Constraint Based Scheduling

Quick reference

• 00:04 So far I have talked quite a bit about how to use Microsoft Project.
• 00:09 Now, let's talk little bit about why to use Microsoft Project.
• 00:13 Well, Microsoft Project uses what's called a constraint-based scheduling engine.
• 00:18 And this is what makes Project unique over other tools like Microsoft Excel.
• 00:24 And I'm going to show you what that constraint-based scheduling engine
• 00:27 looks like.
• 00:28 First, I'm going to create a brand new blank project.
• 00:32 And we're going to just quickly create a very simple project to purchase a new car.
• 00:39 So let's go ahead and
• 00:42 type in a few task names.
• 00:51 With these tasks entered, you can see that now I can enter a duration,
• 00:56 a start date, and a finish date, and predecessors but
• 00:59 there's not really much going on right now.
• 01:02 Well, first of all,
• 01:04 Microsoft Project starts in what's called a manual scheduling mode.
• 01:08 You can see that down here at the bottom of the screen,
• 01:11 new tasks are manually scheduled.
• 01:13 What we're going to do is use auto-scheduling mode and
• 01:16 this is where the power of Microsoft Project comes in.
• 01:19 So I'm just going to go ahead and change this test to Auto Scheduled.
• 01:23 And then just click this little tick mark here at the bottom right of that drop down
• 01:28 and choose Auto Scheduling for the rest of the tasks.
• 01:31 Well, you can see this is a Gantt chart that shows up on the right-hand side.
• 01:36 The Gantt chart is a visual representation of the project based on
• 01:40 the number of days that each task will take.
• 01:43 So let's go ahead and add some durations to these tasks.
• 01:49 By default, Project puts in one day with a question mark and
• 01:52 that question mark just says, you haven't estimated this yet.
• 01:56 You haven't decided how long it will take.
• 01:59 Well, I do want this one to take one day.
• 02:02 So just type 1d, then I'll type 5d for
• 02:07 days, 2d for days, and 1d for days.
• 02:12 Now, I have a project schedule.
• 02:14 Now, what's interesting about this project schedule here,
• 02:18 let's draw our attention here to this 5-day task.
• 02:21 You can see that it starts on Tuesday but finishes on Monday.
• 02:27 Well, why is it that a 5-day task is taking longer?
• 02:31 Well, this is the first type of constraint-based scheduling that Project
• 02:36 uses and that's based on a calendar.
• 02:38 So Project by default assumes that you're not working Saturday and Sunday.
• 02:43 So this task, while it's showing blue over here in the Gantt chart, it's really
• 02:48 just saying I'm skipping over those two days and finishing it on Monday for you.
• 02:52 You can override this with various scheduling options and
• 02:56 we'll talk more about that in future lessons.
• 02:58 So at this point, you might be thinking, okay,
• 03:01 well if there's a calendar constraint that's nice.
• 03:04 But what about trying to figure out how long this whole project is going to take?
• 03:09 Because right now everything's starting at the same time.
• 03:11 So what you can do is use a column called the Predecessors, and
• 03:15 there's actually, another column called Successors.
• 03:19 And I'll just go ahead and insert that column by right clicking on a column name,
• 03:24 and choosing Insert Column, and typing Successors.
• 03:30 What you'll notice once I start doing a Predecessor,
• 03:33 the Successor column will start filling in accordingly.
• 03:37 Now, what let's watch what happens here.
• 03:39 Here's task number two.
• 03:41 It cannot happen until after I've done some research.
• 03:45 So I'll go ahead and type 1.
• 03:47 And what I'm going to do is link task 2 to task 1, and press Enter.
• 03:52 Now, look over here on the Gantt chart, and you can see My Tasks got pushed out.
• 03:56 And these blue highlights on this Start and
• 03:59 Finish is Project telling you that the dates have changed.
• 04:04 Now I'll go ahead again, and type 2 and 3, and
• 04:08 now I have a project schedule where Microsoft Project
• 04:13 helped to calculate the dates for me.
• 04:16 And this is what we call relationship constraints.
• 04:20 Another way Microsoft Project's scheduling engine uses constraints is with resources.
• 04:26 Now, with Resources,
• 04:28 you have a lot of options to turn certain features on or off.
• 04:32 But let's go ahead and just do something simple.
• 04:35 So I can show you the point.
• 04:38 Click the View tab, and click Resource Sheet and
• 04:41 I'm just going to add two resources.
• 04:44 I'll type in me, my wife.
• 04:47 Now, I'm going to type sorry, select Gantt chart.
• 04:50 So now let's go and look at this 5 day task.
• 04:54 I'm going to add me and it's still five days.
• 05:01 But now what happens if I add my wife?
• 05:03 Well, Project is saying, hey, you know what?
• 05:06 It may be the case that you want to reduce the duration because you have
• 05:10 two people doing the work.
• 05:12 And if that is the case, I can select that.
• 05:14 And the tasks will change it to 2.5 days.
• 05:17 You can see this blue highlighting is showing that it automatically adjusted
• 05:22 other dates in the project.
• 05:23 So that's a basic overview of Microsoft Project scheduling engine.
• 05:27 Of course, there's a lot more to it and there's a lot of features that we
• 05:32 can turn on and off to control how Microsoft Project calculates dates.
• 05:36 But what we talked about are the three primary constraint types.
• 05:40 One are dates based on a calendar,
• 05:43 another is predecessor and successor relationships.
• 05:47 And finally, we can use Resources to further constrain dates on a project.

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