting CAN begin and make them all
predecessors to the Painting Starts milestone. In turn, Painting Starts is
a predecessor to all the painting tasks. I'm guessing that all the
predecessor tasks probably don't converge on a single milestone allowing
painting to begin and there might well be multiple Painting Starts
milestones for different segments of the project but I think you'll get what
I'm driving at.

I would strongly suggest you NOT place milestones in a separate section of
the task list. If you need to see just the milestones from time to time,
use a filtered view to temporarily hide the performance tasks. But the
milestones should be placed logically with the group of tasks that drives
them, typically at the end of the drivers. Remember that a WBS is a
deliverables oriented list and task should not be grouped "administratively"
by resource or department or accounting category or responsibility or even
by time. Decompose your deliverable into smaller and smaller units -
summary tasks corresponding to smaller and smaller deliverables - until you
get to the level of granularity where you can schedule Joe Plumber to show
up Tuesday at 10am in Unit 123 with the tools and materials needed to
install a sink in the 2nd floor half-bath. That breakdown forms the
structure of your task list in the Gantt Chart.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Jack / Steve,

Thanks for your replies. I got your views & quite agree to your thoughts.
I
guess my Qn was incomplete, I would rephrase that:-

I have a programme of around 2000 activities & its got 20-30 odd
activities
for painting of walls and I need a "floating" Milestone up in the
Milestones
section to show when the painting of walls will start. The project is
currently at Foundation stage Walls will be erected according to a set
sequence. Can this be possible in MSP?

Apologies for not expaining it in the first go.

If there is no process-driven reason that the walls have to be painted in
a
certain order, don't link them to each other at all. Even if only you
have
only one painter so that only one wall can be worked at a time, that is a
resource availability issue, not a dependency linkage issue. Link
indicate
a required order, saying the schedule of the successor task MUST be
driven
by the scheduling of the predecessor. So set it up like this:

1: Paint Arrives
2: Paint A - 1FS - Joe Painter
3: Paint B - 1FS - Joe Painter
4: Paint C - 1FS - Joe Painter

and resource level to establish the sequencing. If there is a preferred
order to the walls, in contrast to a REQUIRED order, set task priorities
in
descending order on the tasks.

If the paint is to be delivered on a certain date, this is a case where a
Start No Earlier Than constraint is entirely appropriate. The earliest
date
the painting can start is the date the paint arrives but if the prep work
still isn't done, it's going to have to start later. So the actual
predecessor of the painting tasks would be Prep Work and the painting
tasks
themselves would each have a SNET of the date the vendor has promised to
deliver the paint. In that case the Paint Arrives milestone can be
dropped
altogether unless it's something important enough to monitor it in the
schedule, like you need to know the date it arrived because that triggers
the payment on the invoice or something like that.

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs

This might be a silly Qs to ask but please help me out:-

There are three walls to be painted at different times, lets say one
after
the other.
e.g.
A -> B -> C

I need to plug a milestone (D) before these activities for arrival of
Paint
before stating of painting on the first wall.

Other points to be noted:-

1) The order priority of painting the walls may change in future, hence
I
need to connect "D" with all the walls A,B & C.

2) My programme is scheduled from the Start date.

I have tried my best but in vain.

HOW TO DO THIS?

 

[LS123]

Thanks for your valuable comments Steve,

I got your point now. Weekly I need to prepare a Milstone chart from the
main programme to show Start & finish of some important event/activities.

My project is at foundation stage, after evey week's progress update I need
to forward the Milestones chart to commecial deptt. to update their schedule
as well.
What happens after every weeks progress input, the first wall which was
supposed to be ready for painting in 4wks from previous status date is now
being delayed by 1 wk & some other foundation is now the first one to be
completed.

There are say 25 wall foundations to be done in next 4-10wks, every week you
have a new foundation that is ahead of schedule. If I give a SS predeccessor
to my milestone from all walls, the milestone will show the start date of
last wall but I want exactly opposite - Start date of First Wall!!!

I know I am good at explaining the things But I hope you got my query.

Milestones are ALWAYS floating, if I understand your meaning. They may have
a date when they're supposed to occur or a date by which they ought to occur
but it's important not to forget that a "milestone" is an observable
physical event, NOT the date on which the event takes place. As such it
takes place on whatever date it is driven to by the factors that control it.
The date it occurs may be before, on, or after some date requirement but the
date it happens is the date it happens. So ask what task(s) are the drivers
that determine the date that painting CAN begin and make them all
predecessors to the Painting Starts milestone. In turn, Painting Starts is
a predecessor to all the painting tasks. I'm guessing that all the
predecessor tasks probably don't converge on a single milestone allowing
painting to begin and there might well be multiple Painting Starts
milestones for different segments of the project but I think you'll get what
I'm driving at.

I would strongly suggest you NOT place milestones in a separate section of
the task list. If you need to see just the milestones from time to time,
use a filtered view to temporarily hide the performance tasks. But the
milestones should be placed logically with the group of tasks that drives
them, typically at the end of the drivers. Remember that a WBS is a
deliverables oriented list and task should not be grouped "administratively"
by resource or department or accounting category or responsibility or even
by time. Decompose your deliverable into smaller and smaller units -
summary tasks corresponding to smaller and smaller deliverables - until you
get to the level of granularity where you can schedule Joe Plumber to show
up Tuesday at 10am in Unit 123 with the tools and materials needed to
install a sink in the 2nd floor half-bath. That breakdown forms the
structure of your task list in the Gantt Chart.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Jack / Steve,

Thanks for your replies. I got your views & quite agree to your thoughts.
I
guess my Qn was incomplete, I would rephrase that:-

I have a programme of around 2000 activities & its got 20-30 odd
activities
for painting of walls and I need a "floating" Milestone up in the
Milestones
section to show when the painting of walls will start. The project is
currently at Foundation stage Walls will be erected according to a set
sequence. Can this be possible in MSP?

Apologies for not expaining it in the first go.

If there is no process-driven reason that the walls have to be painted in
a
certain order, don't link them to each other at all. Even if only you
have
only one painter so that only one wall can be worked at a time, that is a
resource availability issue, not a dependency linkage issue. Link
indicate
a required order, saying the schedule of the successor task MUST be
driven
by the scheduling of the predecessor. So set it up like this:

1: Paint Arrives
2: Paint A - 1FS - Joe Painter
3: Paint B - 1FS - Joe Painter
4: Paint C - 1FS - Joe Painter

and resource level to establish the sequencing. If there is a preferred
order to the walls, in contrast to a REQUIRED order, set task priorities
in
descending order on the tasks.

If the paint is to be delivered on a certain date, this is a case where a
Start No Earlier Than constraint is entirely appropriate. The earliest
date
the painting can start is the date the paint arrives but if the prep work
still isn't done, it's going to have to start later. So the actual
predecessor of the painting tasks would be Prep Work and the painting
tasks
themselves would each have a SNET of the date the vendor has promised to
deliver the paint. In that case the Paint Arrives milestone can be
dropped
altogether unless it's something important enough to monitor it in the
schedule, like you need to know the date it arrived because that triggers
the payment on the invoice or something like that.

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs


This might be a silly Qs to ask but please help me out:-

There are three walls to be painted at different times, lets say one
after
the other.
e.g.
A -> B -> C

I need to plug a milestone (D) before these activities for arrival of
Paint
before stating of painting on the first wall.

Other points to be noted:-

1) The order priority of painting the walls may change in future, hence
I
need to connect "D" with all the walls A,B & C.

2) My programme is scheduled from the Start date.

I have tried my best but in vain.

HOW TO DO THIS?

 

[LS123]

I beg you pardon Steve the last line was:-

"I know I am NOT good at explaining the things But I hope you got my query"

Please bear with me!!

Thanks for your valuable comments Steve,

I got your point now. Weekly I need to prepare a Milstone chart from the
main programme to show Start & finish of some important event/activities.

My project is at foundation stage, after evey week's progress update I need
to forward the Milestones chart to commecial deptt. to update their schedule
as well.
What happens after every weeks progress input, the first wall which was
supposed to be ready for painting in 4wks from previous status date is now
being delayed by 1 wk & some other foundation is now the first one to be
completed.

There are say 25 wall foundations to be done in next 4-10wks, every week you
have a new foundation that is ahead of schedule. If I give a SS predeccessor
to my milestone from all walls, the milestone will show the start date of
last wall but I want exactly opposite - Start date of First Wall!!!

I know I am good at explaining the things But I hope you got my query.

Milestones are ALWAYS floating, if I understand your meaning. They may have
a date when they're supposed to occur or a date by which they ought to occur
but it's important not to forget that a "milestone" is an observable
physical event, NOT the date on which the event takes place. As such it
takes place on whatever date it is driven to by the factors that control it.
The date it occurs may be before, on, or after some date requirement but the
date it happens is the date it happens. So ask what task(s) are the drivers
that determine the date that painting CAN begin and make them all
predecessors to the Painting Starts milestone. In turn, Painting Starts is
a predecessor to all the painting tasks. I'm guessing that all the
predecessor tasks probably don't converge on a single milestone allowing
painting to begin and there might well be multiple Painting Starts
milestones for different segments of the project but I think you'll get what
I'm driving at.

I would strongly suggest you NOT place milestones in a separate section of
the task list. If you need to see just the milestones from time to time,
use a filtered view to temporarily hide the performance tasks. But the
milestones should be placed logically with the group of tasks that drives
them, typically at the end of the drivers. Remember that a WBS is a
deliverables oriented list and task should not be grouped "administratively"
by resource or department or accounting category or responsibility or even
by time. Decompose your deliverable into smaller and smaller units -
summary tasks corresponding to smaller and smaller deliverables - until you
get to the level of granularity where you can schedule Joe Plumber to show
up Tuesday at 10am in Unit 123 with the tools and materials needed to
install a sink in the 2nd floor half-bath. That breakdown forms the
structure of your task list in the Gantt Chart.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Jack / Steve,

Thanks for your replies. I got your views & quite agree to your thoughts.
I
guess my Qn was incomplete, I would rephrase that:-

I have a programme of around 2000 activities & its got 20-30 odd
activities
for painting of walls and I need a "floating" Milestone up in the
Milestones
section to show when the painting of walls will start. The project is
currently at Foundation stage Walls will be erected according to a set
sequence. Can this be possible in MSP?

Apologies for not expaining it in the first go.



:

If there is no process-driven reason that the walls have to be painted in
a
certain order, don't link them to each other at all. Even if only you
have
only one painter so that only one wall can be worked at a time, that is a
resource availability issue, not a dependency linkage issue. Link
indicate
a required order, saying the schedule of the successor task MUST be
driven
by the scheduling of the predecessor. So set it up like this:

1: Paint Arrives
2: Paint A - 1FS - Joe Painter
3: Paint B - 1FS - Joe Painter
4: Paint C - 1FS - Joe Painter

and resource level to establish the sequencing. If there is a preferred
order to the walls, in contrast to a REQUIRED order, set task priorities
in
descending order on the tasks.

If the paint is to be delivered on a certain date, this is a case where a
Start No Earlier Than constraint is entirely appropriate. The earliest
date
the painting can start is the date the paint arrives but if the prep work
still isn't done, it's going to have to start later. So the actual
predecessor of the painting tasks would be Prep Work and the painting
tasks
themselves would each have a SNET of the date the vendor has promised to
deliver the paint. In that case the Paint Arrives milestone can be
dropped
altogether unless it's something important enough to monitor it in the
schedule, like you need to know the date it arrived because that triggers
the payment on the invoice or something like that.

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs


This might be a silly Qs to ask but please help me out:-

There are three walls to be painted at different times, lets say one
after
the other.
e.g.
A -> B -> C

I need to plug a milestone (D) before these activities for arrival of
Paint
before stating of painting on the first wall.

Other points to be noted:-

1) The order priority of painting the walls may change in future, hence
I
need to connect "D" with all the walls A,B & C.

2) My programme is scheduled from the Start date.

I have tried my best but in vain.

HOW TO DO THIS?