I'm trying to understand the update function in MS Project 2010 and I hope you can help.
Let's say I have a road-project where I have divided a task in to several activities based on where the task is performed. To simplify my example I will call the task "Build Road". Here are the example activities:
Originally, all activities are planned to be built in sequence (top to bottom).
After production start we begin having production problems on different stretches. To try and keep the schedule we decide to start working on several fronts.
So as a planner in this project I start to follow up the production.
To keep track of project finish date and to help manage the project i choose to Update the project and move unfinished work to report date.
I keep doing this continuously in the project and after a while my schedule looks like this:
Now my questions:
Is this a smart way to keep track of project progress? what are the risks? is there a better way?
Where can I find the new startdates for the remaining work on the different partial activities? MS Project 2010 gives me the new end dates (and project finish date) but I cant't find the start dates for the different partials.
What starts happening if I, mid-way, start to update the durations of some tasks because I have recalculated the project with new capacities? what do I have to keep in mind? For example to increase production to minimise delays.
I appreciate any input you can give on this! Thanks!
In this project there is not enough time to keep track of resources and work within MS Project so we are only working with durations (no resources or work in the .mpp).
(For those who know what flowline/line-of-balance is, this is an attempt to use flowline in an Gantt-environment when no flowline schedule application is avaliable.)
Best regards