Goal: Identify schedule problems - Project

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Goal: Identify schedule problems

Applies to: Microsoft Office Project 2003

Applies to
Microsoft Office Project 2003 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Microsoft Project 2000 and 2002

After your project begins and you are tracking the actual progress of tasks (task: An activity that has a beginning and an end. Project plans are made up of tasks.), you can review your schedule (schedule: The timing and sequence of tasks within a project. A schedule consists mainly of tasks, task dependencies, durations, constraints, and time-oriented project information.) to identify problems or potential problems with task schedules. Identifying or anticipating problems enables you to take care of any issues that may affect the project's finish date.

Tip This article is part of a series of articles that describe a broad set of project management activities. We call these activities "goals" because they are organized around the project management life cycle: Build a plan, track and manage a project, and close a project. The project life cycle is outlined in The Project Map, where you can find a link to an article about each project management goal. Most of the articles include links to supporting information or procedures that you perform in Project or Project Server. These "goal" articles were designed to help you not only use Project but also better understand project management.

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See all goals on the Project Map

number 1 Analyze your schedule After you've designed a basic schedule, you should check it to discover problems or oversights that require adjustments. You can use a PivotChart® (PivotChart: Provides a graphical representation of the data in a PivotTable report, an interactive, crosstabulated report that summarizes and analyzes data. Use the Portfolio Analyzer to select the data that you display in a PivotChart.) or PivotTable® (PivotTable report: An interactive table that summarizes, or crosstabulates, large amounts of data. You can rotate its rows and columns to see different summaries of the source data, filter the data by displaying different pages, or display details.) to help you analyze the schedule for resource (resources: The people, equipment, and material that are used to complete tasks in a project.) or project problems.

Analyze or model project data in Project

Number 2 Compare two versions of a project You can perform a customized comparison of two project files from the same project and produce a detailed report (report: A format in which you can print schedule information that is appropriate for the intended recipients. You can use the predefined reports provided by Project or create custom reports.) to help you identify schedule problems.

Compare two versions of a project

Number 3 Determine if your project's finish date has changed You can view an overall summary of the project's dates compared with the baseline plan.

Determine if the project end date has changed

Number 4 Assess why the project finish date is delayed Review the factors in the schedule that could extend the finish date of your project.

Click all of the following that apply:

Show the critical path for your project to quickly find problem tasks. Tasks that fall on the critical path (critical path: The series of tasks that must be completed on schedule for a project to finish on schedule. Each task on the critical path is a critical task.) affect your schedule most because a delay of a critical task extends the finish date. Because the critical path may change as you modify your schedule, showing the critical path for your schedule helps you make decisions about what changes to make and how those changes affect the critical path.
Check task dependencies to review the dependencies (task dependencies: A relationship between two linked tasks; linked by a dependency between their finish and start dates. There are four kinds of task dependencies: Finish-to-start [FS], Start-to-start [SS], Finish-to-finish [FF], and Start-to-finish [SF].) for tasks on the critical path to make sure that they are accurate and necessary. Unnecessary or inaccurate task dependencies can cause your project to finish later.
Examine task constraints to see if you have any unnecessary constraints. Unnecessary constraints (constraint: A restriction set on the start or finish date of a task. You can specify that a task must start on or finish no later than a particular date. Constraints can be flexible [not tied to a specific date] or inflexible [tied to a specific date].) can limit the flexibility of your schedule by forcing tasks to start on certain dates or to use all available slack (slack: The amount of time that a task can slip before it affects another task or the project's finish date. Free slack is how much a task can slip before it delays another task. Total slack is how much a task can slip before it delays the project.). If you eliminate unnecessary constraints, Project schedules tasks based on their durations and relationships to one another.

Number 5 Determine which tasks are delayed or incomplete Review the tasks that are in danger of finishing late or that are incomplete and may delay the project.

Click all of the following that apply:

Check for tasks that are behind schedule by comparing the baseline (baseline plan: The original project plans [up to 11 per project] used to track progress on a project. The baseline plan is a snapshot of your schedule at the time that you save the baseline and includes information about tasks, resources, and assignments.) for your schedule with a later version of the project.
View resource assignments that are slipping from the finish date. If you are tracking actuals (actual: Information that shows what has actually occurred. For example, the actual start date for a task is the day that the task actually started.) and have saved a baseline, you can assess which assignments (assignment: A specific resource that is assigned to a particular task.) will probably finish later than the baseline finish date for the tasks.
View task progress with progress lines to view project status. If you are tracking actuals and want to quickly scan the Gantt Chart to see where your project is behind or ahead of schedule, you can enter a status date (status date: A date that you set [rather than the current date] for reporting the time, cost, or performance condition of a project.) or use the current date to show your progress compared with your current schedule or a baseline plan.

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