Microsoft Project - manage project with tasks that can be completed in any order

Question

0

Probably best described by example:

I have a project with 10 tasks of 1 day to be done by 1 resource. So they have to happen sequentially, easy to arrange by levelling or linking and the project will last 10 days. But this sets a task order, and it seems that Project expects them to be done in that order.

If they are, it is easy to get an indication from the standard reports about overall project progress. I can get a "late tasks" report which will show exactly that.

But the reality in our projects is that each task is done a bit at a time. So after 5 days, we are just as likely to have done 50% of all the tasks, or 100% of the last 5, as 100% of the first five and for us, that is equally satisfactory progress.

I have tried but I can't seem to find a way of knowing if the overall project is on track by work done regardless of task order. Is there an easy answer for this?

Answer 1

This can be handled by treating the tasks as though they all start on the same day and run for the full 10 day duration, while allocating the same resource at 10% availability to each task.

This is very similar to the following question: MS Project: Multiple tasks for one employee

There is also some information on this here: https://www.mpug.com/hidden-functions-in-projects-assign-resources-window/

Answer 2

If they can be done in any order, by a single resource, it is a single task

Welcome to pm.stackexchange!

If these can be done in any order, I will keep these as a single task of 10 days duration and assign it to that single resource.

after 5 days, we are just as likely to have done 50% of all the tasks, or 100% of the last 5, as 100% of the first five and for us, that is equally satisfactory progress.

After 5 days, any of the above combinations will show that task as 50% complete. I think you are unnecessarily adding complexity by splitting that into 10 tasks.