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MS Project questions
IainB:
Yes, that's all very well, but it's a cruel thing to do to an employee or subordinate. How else is @kalos expected to do whatever ad hoc job has been thrown at him? Because he's out of his depth, he's obliged to beg answers/help in this forum (and maybe others) about how to do basic stuff in MS Project - or at any rate, item 2 of his Q is basic, though I'm not sure that I understand item 1 of his Q.
I've seen this sort of thing so many times that it makes me grind my teeth in frustration. Theory helps one to understand it, but that doesn't make it any better. From what I have seen in this thread and others, I would suggest that @kalos is probably working in an organisation where the business processes are ad hoc. Every time one wants to do something, a new or modified existing business process is used to do it - it would be chaotic, by definition. The theory describes this as being CMM Level 1 (Ad hoc/chaotic). (CMM here means Capability Maturity Model for business processes.)
So, if one is (say) in the business of making sausages, then the sausages are made in (say) a different way, or by a different person, or to a different recipe, each day.
CMM Level 2 = Repeatable (a lot of our our processes are re-used from day-to-day).
CMM Level 3 = Defined (we know what most of our process are, and they are defined and documented).
CMM Level 4 = Managed (we manage the operation of our main processes and run them according to their defined usage).
CMM Level 5 = Optimised (we constantly strive to improve and optimise the way our defined/managed processes operate).
Organisations have to start somewhere, and that is at CMM L1, then as they grow, they might move up to CMM L2, and even L3. In Westernised economies, rarely will you be lucky enough to see CMM L4, and CMM L5 organisations are even rarer.
I have every sympathy for anyone who is working in a CMM L1 organisation (where most of the business processes are ad hoc and work is chaotic). CMM L2 would be much the same. For employees, neither type of organisation can be a pleasant/happy place to work, and yet no-one there would quite understand why, or why staff turnover was so high. The explanation is given by the theory, that by definition they are chaotic (CMM L1), or barely rational (CMM L2) and such organisations cannot provide pleasant/happy/"safe" working environments.
You can't skip levels. There is only hope above CMM L2.
So I would suggest that the best way forward might be for @kalos to master MS Project to some reasonable level, whereupon he would be able to not only do the job thrown at him, but also, more importantly - as the de facto resident expert - to contribute more to the development of the organisation's processes - at least those relating to project management.
Renegade:
^ And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what an experienced project manager on steroids looks like. :P 8)
DerekHal:
1)
Please explain what you want to autoschedule, and what result you expect by doing that.
2)
In MS Project 2007 in the Project-menu | Project Information window you can set the project's starting day (e.g. "today"). As long as you haven't linked your tasks neither changed MSP's default value regarding from where to schedule (default should be from the project's starting day), any new task should turn up with "today" as the default value in the task table.
In the Project Information Windows there is also a "today" date field. As far as i can understand, it's value is the system date value. If so, it's a dynamic field, and therefore changes every new date.
/Derek
IainB:
@DerekHal:
Good answer, but now you've gawn an' done it.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Chinese proverb.
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TaoPhoenix:
@DerekHal:
Good answer, but now you've gawn an' done it.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Chinese proverb.
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-IainB (May 06, 2015, 01:44 AM)
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Ya gotta do both, Iain!
Police: "Why is this man dead, with a book next to him?"
Witness: "He starved while trying to learn how to fish. No one would give him dinner."
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