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activities moving with data date line - cont

11 replies [Last post]
Jonathan Ward
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morning Ladies/Gents,
i have followed Akin’s instructions (below) to the letter, however, not all of the activities listed on my Plan have the Target Bar visable, even after i have tested the process by moving the data date past the known early start date of the activity,, any ideas, am i missing something obvious?
ideally i would like the Target Bar to be in Position 1 to match the Early Bar, all i’m after is a method of detailing when an activity has not been progressed on the date that it was scheduled to
once again
any help would be fantastic
cheers
jon


RE: activities moving with data date line


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Basically P3 is not intended for this kind of schedule. However it provides flexibility to achieve what you want to achieve.

You can do this by creating a target bar. Subsequently you manage this target bar as you would manage the early bar but note that this is the target/baseline. You can the save this as a layout specifically for this purpose.

How?
Go to ‘Tools’ --->> ‘Project Utilities’ --->> ‘Target’ then choose your project (same project) remember to change the project name.

Go to ‘Format’ --->> ‘Bars’ the add another bar (by clicking the + sign). In the opened window under ‘Description’ give your new bar a name (e.g. Target 1- Report). Make the following selections:
‘Start point’ --->> Target 1 early start
‘End point’ --->>Target 1 early finish
‘Bar’ --->> Bar
‘Position’ --->> 3
(These are minimum selection you should make; do format the bar as may be necessary)
Then click ‘OK’
Check/select/click all the options (‘Visible’, ‘Progress’, ‘Critical’, ‘Neck’) except ‘Key’ (Please don’t make this bar the key bar, if you do it will affect your leveling) then ‘Close’

Save the layout for future use. (go to ‘View’ --->> ‘Save as’)
When you schedule, the progress will be showing on the bars, and the remaining duration will not be rescheduled.

Please note, like I said earlier this is not for planning but for reporting if I may say.

I hope this is helpful.

Akin Adurosakin
Nigeria

Replies

Bijaya Bajracharya
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Yes,

And Target activities will stay in the same position without doing anything. You see the most useful things in life comes FREE.
Anoon Iimos
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Bijaya,

Ok, but I suppose the original question is how to hold or how to make the activities in the target project to stay in place (original position), even when moving the data date line (i mean in the Target Schedule itself).

regards
Bijaya Bajracharya
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Anoon,

I am not convinced as well. The best way is to keep the Target Programme untouched. Always work in your current programme only. To safeguard your target programme, you may even make it read only so that even if you open it, no change will be saved.
Anoon Iimos
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Mark,

if you’re not convinced, do you know any other solution? i mean i’m open. Target Projects (in real life Planning) once set is seldom changed. It takes a lot of arguments before anyone can get approval of a new Target Project!

are you Planning in real life Mark?
Mark Chapman
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Anoon,

I am not convinced you understand what Bijaya was saying. Any other version of your plan can become a target. If defined as a target then a schedule in the main plan won’t move the dates in the target. Of course if you are in your target then a schedule can but defining extra constraints to your target is not the best solution.

Mark
Anoon Iimos
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never mind the place Bijaya, the issue is more important. Are you convince now that you need constraints in order for your Target activities not to move?
Bijaya Bajracharya
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I will remember now - Anoon. By the way, are you really in the Antarctica?
Anoon Iimos
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Bijaya,

You got the wrong spelling (ANOON), I know there’s another one with that name (just copied it actually). Anyway, you might be right, but to make your Target Program immovable, I think that’s the solution. And you can do whatever you want with it without affecting the early dates that you had set. You can estimate progress as you had planned it, in any date that you want and compare it with your current schedule or your actual one.


regards
Bijaya Bajracharya
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Annon,

I think you are complicating things. Normally since you don’t need to touch the target programme, you don’t need to constraint any programme in the target programme. When you schedule your current programme, only the dates in the current programme change/move to new data date.
Anoon Iimos
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the solution is simple, put constraints on all of the activities of your Target schedule, you can do whatever you want with the data date, but the activities will surely not move (remember, constraints on your Target Schedule only)!

check the position of your current bar and your target bar (make sure you did not use the same position).
Bijaya Bajracharya
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It would have been good to continue the same thread for the problem instead of starting a new one.

Anyway back to your problem. There are certain circumstances when you will not see a target bar. One such situation is when you have added new activity in your current programme. Check if you have added any new programme.

One easy "method of detailing when an activity has not been progressed on the date that it was scheduled to" is to show Variance 1 (Target Early Start - Current Early Start). If the activities started as per target this value will be zero. If it has not started, it will start getting negative.

You can show Variance in column and even filter to show activities with negative variance.