MS Project 2003

[ultras67]

Is there anyone here who is a whizz on this?

 

I am trying to do a college project which is basically setting up a project ( funny that ) and hitting a few blanks. It turns out the lecturer doesnt have a clue about the isoftware and has been as useful as the MS help file.

 

Anyway. What I need to do is set up a project with resources, tasks, allocate units, run reports etc. Then I need to identify where it can be tightened up and brought in under budget and run more reports.

 

The problem is that every time I allocate units of multiple resources the program is automatically reducing the time needed to do the work. How do you get the program NOT to change things automatically and just accept what units and timescales you type in?

 

Cheers

[ijs5]

Try this excellent (free) plug in for MS Project:

 

Project Companion

[ultras67]

cheers i will have a look at that.

 

have you used project before? i am wondering about putting in all the dates with cant be moved start dates and end dates. i dont know if that will feck things up somewhere else though.

[ijs5]

I should have said - the Project Companion plugin mentioned earlier adds huge amounts of tutorials and reference info into the MS Project Help system, it's really very handy, especially if you are only an intermittent user (like me).

 

If you fix the start and end dates, it won't be able to schedule or level resources properly, and you will get lots of complaints. Also, you will effectively be doing the scheduling yourself, you may as well do that by drawing on a sheet of paper.

 

To answer your original question about keeping the duration the same when increasing resources, the standard MS help says:

 

When you assign resources to a task, Microsoft Project calculates how long the task should take to complete using those resources. If you assign multiple resources at the same time, the duration doesn't change from your original estimate.

 

But if you assign additional resources to a task that already has an assignment, Microsoft Project calculates how much less time it will take with these additional resources. This is known as effort-driven scheduling.

 

For example, if a task with a four-day duration is assigned to two resources, the duration stays at four days, and each resource is assigned to work on the task for four days. But if you assign two additional resources, the duration decreases to two days because the duration should be half as long with twice as many resources.

 

To reset the duration to its previous value, click the task, and click Assign Resources. In the Resource Name column, select the resource you added to the originally assigned resources, and then click Remove.

 

To turn off effort-driven scheduling for an individual task, click the task, click Task Information, and then click the Advanced tab. Clear the Effort driven check box.

 

To turn off effort-driven scheduling for all new tasks, on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Schedule tab.

Clear the New tasks are effort driven check box.

 

Hope that sorts you out.

[John_Betong]

 

Hi Ultras67,

 

I recently came across the website of a remarkably knowledgable guy who has written a book that has been translated into well over 30 languages! He has a webpage on Projects that you may be interested in reading:

 

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html

 

 

>>> Extract from his webpage <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

 

Here's a simple, painless way to make schedules that are actually correct.

 

1) Use Microsoft Excel. Don't use anything fancy like Microsoft Project. The trouble with Microsoft Project is that it assumes that you want to spend a lot of time worrying about dependencies. A dependency is when you have two tasks, one of which must be completed before the next one can begin. I've found that with software, the dependencies are so obvious that it's just not worth the effort to formally keep track of them.

 

Another problem with Project is that it assumes that you're going to want to be able to press a little button and "rebalance" the schedule. Inevitably, this means that it's going to rearrange things and reassign things to different people. For software, this just doesn't make sense. Programmers are not interchangeable. It takes seven times longer for John to fix Rita's bug than for Rita to fix Rita's bug. And if you try to put your UI programmer on a WinSock problem, she'll stall and waste a week getting up to speed on WinSock programming. The bottom line is that Project is designed for building office buildings, not software.

 

2) Keep it Simple. The standard format I use for schedules is so simple you can memorize it. You start with just seven columns:

 

<<< Quote ends

 

Cheers,

 

 

John Betong