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Create a new Enterprise Project Microsoft Project

Create a new Enterprise Project Microsoft Project

Create a new Enterprise Project

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 10:40 PM PDT

Hi Dave,

This sounds like a developer-type question to me. Try posting on the
developer newsgroup. Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project Newsgroups. FAQs,
companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at this
web address: http://www.mvps.org/project/.

Mike Glen
Project MVP

davegrr wrote: 

Gantt Bar Sizes

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 03:00 PM PDT

Hi Brian,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup :-)

Bar Styles give the option of 6 shapes, 10 patterns and 16 colours gives 960
combinations, and there aren't any more :(

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on :-))

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

Brian wrote: 

Project duration and dates

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 01:05 PM PDT

It sounds like you're confusing hours of work with hours of duration.

The duration is the amount of (working) time between when the task begins
and when it ends. If we work a normal default work schedule of an 8 hour
workday (that's how Project knows what minutes out of the day count as
working time) a task that starts Monday at 8am and is finished Friday at 5pm
is 40 hours of duration by definition, period, end of story, and it CAN'T be
anything else. So if you say a task has a *duration* of 24 hours and starts
Mon at 8, it simply must end Wednesday at 5, there is no other option. You
cannot say a task starts Mon at 8, ends Fri at 5, and has 20 hours duration
UNLESS the workday itself is defined at 4 hours per day.

Work is the number of man-hours the resource is actually doing something
during that duration time period. The ratio of the two is the resource
allocation percentage of the resource assignment. If I say I have a task
budgeted for 20 hours, I'm usually thinking of man-hours of work. I could
do that work over a 20, 40, 60, 217, or whatever hour duration. (I can't do
it over LESS than 20 hours duration unless I get someone else to work with
me because I can't be two places at once.) If I do 20 hours of work over a
20 hour duration I'm working 100%. If I do it over a 60 hour duration I'm
working at 33% allocation, and so forth.

Fixed dates are a major issue because all too often those dates have been
determined without any regard to whether they are realistic or do-able. The
notion behind ALL project scheduling software, not just MS Project, is that
you are using the tool to develop a model of the project in order to
determine what dates things should be scheduled for so as to meet the
overall business objectives. When you start the process you know that you'll
be able to start as of a certain date (or can assume one), perhaps you know
you need to finish by a particular deadline, and you know what you need to
get accomplished and who's available to do it. But you *don't* have a clue
what dates all the tasks should be scheduled for - figuring all that detail
out is why you're using the software in the first place. Even specifying
start and finish dates when you enter tasks into the Gantt chart table
doesn't really give you truly fixed dates. Entering a start date gives a
Start No Earlier Then constraint while entering a finish date gives a Finish
No Earlier Than constraint. There can only be one constraint so which you
get will be determined by whether you specify the start of the finish date
first - the last one entered will govern. But that's not to say the tasks
won't get moved LATER in the plan if a predecessor link or resource
unavailability or conflict drives them later.

Here's a possible solution, workable if you're very careful. Set the
default task type to fixed units and enter your tasks. You should never,
ever, input start and finish dates except for those few tasks where a
constraint is actually required by the nature of the task itself but if you
really have no choice in the matter, when you set those dates the duration
they represent will be calculated. I'd actually do it in the order finish
date then start date because a SNET constraint makes more sense than a FNET
constraint if you have to have one at all. The duration between those two
dates is fixed and that's not something you can control, period. Now enter
your resources in the resource list. Back to the Gantt chart. Split the
screen (Window Split) and use the Task Form in the bottom window to assign
your resources. For each task in turn, first switch the task type to fixed
duration, click ok, then in the resources section enter the resource name,
leave the percentage blank, and enter the number of hours budgeted for that
task. When you click ok, the resource(s) will be assigned at whatever
percentage produces the budgeted hours of work over the duration represented
by the start and end dates you've specified. If any resource gets allocated
at over 100% you've now got a political problem to solve because it means
that the boss who gave you those fixed dates is requiring people to do more
work in a workday than is humanly possible to do and something has got to
give or the project is virtually guaranteed to fail.

Hope this helps, let us know how it goes...

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



"Lisa" <microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:com... 
can't figure out how to allot resources so that neither the amount of hours
at which I've sent the duration nor the dates move.

How difficult is Project Server to Implement?

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 12:27 PM PDT

I agree. The tool is just part of the problem. Defining and getting
agreement on a standard process and training the users is quite an effort in
a large group.

-Jack

"Rob Schneider" <net.net> wrote in message
news:phx.gbl... 

How are percentages calculated?

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 12:12 PM PDT

The best thing to do is look in Help, and ask the question "how is
percent complete computed" and you'll see the article "Percentage and
number fields" and there you can see how these fields are computed.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms




JeremyE wrote: 

Linking tasks into master project

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 12:07 PM PDT

Hi Robin,

If you expand the sub-project files within the master, you can link tasks in
the normal way: eg select the 2 tasks an click the Link tool.

Mike Glen
Project MVP



Robin wrote: 

build customized application for MS Project

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 06:40 AM PDT

You could also keep it simpler by using, if available in the company,
Outlook's Task Request process. Customers ask a request of the manager
who in turn delegates it out.

Project would be great if the tasks are true projects ... but if "just"
tasks, you might find the overhead/complexity is too much.

There are also some very nice open source products available for free
that do this sort of thing. Check out Source Forge et. al.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms




aj wrote: 

Link Summary or not?

Posted: 15 Jul 2004 06:39 AM PDT

You might want to look for an article by Robert Cooper about Stage-Gate
processes (phases and gates) particularly the stuff he wrote about "Fuzzy"
gates...

some thoughts on lifecycles and phases....
This probably won't answer your question regarding linking of phase summary
task (though I recommend against it)
----
Turns out most companies have lifecycles with phases and gates - however
many gates are "90% there" (from an old Arnold Palmer quote about trees and
golfing).

Think about it, perhaps you have a deliverable of a specific tool made by an
outside vendor. That tool is complicated and will take 6 months to produce.
According to your lifecycle, that tool is not due until phase 3 - which is
typically 2 months long and should happen 4 months from now. Do you wait
until phase 3 to start work on the tool? Hell no! - you start thinking and
acting on that deliverable ASAP....

SO here a phase 3 deliverable is actually being worked on during phase 1 and
phase 2....

Mark
--
__________________________________________________ _______
Mark Durrenberger, PMP
Principal, Oak Associates, Inc, www.oakinc.com
"Advancing the Theory and Practice of Project Management"
__________________________________________________ ______

The nicest thing about NOT planning is that failure
comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by
a period of worry and depression.

- Sir John Harvey-Jones
"maarkr" <microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2d9c601c46a71$37f8fdd0$gbl... 

Can't remove program

Posted: 14 Jul 2004 08:47 PM PDT

Have some kind of corruption on primary HD as could not
reinstall, remove or change features when attempting to
reload Project, reinstalled MS project to different HD and
was able then to remove program. Thanks for your reponse.

Steve Brown 
Sounds like 
that the uninstaller 
Whenever I 
not 
bar 
and 
Since 

Printing in Microsoft Project 2002

Posted: 14 Jul 2004 05:26 PM PDT

Hi Catherine,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup :)

You might like to have a look at my series of Microsoft Project lessons in
the TechTrax ezine, particularly Lesson 8 - Printing Reports and Views, at
this site: http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc (Perhaps you'd care to rate it before
leaving the site, :) Thanks.)

If that doesn't help, I would suspect corruption and you could try the
suggestions in FAQ Item: 43. File Bloat? - Might be Corruption.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on :)

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

Catherine wrote: 

Website Project Plan

Posted: 14 Jul 2004 04:22 PM PDT

FYI, a project plan is a collection of documents. MS Project can be used for
the WBS, schedule, resource plans, effort and duration estimates (and other
documents) which are all PART OF the project plan.

You'll also need things like roles and responsibilities, project success
criteria, project justification, project charter ...

If I were to do a Web sit project plan these would be the hyperlinks I'd
consider:

Project Charter
One page scope document
WBS
Activity Effort estimates
Activity duration estimates
Resouce requirments/resource plans
Team members and roles
Risks and risk response plans
Communication plan (built on the list of key stakeholders)
Assumptions
Network logic diagram
performance measurement baseline (for earned value)

By building this web site, you will know more about your project than you
ever thought possible...
Mark

--
__________________________________________________ _______
Mark Durrenberger, PMP
Principal, Oak Associates, Inc, www.oakinc.com
"Advancing the Theory and Practice of Project Management"
__________________________________________________ ______

The nicest thing about NOT planning is that failure
comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by
a period of worry and depression.

- Sir John Harvey-Jones
"Ann" <com> wrote in message
news:google.com... 

TO DO CRASHING FROM PROJECT

Posted: 14 Jul 2004 03:35 PM PDT

Start with the critical path(s). Do what you can to shorten it. Then when
the new critical path(s) emerge, shorten them and so on and so on...

Look at your plan and figure out what can be done in parallel but be aware
of the risks as you "parallelize" work

"We can start coding even though the design is not done however we risk
rework once the design is finished" are you willing to take that risk? What
is the risk/reward trade-off? (is the risk worth the reward?)

Best of luck...

Mark


--
__________________________________________________ _______
Mark Durrenberger, PMP
Principal, Oak Associates, Inc, www.oakinc.com
"Advancing the Theory and Practice of Project Management"
__________________________________________________ ______

The nicest thing about NOT planning is that failure
comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by
a period of worry and depression.

- Sir John Harvey-Jones
"student" <microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2d04b01c469f2$d49149b0$gbl... 

Printing only Working Days

Posted: 14 Jul 2004 11:47 AM PDT

Thanks Steve,

I figured this was the case, but I just wanted an expert
opinion on the matter. thanks for the assistance, and
keep up the great work.

Jason

 
cancelled because you 
message 
are 
sheets? 

Assignments not appearing in Project Server Task Timesheet

Posted: 14 Jul 2004 11:42 AM PDT

Diane --

Do you see errors in the application log on the server?

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"


"Diane Skoll" <edu> wrote in message
news:2d89c01c46a5e$c09448b0$gbl...