Microsoft Project 2019: Constraints and Deadlines
Welcome back to our course on Microsoft Project 2019. Since we last looked at the wedding plan, I’ve added quite a bit more detail to it. In terms of the duration of many of the tasks and also some of the dependencies.
For example, if you look down at ID 20. We have Catering, within there, there are two pairs of tasks. There’s the first pair and there is the second pair.
I’ve allowed 15 days for making a shortlist of caterers, talking to them. Making a decision about which one to book, and then finalizing the menu with them.
I’ve allowed 15 days for each of those tasks. And, I’ve done the same for the baker. Make baker shortlist 15 days. Select baker and order cake also 15 days.
It may look from the current plan that we could get this wedding done very, very quickly. But as you can see, one of the main issues is that we’re doing everything all at once. Right at the start of the project.
In reality, that’s not really what would happen. There just wouldn’t be enough time. In this short period of time in the case of a few weeks. We need to do all of those things at the same time.
As we’ll see later on in the course; there are various factors or various reasons that will force us to spread these activities out over time. But for the moment, I just want to leave the plan like this. Except for adding a few dependencies that are really important.
Now, one situation that arises very often. When you’re working on projects is that there are one or two key decisions to make. There are certain things that you must do before you make those key decisions.
And then, there are certain other things that you can’t do until after you’ve made those key decisions. What I want to look at in this first section is the very key decision of the wedding date itself. You can see here Task 3. Set a wedding date.
Now you can’t do everything before you decide on the wedding date. So, for example, we talked in the previous section about making up the guest list and sending out the invitations. You can’t send out the invitations until you’ve set a wedding date.
But you can’t set the wedding date until you know what the venue you’re going to use it. And if it’s available. You may also want to make sure that the venue or the reception is available as well.
But you are going to have to take some things on trust. For example, you may well have to say well I’m going to fix the wedding date. Then see which photographers are available and book one of those photographers.
What I’m going to assume here. There are two or three key things that must happen before we can set the wedding date. From that point onwards various other things will be dependent on knowing that wedding date.
Appreciating once again that there is quite a lot of detail missing from this plan. I’ve been through the plan. And, I’ve decided that the two key things that I need to do are number 18. Book the reception venue, and also number 38, Book the wedding venue.
I’m going to go up to Set a wedding date. Rather than using the linking mechanism that I’ve used before. I’m going to type in those IDs straight into the Predecessors field on the end here.
Then, I’m going to put in 18, comma, 38. And that gives me a date on which I’m going to set the wedding date. I should point out that this is not final yet. Because we have a few more hurdles to overcome a little bit later on.
And then, from the setting of the wedding date, for example. I can say, well, if I select Set wedding date then certainly sending out the invitations will be dependent on that.
I’m going to put a link in between those two. Up to Task and click on Link. And now we have a more realistic representation of when we’re going to be in a position to send out the invitations.
Now, particularly in the early stages of creating a project plan. It’s important to review the plan from time to time. This is to make sure that things haven’t been missed. I’ve left a couple of items here which clearly have dependencies that aren’t currently represented in the plan.
So for instance Task 19, Plan and finalize seating arrangements. And that will clearly need to have the guest list finalized before that can happen. So really a predecessor of Plan and finalize seating arrangements should be Task 14.
There are still one or two key dependencies that I haven’t put into the plan yet. But I want to turn my attention now to Constraints and Deadlines.
Let me insert a completely new task into this schedule. Right-click, Insert Task. And you see that it’s inserted it at the Project Start Date. We changed that option much earlier on in the course if you remember.
And if I open up that task and go to its Advanced tab I’ll see that the constraint on that task is that it should start as soon as possible. And when scheduling from a start date and when you have the project start date as the default date for new tasks that is the constraint that new tasks get. Generally speaking, they should start as soon as possible.
Now there are a number of different constraints that you can set on tasks. As late as possible, As soon as possible, Finish no earlier than, so on and so forth.
And it’s worth pointing out that As late as possible will be the default when you’re scheduling to an end date. But you also have this multitude of other options in the Constraint type dropdown that you can select.
Now it’s quite often external factors that mean you need to put constraints other than straightforward ones, such as As soon as possible onto a task. In many cases when you’re scheduling from a start date as we are here As soon as possible is the best bet because you’re basically trying to get all of the tasks done as soon as possible without restricting Project to do certain things on certain dates. But let’s take an example of a possible constraint.
Let’s suppose that we already know that one of the bridesmaids who is the bride’s sister is actually out of the country so she’s working abroad at the moment and she’s not going to be available for the Select and order bridesmaid’s dresses until the beginning of May 2019.
So whatever else happens she won’t be available until then. Now if I double click on this task and go to the Advanced tab I can say Constraint, Start no earlier than, and then I can choose a date at the beginning of May.
So whatever else happens she won’t be available until then. And when Project 2019 schedules the wedding it will take into account that constraint that we can’t start earlier than that.
Now you may want to at this point also put a note in here to remind yourself why the constraint is there. So across to the Notes tab and I’m going to add a quick note. And as you can see Project 2019 has successfully rescheduled this task to make sure that it doesn’t actually begin until the beginning of May.
Now with the plan as it is at the moment and considering that particular task the constraint that we’ve just added really has had quite an impact on the duration of the whole plan.
So you’ve seen there an example of a Constraint. Let’s now look at Deadlines.
Deadlines in many ways are quite similar to constraints but there are two or three really important differences. One difference is that a deadline is very easily visible in the Gantt Chart.
It’s actually a physical marker in the Gantt Chart, which you’ll see in a moment. And you get not only a marker in the Gantt Chart but you can also get warning indicators in the Indicator column to the left of the table.
Another major difference is that although constraints are used in scheduling as you saw just now with the limitation on the availability of one of the bridesmaids’ deadlines are not actually used in scheduling. They are used in some calculations associated with scheduling but they don’t actually affect the schedule itself.
Let’s suppose that we decided, obviously, we want the wedding to be a huge success, but if possible we’d like to schedule it in a better time of year. Maybe it’s always been our dream to have an autumn or fall wedding. I want to change the actual date of the wedding to the beginning of September.
What I’m going to do is go down to the Wedding date task itself which is down here, Task 41, open that up and I’m going to go to the Advanced tab. I’m going to put a deadline on it and the deadline I’m going to put on it is September the 1st.
Now you can’t actually see September at the moment in the Gantt Chart on the right there so let me just zoom out a little. And now you can see that the deadline marker, the green arrow just there. And if I hover over it you see Deadline Task Wedding day deadline, Sunday, September the 1st 2019.
Now that’s a purely visual marker. It won’t put in a physical limitation, but clearly, as we work further on the plan we need to try to make sure that the wedding day never moves to the right of that date.
We’ve got quite a lot more to do on it yet so we don’t need to worry about that too much at the moment. And as I say, if we do start to get a problem we will see an indicator in the column at the left of the table.
So I have two other things to do in this section, both fairly quick things to show you.
First of all, I’m going to go into Options. So File, down to Options, and on the Schedule tab, one of the options is Auto scheduled tasks scheduled on. And we changed it to Project start date, which is the setting that I usually use. But let me just change that to Current date and click on OK.
And then I’m going to go and insert a new task. Now if I double click and take a look at the constraints on that new task it doesn’t have an As soon as a possible constraint. It has a Start no earlier than the constraint of today, which means as the constraint implies that the task cannot be scheduled by Project 2019 to start earlier than that date.
So that’s an important distinction. I’m now going to cancel that and delete both of those new tasks. So highlight them both, right-click, Delete Task. I’m just going to go back in and change that setting. So back to Schedule and I’m going to change this back to Project start date because that is my preference.
The second thing I want to do here is to make quite a big change. Right near the beginning of the plan, so ID 2, Agree budget and approach, in terms of project management itself quite often projects have phases.
And probably the most likely phase with a wedding planning project would be that we’d start off by saying well how much money are we going to need to spend on this? What sort of level of spending are we looking at? And what will our approach be?
So for example, are we talking about a relatively small family wedding with maybe just immediate family and a dozen or so people? Or are we talking about a much grander affair with 200-300 guests and maybe even more than that attending the reception and entertainment in the evening?
Now really that particular task is a precursor to virtually everything else within the schedule. And sometimes when you’ve been looking at a plan for a while, like this one, you may decide actually I’m not 100% sure about the planning task at the beginning there because setting the wedding date and agreeing the budget and approach are really two completely separate tasks.
So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to promote Set wedding date, and again you can do that from the mini toolbar, and also promote Agree on budget and approach.
And I’m going to remove that planning task by right-clicking and Delete Task. And then I’m going to make Task 1 a predecessor of each of the summary tasks. Let me just drag this out slightly. So Task 3, Attire, it’s predecessor is going to be one.
What I’ve done is go through and put Task 1 as a predecessor of each of those other summary tasks. And this reflects the fact that as you get more and more detail and accuracy in a plan you may well want to restructure it.
You may want to take everything from Attire onwards and put that inside a sort of super summary task, which would make it much easier to represent the fact that everything in that task follows after the task with ID 1.
Something else you can do which often makes it easier to read a plan to understand the structure of it, if I select Task 3 and on the Task tab in the Insert group click the lower half of the Task button, one of the options is Blank Row and you can insert a blank row quite neatly into a project plan. And very often that emphasizes the structure of the plan.
Note also, let’s take this task here with ID 1. If I insert a blank row again look at what happens to all of the predecessors in the Predecessor column. The task is now Task 2 and of course, all of the other task IDs are updated accordingly.
So that’s the end of this section. I will see you in the next one.
Deborah Ashby
Deborah Ashby is a TAP Accredited IT Trainer, specializing in the design, delivery, and facilitation of Microsoft courses both online and in the classroom.She has over 11 years of IT Training Experience and 24 years in the IT Industry. To date, she's trained over 10,000 people in the UK and overseas at companies such as HMRC, the Metropolitan Police, Parliament, SKY, Microsoft, Kew Gardens, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP.She's a qualified MOS Master for 2010, 2013, and 2016 editions of Microsoft Office and is COLF and TAP Accredited and a member of The British Learning Institute.
