Special Checks for Project 2010
Steelray Project Analyzer is the only schedule analysis tool with special checks for Project 2010.
Project 2010's User Controlled Scheduling: Increased Flexibility . . .
In Project 2007, when you enter a new name in a blank task row, the application fills in default values for a start date, an end date, and a duration. It needs those values to calculate the schedule. Project 2010 introduces user controlled scheduling, which allows you to manually schedule a task based on the information available to you. In manually scheduled mode, when you enter a task name, the dates and duration remain blank (just like they would in Excel). You may also enter textual information in duration and date fields (e.g. "Ask Joe").
. . . and an Increased Need for Vigilance
This increased flexibility of user controlled scheduling comes at a price; you must be even more vigilant that your schedule quality remains high. What does this mean? A high quality schedule has a good critical path, which means that the critical path reflects reality and that slippage in one part of the critical path affects the project's finish date proportionally.
With Project 2010's manual scheduling mode, the need for Steelray Project Analyzer become a must have. Here's why:
- The main purpose of Microsoft Project is to calculate the finish date of your project. To do that, you need a believable critical path.
- A believable critical path is one that flows smoothly, meaning delays in one part of the critical path affect everything after that part.
- Manually scheduled tasks (where you manually enter the dates instead of allowing them to be calculated) don't allow the scheduling engine to properly do its job. Until you make a task automatically scheduled, you won't know for sure whether it is truly part of the critical path.
As a Microsoft Project Partner, we've been using Project 2010 since the first beta release, and we've added several more checks to Steelray Project Analyzer to quickly identify potential problems in your Project 2010 schedule.
New Project 2010 Checks in Analyzer
The following new criteria are specific to Microsoft Project 2010:
- checks whether the default scheduling mode option is set to manual scheduling.
- identifies inactive tasks, a new feature in Project 2010.
- identifies manually scheduled tasks, which may inhibit the calculation of an accurate critical path.
- identifies tasks in the schedule with a warning flag (new in Project 2010).
- identifies tasks in the schedule with an invalid (e.g. textual) duration.