What I suggest is that Project is ideal as a "what if" planning tool so you
CAN hit your required dates AND get all the preparatory items done on time.
If you let it, it can show you what effect changing something in the plan
will have on the final completion date. Some changes will make it go later.
Other changes will bring it forward. You set up the plan so it shows all
the things that need to happen and the way they relate to each other and
then proceed to examine and adjust it by rearranging the relationships,
reassigning resources, perhaps hiring a temp or outsourcing something or
even deleting something that is "nice to have" but not essential, all the
things you can tweak and twiddle with that affect the sequencing and
durations of the tasks in your plan, until the calculated finish date
becomes equal to or earlier than the required finish date. Now you have a
plan that you can work to that with some level of confidence that if you
work accoding the the schedule you've devised you're going to be successful.
All too many project plans amount to little more than educated guesswork and
wishfull thinking. A tool like MSP takes it from that into something more
precise that can actually predict real outcomes with a reasonable level of
confidence.
You don't tell Project the schedule you think you'd like to work or even the
schedule you think you'll be able to work - you tell it what you need to do,
what the assets are you have to do it with, any requirements that the
physical process itself dictates must occur in terms of task sequencing, and
the deadlines you need to do it by, and then Project tells YOU the schedule
you'll need to work to achieve those results.
I think we get hung up on what "fixed date" means. Certainly the date on
which an even must occur in the real world might be fixed. A contract might
require something be delivered on a certain date and it's non-negotiable.
But a "fixed date" in Project really means, IMHO, something quite different.
In Project, "fixed" means that the scheduling calculation engine won't move
it in the model of the plan (even it really should be moved because the
schedule is impossible to meet). But the model is not the reality. The
idea is to use the model to figure out what you must do to hit the reality
that you must. You don't do that by creating a picture that shows the
finish sitting on the goal regardless of what comes before it, which is what
a fixed date in Project does. I want to use the plan to answer the question
"What would the effect be of moving Tom from this task to that one during
the second week of March. Would doing that make the finish come earlier or
later? It looks like we might not be finished by the required deadline ...
would calling in overtime on Task XX during the second week it May give us
some breathing room in the schedule?" In order for us to make decisions
based on those answers, we must be able to see what effect each alternative
strategy has ... and if we fix the finish with a constraint project will
never show us those results.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
Post by Tom G.Post by Steve House [MVP]Your golf tourney is scheduled for 15 Sep.
But for the tournement to happen on time a lot of preparatory things
have to also happen. If they happen on time, the tourney will too.
But if they happen late, you won't be ready to rock and roll on the
required date no matter how badly you want to be and you're going to
be very very embarrased.
I disagree. When you plan a real world event, you may have 100 things
you'd really like to get done by the event date. But frequently things
don't work out so you simply eliminate them.
I agree with your arguments if it comes to designing an introducing a
product (which I've done), managing a construction project or any number
of other activities. I've done full software and hardware development
schedules using MS Project and the old CA SuperProject. It's a very useful
exercise especially in terms of, as you say, trying to figure out if a
schedule is realistic.
BUT, there are still real world applications for developing a project that
has a fixed date. For example, it's pretty standard to issue a press
release 60 days before X, 30 days before X, 15 days and so on. Those are
tied to the fixed event date. Also, this kind of planning is generally not
resource constrained.
Anyway, I'd like to know how to do that better using Project as a tool.
But, maybe there are other planning tools that are more appropriate?
--
Tom G.
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