Optional Tasks

[deeziner]

I'm exploring some project managment tools for our Engineering department and my first "test drive" is with Microsoft Project.

The projects we're managing are the design and production of custom engineered vacuum pump systems. The design cycle for a typical system lasts about 5 to 10 (business) days, from start to release to production. Most of our projects follow the same basic lifecycle through Engineering. Sometimes; though, our projects require customer approval before we can proceed with production. In this case, we work up to a point, send drawings & such to the customer, and we don't proceed until he says to. Sometimes we need to do revisions and resubmit before we move forward.

I'm trying to create a template for our managers to use to quickly set up a project using a 'standard' design path. Is there a way for me to indicate that a job is (or is not) 'for approval' and therefore the approval task is/is not required?

The only solution I can think of is to have one template for approval jobs, and one for 'non-approval' jobs, but I'd really like to have a single template to work from.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[JulieInMaine]

You could set one of the Flag fields to flag those approval tasks -- then filter for those tasks in a "non-approval" project. Select the filtered tasks and use the "Inactive" feature in Project 2010.

I hope this helps.

Julie

 

[PDQBach]

If your work cycles are fairly standard tasks that don't vary a lot from project to project then I'm not sure you'll gain much by using MS Project.

It sounds to me as if you've got a fairly mature process that has only occasional variations.

If this were me, I'd give serious thought to using Excel (one tab for the schedule, one tab for a standard design cycle and copy the data from the design cycle tab to the schedule tab. It's easy enough to have a dummy task at the start of each design project called "Starts on" and then have all the remaining dates in the cycle as a formula that is the "Starts on" date plus 1 or 2 or 3 or whatever days.

As another alternative, Google: project schedule whiteboard

You'll see some results that may be useful to you.