DePaul University

1. DePaul University Evaluating Schedule In MicroSoft Project Instructor: David A. Lash

2. Evaluating and Adjusting Your Schedule • After you create a schedule by entering tasks, assigning resources, and entering cost information, you are ready to evaluate and adjust it. • Usually evaluate schedule during planning. • However, after the project is under way, you can check your schedule and adjust it when necessary to meet your goals. • You should consider evaluating: • The finish date of the schedule. • How resources are allocated. • The cost of the schedule.

3. About Evaluating Your Schedule • To determine whether your schedule has problem areas that require adjustments • first analyze the schedule and evaluate the use of time, resources, and costs. Evaluating your schedule in various ways helps you identify: • Task relationships and the critical path • slack time in the schedule • Constraints on tasks • Overallocated resources • Cost of tasks • By evaluation, you can modify the critical path and shorten your schedule.

4. About Evaluating Your Schedule • If need to keep tasks on the critical path on schedule, adjust the task relationships and resource assignments of noncritical tasks to use slack in the schedule. • Slack time is the amount of time a task can be delayed without delaying the finish date of the schedule. • If a task that has slack finishes late, it may not affect the rest of the schedule. Most schedules have some noncritical tasks with slack.

5. Checking Task Relationships 1. From the View menu, choose Gantt Chart. 2. Double-click the task in the Gantt table for which you want to see the task relationship to its predecessors. 3. In the Task Information dialog box, select the Predecessors tab. Look in the Type column for the task relationships. Note You can change the task relationship by choosing a different task relationship from the entry bar list.

6. Identifying the Critical Path 1. From the View menu, choose Gantt Chart. 2. From the Format menu, choose Text Styles. 3. In the Item To Change box, select Critical Tasks. 4. In the Color box, select a color for the names of critical tasks. 5. Choose the OK button.

7. Finding Slack in Your Schedule 1. From the View menu, choose Gantt Chart. 2. From the View menu, choose Table, and then choose Schedule. 3. Drag the divider bar to the right to view the Free Slack and Total Slack columns. Note Negative values in the Free Slack and Total Slack columns indicate that there is not enough time to complete the task without delaying the project finish date. In the Total Slack column, zero durations indicate critical tasks.

8. Finding Constraints on tasks • Constraints on tasks help you control the start or finish dates of important tasks. • Check the constraints on tasks, particularly critical tasks, to make sure they are absolutely necessary, because constraints can limit your schedule's flexibility.

9. Examining Constraints on Tasks 1. From the View menu, choose Gantt Chart. 2. From the View menu, choose Table, and then choose More Tables. 3. In the Tables box, select Constraint Dates. 4. Choose the Apply button. For each task with a constraint other than As Soon As Possible, look at the predecessors and successors on the Gantt bar chart to determine if the constraint is necessary. 5. Drag the divider bar to the right to view the Constraint Date column.

10. Efficient Resource Allocation • When you evaluate your schedule, be sure that you have allocated your resources efficiently. • Resources are overallocated when they are assigned more work than they can do in their scheduled working hours • .Resources are underallocated when they are not fully assigned. • To ensure that resources are overallocated and underallocated as infrequently as possible, you can reschedule tasks within their slack time.

11. Finding Overallocated Resources and Their Task Assignments 1. Just click resource graph - Overallocated tasks are in red.

12. About Finding the Cost of a Task • If you are entering costs in your schedule, you should check the project's total cost to see whether you are within your budget. • If the total cost is too high, you can lower the cost of individual tasks and resources to lower project costs. • The total cost of a task is the sum of the resource rates and any fixed costs that are attributed to the task. • A fixed cost is a specific amount you set that does not rely on how much time or work is done to complete a task.

13. Finding the Cost of a Task 1. From the View menu, choose Gantt Chart. 2. From the View menu, choose Table, and then choose Cost. 3. Examine the Fixed Cost and Total Cost fields to determine the cost of the task due to fixed costs and the cost of the task due to resources.

14. Strategies for Shortening Your Schedule • Some of the methods to shorten schedule are: • Change task relationships to allow more tasks to overlap or occur at the same time, rather than strictly sequentially. • Increase the available working time by changing the project calendar. • Reduce the scope of your project by combining or reducing the number of tasks. • Reduce the scope of a task by decreasing the task's duration or the amount of work assigned to the task.

15. Strategies for Shortening Your Schedule • For tasks with resources assigned, you can: • Increase the number of resource units allocated to the task. • Increase the resource's availability by changing the resource calendar. • Assign overtime work hours to the resource.

16. Shortening Schedule by Changing the Critical Path 1. Select a single task on the critical path that could be completed in several steps. 2. Click the Unlink Tasks button on the Standard toolbar. (Or Unlink Tasks from the Edit menu). 3.Select the task beneath the task you want to change, and from the Insert menu, choose Insert Task for each subtask you will add. 4. For each new task, type a name in the Task Name column and a duration in the Duration column. 5. Select the new tasks and click the Indent button on the Formatting toolbar to make them subtasks of the original task, which becomes a summary task. • Or select the tasks and choose Outlining from the Tools menu, and then choose Indent.

17. Shortening Schedule by Changing the Critical Path 6. Select only the subtasks that must be completed sequentially for work to progress.These subtasks are on the critical path. 7.Click the Link Tasks button on the Standard toolbar.Or choose Link Tasks from the Edit menu. • Microsoft Project schedules the noncritical subtasks to begin on the start date for the summary task. You can create a start-to-start or finish-to-finish task relationship between a noncritical task and a critical task, so that the noncritical task starts nearer to appropriate tasks. 8. Select the summary task, and its successor task. 9. Click the Link Tasks button on the Standard toolbar work hours to the resource.

18. Shortening Your Schedule by Changing the Critical Path Or select the tasks and choose Outlining from the Tools menu, and then choose Indent. 6. Select only the subtasks that must be completed sequentially for work to progress. These subtasks are on the critical path. 7. Click the Link Tasks button on the Standard toolbar. Or choose Link Tasks from the Edit menu. Microsoft Project schedules the noncritical subtasks to begin on the start date for the summary task. You can create a start-to-start or finish-to-finish task relationship between a noncritical task and a critical task, so that the noncritical task starts nearer to appropriate tasks. 8. Select the summary task, and its successor task. 9. Click the Link Tasks button on the Standard toolbarwork hours to the resource.