MS Project with small tasks and a full year to complete
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From: JimT on 28 May 2010 11:06 I'm trying to add a project that includes 12 tasks that are not recurring, or at lest don't recur regularly, but will continue for one year. These all involve only a couple of days per month, or 8-36 days per year, but I want the project to show we have a full year to complete them. These are all independent tasks. Thanks for any ideas! -- JimT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JimT's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/225759.htm View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/microsoft-project/1341576.htm http://forums.techarena.in
From: John on 28 May 2010 23:06 In article <JimT.4boqpb(a)DoNotSpam.com>, JimT <JimT.4boqpb(a)DoNotSpam.com> wrote: > I'm trying to add a project that includes 12 tasks that are not > recurring, or at lest don't recur regularly, but will continue for one > year. These all involve only a couple of days per month, or 8-36 days > per year, but I want the project to show we have a full year to complete > them. > > These are all independent tasks. Thanks for any ideas! JimT, It's not clear from your post whether there are 12 tasks each with a month in which to complete them (i.e. duration time) or there are simply 12 tasks each of which can be completed anytime during a year's time. Either way you should set up the task type as Fixed Duration with the Duration field showing 2088 hours, 52.2 weeks or 13.05 months. These values assume a 2010 calendar with normal 8 hour work days, 5 days a week with no holidays. You should be aware that this newsgroup is destined to be shut down next week on June 1st. All future questions should be posted to, http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/threads. John Project MVP
From: sjhouse.remove on 29 May 2010 07:49
A task is action that produces a single deliverable, not just the name of an activity. Is that what each of these tasks do or are they really series of separate tasks? For example, let's say your department will be sending out a short newsletter once a month for the next year and you're tasked with editing it, a job that will take 2 days per month. That's not as single task "edit newletter" lasting a year requiring a couple of days attention each month but really it's a series of 12 separate and distinct tasks - "edit January newletter," "edit February newsletter," "edit March newsletter" and so on and the project file should list them as such. "Edit Newletters" would become a summary task with the individual months shown as 12 2-day duration tasks indented under it. You could enter such manually with SNET constraints to push each subtask into its proper month or you could use arecurring task to automatically schedule this sort of thing. If the tasks you ask about in your post are truly producing just a single deliverable each, why are you setting them to a years duration? A task that will require me to put in 2 hours of work and is due the end of June is not a 1 month duration task, it is a 2 hour duration task with a deadline date of July 1st. If your task requires, say, 24 days of work to complete and could start Monday, even though it's not due for a year, why put it off? Why not just do it all at once, put the deliverable it produces on the shelf until it's needed, and move on to something else? If there's a reason you CAN'T do it like that, if it truly must be be split up into 2 days per month segments extending for the next year, I'd be very suspicious that what you're describing as a single task is not really multiple tasks as discussed above and you really should revisit your task breakdown and make it more detailed. Steve House On Fri, 28 May 2010 10:06:40 -0500, JimT <JimT.4boqpb(a)DoNotSpam.com> wrote: > >I'm trying to add a project that includes 12 tasks that are not >recurring, or at lest don't recur regularly, but will continue for one >year. These all involve only a couple of days per month, or 8-36 days >per year, but I want the project to show we have a full year to complete >them. > >These are all independent tasks. Thanks for any ideas! |