MS Project 2002/2003 1

[smithwillls]

Hello

I am investigating whether or not we should start using MS Project for our Transition Test/Implementation Planning.

Our main criteria for selecting the right product are :

1. Sharability of Plan Building : We need a tool which allows a team of planners to build the plan from their own desktops.

2. Network Diagramming which shows graphically the time duration not just dependancies.

Does anyone now if MS Project 2002 or 2003 will allow us to achieve these goals?

 

[PDQBach]

1. I'm not sure that sharing plan development among several people is a good idea. If, however, you are referring to Master Projects and Subprojects then the answer is: Yes, Project 2002/3 support that.

2. I'm also not sure what kind of network diagram you need. The View | Calendar option certainly shows durations but it isn't what I would call a network diagram. And the View | Network diagram doesn't show durations graphically.

Let's start with Gantt charts: what do they omit that you find necessary and what do they include that you find superfluous?

 

[smithwillls]

Hi PDQBach,

Thanks for your response - I guess what I'm really asking is, is it possible for two people or more to edit the same plan, but not update the same task at the same time, i.e. if one person is updating a task, then others are locked from updating that task!

I share your concerns regarding multiple people building the same plan.

The problem I have with Gantt Charts is that they display a line per task - I would rather that tasks do not occur at the same time appear on the same line - particularly if the task are related with a dependency

Thanks

Anthony

 

[PDQBach]

If one person has the plan open then other people can only open the plan in read-only status. "Opening the plan" is the key phrase -- there is no way to open a task. (I'm guessing that you were looking for an analog to a SQL table where many people can open the table -- the 'project plan' -- and then view various rows -- the 'project tasks' -- simultaneously with appropriate row locking. This is not how Project operates.)

It is possible for the first person (or persons) to open a plan in "read only" mode and this would allow another person to open the plan in the default update mode -- but any updates made by the updater would not be visible to the others until they closed and reopened their copies of the plan.

However ... if you use P2002/3 Enterprise then one person can have the plan open and that wouldn't stop other people from entering time against tasks (using PWA).

As for your chart ... that's kinda neat. No, Project doesn't have that (and I don't know of any add-ons that do that). What would you do if two or more tasks, performed in parallel are predecessors to the same task? ("Code module1", "code module2" and "code module3" are in parallel and predecessors of "integration testing&quot

If you think you are not alone in your requirement then the underlying data structures are fully documented -- good luck!

 

[smithwillls]

Thanks - that kinda answers my questions - however, I can only think schade.

We have a tool already which display resulting plans with mutiple tasks on the same line (using dependencies). If numerous tasks have the same dependancy, then more than one line is used.

However, the tool we have is not as intelligent as MS Project when inserting new tasks,i.e. new tasks are added to the end, and only the resulting generated view shows the tasks in the correct order. Also, our tool odes not show the critical path which is a major issue for us and hence we wanted to still generate the same views but with the critical path(s) highlighted.

The other thing we may do is use vba to use the MS Project plan to generate our views in Powerpoint.

PDQBach - thanks for your assistance and ave a good Christmas and New Year.

 

[PDQBach]

Which product is that?

 

[smithwillls]

It is a tool we have developed in-house. It uses Excel to for task entry alon with time, dependencies and area to which it pertains. The resulting graphical plan also shows the various streams in different colours.

Maybe there is something else you could help me with. I have read that MS Project 2003 allows dynamic updating of the plan, i.e. to know when a task is complete via the person responsible having the task in their outlook schedule and updating the status via outlook. Is this facility only available with outlook or will it also work with other mail platforms e.g. lotus notes?

 

[PDQBach]

Don't know. I'll have to do some research.

 

[PDQBach]

There are some things (like plan and task changes) where "advice notices" are optionally sent out on email messages.

I know of one multi-national site where P2002 Enterprise has been successfully linked to Lotus. I was unable to get further details.

 

[saadi04]

Can anybody insert the forward pass and the backward pass values in the network diagramme in MS Project