![]() Tracking and reporting becomes much harder without appropriate milestones. Having milestones allows you to quickly and visually check if a project schedule is on track or not. It is usually a zero duration task with no assignments. A milestone is a point in time, which is used to monitor and control a project schedule. My previous article on how to track project scheduling using Actual Dates will help you to understand best practices of this. If you wait to look at your project for a month or more, the tracking will require a couple of hours. If you track you project weekly, updating MS Project schedule will be easy and it will take only a few minutes. What is the use of a plan if you do not follow it and track it regularly?ĭepending on the size of your project and organizational guidelines, you should track your project schedule regularly. Read my detailed article on how to save and use baselines. In fact, comparing two schedule files manually is next to impossible. You cannot do these things by using a simple backup file. MSP also allows you to save and compare multiple versions of baselines against each other. It allows you to compare current plan and actuals against the original schedule. They think that a backup of original schedule is enough for tracking a project, but a baseline is much more than a simple backup. I have seen some project managers saving a separate copy of their original schedule thinking that it will suffice. Without a proper baseline, you won’t know what your original dates were, and you will not be able to track the project. Skipping the BaselineĪ schedule is not a schedule unless it is baselined. To do this, navigate to the project options dialogue by clicking File > Options and selecting the ‘New Tasks Created’ as ‘Auto Scheduled’ under ‘Scheduling options.’ Refer to my previous article for some additional details about auto scheduling. The date constraints are sometime very difficult to manage in a large project.Ĭhange the default ‘Task Mode’ to ‘Auto Scheduled’ for all new tasks in a project. ![]() Some project managers do not know about ‘Task Mode’ and it’s settings, while some do know that the setting can be changed to ‘Auto Scheduled.’ By changing the mode to ‘Auto Scheduled,’ you don’t have to manually analyze the entire schedule every time a task is modified.įurthermore, MSP automatically will add a date constraint to tasks when you manually enter a date. This means that MSP does not automatically calculate or update the dates, duration, and other attributes of a task whenever a predecessor attribute is changed. Manually Scheduled Tasksīy default, ‘Task Mode’ of a new task is set as ‘Manually Scheduled’ in MSP. To read more about the disadvantages of date based planning, check out this article. This way MSP will be able to automatically calculate the project dates and update them whenever any predecessor is modified. Lastly, you should add predecessor(s) to each task. Then, add estimated durations to each task. Get out of the mindset of starting with dates, as this defeats the whole purpose of using a scheduling tool in the first place, and a tool, like MSP, should make things easier by automating some of the work.Įven though dates are central to a project schedule, scheduling should center around tasks instead. If a task date is manually entered, MSP will not be able to automatically calculate and update the project schedule. Dates should be automatically derived from tasks and task predecessors. Most new project managers begin to create their project schedule by entering dates manually, but this is problematic. Date-Based PlanningĪ basic project schedule contains tasks and dates. Dates are essential ingredients of a project schedule. Most of them have to do with the use of dates in MSP. I have written this article to dissect five top scheduling mistakes. I think this happens as many of them, as I did, start using MSP without proper guidance. Even after so many years, I still notice similar mistakes in other project managers’ schedules. During those early days, I know I made quite a few mistakes creating my project schedules. When I started using MSP in 1997, I had to learn it on my own without much guidance. This time, I thought I’d write about the most common errors found in MSP schedules. I’ve been covering a variety of MS Project (MSP) tips and guidelines in my last few articles. Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Training.Project Management Office (PMO) Training.Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Training.Project Management Certification Training.
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