Leveling Gantt view and Leveling Delay field in MS PROJECT 2019

Posted on August 27, 2019 by

Hi,

today I will explain Leveling Gantt view and Leveling Delay field in MS PROJECT 2019, which are rarely used.

I will crate a simple Project with two resources and they both are going to be overallocated:

image

As you can see John and Mary are both overallocated. Notice this:

  • Task 1: Start date 27.08, Finish date 28.08
  • Task 2: Start date 29.08, Finish date 30.08
  • Task 3: Start date 27.08, Finish date 27.08
  • Task 4: Start date 28.08, Finish date 30.08

Now, I will Level all resources like this:

image

and I will get:

image

Notice that, after leveling, Start and finish dates are:

  • Task 1: Start date 28.08, Finish date 29.08 e.g. Task is moved 1 day
  • Task 2: Start date 02.09, Finish date 03.09 e.g. Task is moved 3 days
  • Task 3: Start date 27.08, Finish date 27.08 e.g. Task is not moved
  • Task 4: Start date 28.08, Finish date 30.08 e.g. Task is not moved

I will now use Leveling Gantt:

image

and:

image

Finally I will get:

image

As you can see Leveling Delay field for Task 1 is 1 eday, and for Task 2 3 edays. Notice that delay is expressed in elapsed days!

On the right part of this view you can see original values – before leveling (marked yellow), and new values (blue lines ) – after levelling.

This view is very useful. Why? Because after leveling maybe the result will not be what you wanted or expected, and you can compare those two (old and new) values here.

Regards!

Posted in MS PROJECT 2019, PMI, PRoject Management | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Resources with dynamic workload in MS PROJECT 2019

Posted on August 13, 2019 by

Hi,

today I will show you how to deal with a problem which you will face, almost, in every Project. And that is: “Resources which are leaving Project, and coming back after some time to perform the same Task!”.

Let’s begin. First I will crate very simple Project with one and only Task:

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and I will have three resources available:

image

I will Assign John and Mary to the Task:

image

As you’ve noticed I am using Task Usage View. Now let’s say that both, John and Mary finished they work ant Monday and Tuesday, e.g. they are 50% done:

image

Now we get:

image

Now, let’s say that for some reason Mary isn’t available for the Task. And we do not know if she will be back or not. And we need another person to replace her (we cannot assign rest of the work to John). We will put Tim on the Task:

image

Now we get:

image

At Wednesday John and Tim were working 8 hours and the Task is now 75% finished. When I mark it as 75% completed, I will get:

image

TADAAAAAA! Mary is back. So, now we want to replace her with Tim. and we will get:

image

Now what? The real life situation is that Mary WILL finish the job at Thursday (instead of Tim), but we cannot replace Tim with her anymore, because she is almost assigned.

Well we can. First of all We are going to modify Mary’s calendar:

image

So, Tip #1: Put exceptions for resource for period in which he or she is not available.

Now, let’s use Task Form, and edit workload for Mary and Tim.

Mary will finish her Task at Thursday, 15.08.2019, and Tim has already finished his work at Wednesday, 14.08.2019. In total Mary will work 24 hours (8 at Monday, 8 at Tuesday, and 8 at Thursday), and Tim will work 8 hours at Wednesday:

image

The result is:

image

This is what we wanted!

Tip #2: Use Task Form, and align the real life situation with finish date!

This is real life situation when you cannot predict if and when your resources will be unavailable, and then again available.

Regards!

Posted in MICROSOFT PROJECT, MICROSOFT PROJECT 2019, PMI, PRoject Management | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Creating Fixed Duration Task using Task form in MS Project 2019

Posted on August 8, 2019 by

Hello,

today I’m going to show you how to use Task Form for creating Tasks from the scratch using MS PROJECT 2019!

First of all, let me crate two brand new Project:

image

OK. I need John and Mary as Resources, as well:

image

OK, now the Task Form:

image

Remember the magic formula, the heart of MS PROJECT which is: Work = Duration * Units

Now, I will create brand new Task for which I want to be Fixe duration, non Effort Driven with 5 days of Duration, but I want John to work 16 hours, and Mary 32 hours:

 image

When I hit OK button I will get:

image

Wow! This is now what I wanted. So, this must be a bug. But it is not!

Since I put Duration = 5 days, and Duration is fixed, and I did not put Units,MS PROJECT calculate work, no matter of values in Work field like this:

Work = Duration * Units, e.g. work = 5 days (8 house per day e.g 40 hours) * UNITS form Resource sheet (e.g. 100%), and the result is Work = 40 hours * 100% = 40 hours for John and Mary.

But, I want that in this 5 days John work 16 hours and Mary 32. I have two options to get that.

First one is to change hours like this:

image

and I will get:

image

Second one is to put right Units when creating a new Task, like this:

image

and I will get the same result:

image

MS PROJECT will calculate work according to magic formula, like this:

  • John: Work = Duration * Units, e.g. work = 5 days (8 house per day e.g 40 hours) * UNITS form  (e.g. 40%), and the result is Work = 40 hours * 40% = 16 hours
  • Mary: Work = Duration * Units, e.g. work = 5 days (8 house per day e.g 40 hours) * UNITS form  (e.g. 80%), and the result is Work = 40 hours * 80% = 32 hours

Hope this helps.

Regards!

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How to link Tasks with recurring Tasks in MS PROJECT 2019

Posted on July 6, 2019 by

Hi,

suppose that every Monday you have a meeting with your project team. And after that you are going back to your regular project Tasks. For that case you will have to create recurring in Project 2019 Task for meeting like this:

image

and:

image

You will get:

image

Let’s say that you have Task 1 with 2 days duration, and Task 2 with 3 days duration. And Task 1is about to start after first regular meeting is over, and Task 2 after second regular meeting is over. You will have to find out right predecessor like this:

image

When you link Task 1, and Task 2 with right meeting occurrence you will get:

image

If you collapse Regular meeting you will get:

image

As you can see, on the right part of the Gantt Chart View (graphic part), you cannot see those links.

One more thing. If you make Regular meeting as a predecessor of any Task, like this:

image

this Task will start after the last meeting is finished and the link will not be shown on the right (graphic) part of the Gantt Chart View.

To conclude, be careful when you link recurring and regular tasks.

Regards.

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Calculate project after each edit option and Task inspector in MS PROJECT 2019

Posted on June 12, 2019 by

Hi,

Today I will show you the option: Calculate project after each edit in MS Project 2019!

This option can be found here:

image

and:

image

and finally:

image

With this option set to On I will create a simple project with three tasks, connected together:

image

Now I will show you the Task Inspector:

image

As you can see, everything look fine, and is fine.

Now, I will turn this option Off, and I will crate the same Project again:

image

As you can see, all Start dates are the same (of course, this applies to my specific example), and calculation is not made at all. If I look at the Task inspector it will look like:

image

As you can see, I can’t see predecessors for Task 2, nor any other thing. When I hit F9 button, I will get everything like in example with option turned on.

The question is very simple: Why, on earth, will someone leave this option turned off? Even it looks odd, it is not. Every time I add or change something on the project, the whole calculation is made, with this option turned on. Do not forget that MS Project can be use for extremely large projects, so the calculation can last for a while. Instead of keeping this option turned on, I can turn it off, and manually ask for recalculation by hitting F9 button.

Which approach is better? None! If you have very large projects maybe it is better to keep this option off, but for “smaller” project keep it turned on.

And one more important thing. If this option is turned on or off, it will be applied to every single project. The new one, and existing one. There is no option to make it on or off for one single projects. So, if you will like to have it for some projects on, and for some others – off, you will need to constantly turn it on and off.

Regards!

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Rollup field in MS PROJECT 2019

Posted on May 12, 2019 by

Hi,

today I’m going to explain purpose of the Rollup for Tasks in MS PROJECT 2019!

First I will create very simple Project:

image

As you can see, there is one Summary Task (Task S), two Sub-summary Tasks (Tasks S1 and S2) and six Tasks (T1 to T6). finally there are two milestones (MS).

Now I am going to select T1 and T2 and check Rollout option:

image

and I will get:

image

As you can see these Task are “rolled up” in the Summary Task S1, but not in Summary Task S. why? Because I unchecked this option for Summary Task S (which is, by default turned on for all summary and sub-summary tasks).

Now, I’m going to turn it on (in the same way as I did it with T1 and T2), and I will get:

image

This can be useful if you want to see Tasks on Summary Tasks. But, what if you want this for every single Task? should you turn this option on for every new Task? NO!

Here is how can you avoid this:

image

and I will get:

image

Wait? there are no Tasks shown! Well, that is because I select option: “Hide rollup bars when summary expanded”. So, if I now collapse summary Tasks I will get:

image

But if I always want Tasks to be shown on Summary Tasks, I will deselect this option and get:

image

So it’s up to you how (and if) you are going to show those “rollups”!

Regards!

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How to Change View in MS PROJECT 2019?

Posted on March 31, 2019 by

Hello,

Today I will show you how to change View in MS PROJECT 2019!

Let’s say that we have Project like this:

image

As you can see, for this Project I have resources:

image

and if I apply Cost Table on the Gant Chart I will get:

image

Now, let’s say that in Gantt Chart I want to see only Task which are on Critical path, and I want to group them by Status. And I want to see Costs in this Gantt Chart. This is the way how to do it (and with this example you will figure how can you change ANY View in MS PROJECT):

image

and:

image

and finally:

image

As you can see I chose Cost table (because I want to see costs in Gantt Chart), I use Critical filter (because I want to see only Tasks on the Critical path), and I use Status group, 9because I want to group them By status).

The final result is:

image

I’ve got exactly what I needed.

Now, if I look here, I can see my Filter and Group:

image

and here I can change them. Be aware of this. If you change filter or group (or even a Table which you want to see), and save the project, when you reopen it you will get the same view as it was when you saved it. So, modifications will be lost!

Regards.

Posted in MICROSOFT PROJECT, MICROSOFT PROJECT 2019 | Tagged | Leave a comment