Working with summary tasks

[Tim]

Can anyone give me a pointer for usage of MS Project 2002?

The problem is this: I have an overall task, "Overall 1",
to which I don't associate any duration. It is present
just to keep things organized logically. I assign that
task to "Resource A", just for ownership. Once again,
there is no explicit work for "Resource A" to perform.
Underneath "Overall 1", I have "Subtask 1" and "Subtask
2", which do have durations associated with them. Also, I
assign one of them to "Resource A" and "Resource B". When
I go to look at the Resource Usage View to see if my
resources are overbooked, it looks like "Resource A" is
overbooked, because it treats "Overall 1" as a real task
that needs to be performed. That is not what I meant by
assigning ownership of it to "Resource A". There must be
an easy way to tell Project to not treat this as a task,
but I haven't found it yet. Any thoughts?

 

[Gerard Ducouret]

Hello Tim,

Generally, we avoid to assign resources on summary tasks. But in your case
you could assign a resource (via the "Assign Resource" dialog box)with Units
= 0... so Work = 0

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Steve House]

Your problem all derives from assigning Resource A to the "Overall 1"
task. Your "overall" is simply a summary task and you are using it
exactly the way it is intended to be except for that. Summaries act as
rollups for all their subordinate subtasks and the values for duration,
work, cost, etc are simply the weighted aggregate of the subtask's
values. But when you assign a resource to a task, it implies that the
resource will be performing physical activity on that task. That is
true for your subtasks but it is not true for the summary. If you just
need to record who is responsible for monitoring the overall progress,
etc, instead of entering it as a resource assignment, use one of the
user-definable text fields to hold the name of that person. OTOH, if
the process of monitoring WILL take a signifigant part of the resource's
workday, let's say consuming an average of 30 minutes a day in that
administrative duty, and you need to budget for it, consider using a
hammock task as an additional subtask tied to the start of the first
subtask and the end of the last subtask and assign the administrator to
it at whatever percentage is appropriate, say 5%, with his other duties
being assigned at 95%.

 

[Tim]

Steve,
Thanks for the clarification. That's exactly what I
needed to know. BTW, do you know of any good training for
MS Project. I find myself stumbling around it too much,
so I think I need to go back to school.
Tim.

 

[Steve House]

As for self-study I've been impressed with the book "Microsoft Project
Step-by-Step" from Microsoft Press. For classroom training, that would
depend on where you're located. I conduct frequent classes in the
Toronto area. For other locations check the training resources in your
area. Look for a bare minimum of 2 days full time and ask lots of
questions about the approach before plunking down your money - too many
software training schools just teach the mechanics of the software. You
can do that with an application like Word but IMHO Project is a totally
different critter and in order to be able to use it effectively you
simply *must* be exposed to some of the theoretical background in the
formal PM (CPM and PERT) methodology that underlays *why* Project
behaves the way it does.

 

[Tim]

Thanks for the pointers. I am in California, so Toronto
wouldn't be very convenient. :-( I attended a PM class
in which we learned the concepts of scheduling, but I
think the capabilities of MS Project go way beyond what I
learned in the class. If you know of a good training
provider in California for PM with MS Project, I would
appreciate hearing about them.
Tim.

 

[Bob]

Hi Tim,

Simply do not assign a resource to the summary task.
If you want to establish ownership, use one of the many additional
text fields.
I have used this successfully in a consulting environment, where 2 or
more parties are all collaborating on a project. It also allows
filtering, etc.

You could also set the resource to 0% allocation, but it might not
meet all your requirements.

From your description, Res1 is double booked...

Good luck.

Bob