Unsure Start and Finish Dates

[Rhonda]

I have been asked to show a range of time for a couple of
tasks that could start anywhere from Feb. '04 and end
anytime before or on April 13, 2004. Is there any way
that "flexible" start and finish dates can be put into
MSP? I am not even certain if this question can answer
what it is that I need, but I am being driven crazy to
come up with a solution and thought that I would start
with the newsgroup.

Thank you for any help that you can provide.

 

[Steve House]

Actually you shouldn't be putting in start and finish dates for tasks at
all. These are normally calculated values - the reason for using Project is
to figure out when you CAN start and when it will finish if you start on
that date - you already know when you want to start, now you have to find
out if it's possible and if not, what to do to make it so. Be that as it
may, you can't put in a range either. The start date is going to be
determined by the start date of the project and the collective durations and
logical dependency relationships of the tasks that lead up to the task of
interest. The finish date is based on the calculated start date plus an
estimate of how long you expect the task to take to complete, ie, its
duration.

Even if you DO supply some dates (which the software does allow you to do,
even though it's very very definitely NOT wise to do so) you can only supply
one end of the task. You can set a start and duration and project will
calculate its end, or you can specify an end date and duration and project
will calculate when you have to start to meet it, but you can't directly set
both start and end dates. It will be scheduled to start on the date that
predecessor tasks and resource availability allows it to start and that's
it. That's what a schedule is all about, figuring out what those dates are
likely to be.

 

[Nilu Talreja nbtalreja]

If we put start date for any task and duration than constraint is
applied to that task.
so always one should only assign duration?

While tracking how one should update project status?
When a resource is assigned to task work is divided evenly to the
mentioned duration but if task duration is of 8 days.
and work caaried for task is only for 1 day. next all 7 days are for
recording observations?
then how one should assigned resource to task?
Accordinf to MS Project work will be equally distributed in 8 days for
that resource?

Also let me clear the difference between %complete and % physical
complete for any task?

Thanks in advance

 

[Steve House]

That is correct ... unless there is a specific reason a task must be
constrained one should normally only supply the estimated duration and the
logical relationship of the task to the rest of the project via the links
set plus the expected start date for the project as a whole. Then MSP will
calculate a first approximation of the start and finish dates of the
individual tasks in the project. When one then assigns resources and levels
any conflicts, the dates are again calculated so as to give the final
schedule as driven by the avaiability of the people needed to do the actual
work.

A scenario to illustrate the various measures of completion. I have a room
to paint. I estimate it will take 5 days to do it, starting Mon at 8am and
finishing Fri at 5pm. We're going to put on 4 coats, allowing overnight
drying time and then the last day we'll finish it all off, so the work
pattern for the painters is 1 hour Mon, 8 to 9, one hour each on Tues, Wed,
and Thu, then Fri we plan to work a full 8 hours to finish up. 4 Walls, 40
hours duration, 12 man-hours work. It's Thursday at 5 oclock and we're
right on schedule. At the moment our % complete is 4day/5days or 80%. Our
% work complete is 4hr/12hr or 33.3%. If we found that we had actually done
3 walls out of the 4 to do at this point, our % physical complete would be
3/4 or 75%.

Re: Assigning to the task with one day work and 7 days observations. I
assume this is an automated process and the resource intervention is not
required during the data collection process. I'd make it two tasks. One is
a 1 day task setting up the test and that's where your resource is assigned.
Linked from it is a milestone task, zero duration, called "Data Collection
Complete" linked as a finish-to-start successor. The milestone is forced
out 7 days after setup by putting 7 days lag time in the link. I'm a big
believer in the idea that tasks should (almost) always represent physical
activity, resources doing something - waiting time, vacations, etc, are by
definition NOT activity and so should not be included as separate tasks
themselves or as time within other tasks padding out their durations. So
your test is NOT an 8 day duration task, it's a ONE day duration task of the
work required to set it up followed by 7 days of waiting before starting
whatever comes next. Of course, it may be that the resource has to go back
and collect the data at the end of the wait, so in that case the milestone
above might be replaced by something like a 1 hour task "Retrieve Data
Recorder" that the resource is again assigned to but that's driven by the
nature of your test - Project handles either case the same way.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the best way to track status?" How to enter
actuals or how often etc you should do it?


--
Steve House
MS Project MVP
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs