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 a little bit about why to use Microsoft Project.
• 00:12 Well, Microsoft Project uses what's called a constraint based scheduling engine.
• 00:19 And this is what makes Project unique over other tools like Microsoft Excel.
• 00:25 And I'm gonna show you what that constraint based
• 00:27 scheduling engine 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,
• 00:37 to purchase a new car.
• 00:39 So let’s go ahead and type in a few task names.
• 01:00 With these tasks entered, you can see that now I can enter a duration.
• 01:05 There's a start date and a finish date and predecessors, but
• 01:09 there's not really much going on right now.
• 01:12 Well, first of all,
• 01:13 Microsoft Project starts in what's called a manual scheduling mode.
• 01:17 You can see that down here at the bottom of the screen.
• 01:20 New tasks are manually scheduled.
• 01:21 What we're gonna do is use auto scheduling mode and
• 01:25 this is where the power of Microsoft Project comes in.
• 01:29 So I'm just gonna go ahead and change this task to auto scheduled and
• 01:32 then just click this little tick mark here at the bottom right of that drop down,
• 01:37 and choose auto scheduling for the rest of the tasks.
• 01:41 What you can see is there's a Gantt Chart that shows up on the right hand side.
• 01:45 The Gantt Chart is a visual representation of the project,
• 01:49 based on the number of days that each task will take.
• 01:53 So, let's go ahead and add some durations to these tasks.
• 01:58 By default, Project puts in one day with a question mark, and that question mark just
• 02:03 says you haven't estimated this yet, you haven't decided how long it will take.
• 02:09 Well I do want this one to take one day, so
• 02:11 I'll just type 1D, then I'll type 5D for days.
• 02:17 2D for days, and 1D for days.
• 02:21 Now I have a project schedule.
• 02:23 Now what's interesting about this project schedule here,
• 02:26 let's draw our attention here to this five day task.
• 02:31 You can see that it starts on Tuesday, but finishes on Monday.
• 02:36 Well why is it that a five day task is taking longer?
• 02:40 Well this is the first type of constraint based scheduling that project uses, and
• 02:45 that's based on a calendar.
• 02:47 So project by default assumes that you're not working Saturday and Sunday.
• 02:52 So this task, while it's showing blue over here in the Gantt chart, it's really just
• 02:57 saying I'm skipping over those two days and finishing it on Monday for you.
• 03:02 You can override this with various scheduling options.
• 03:05 And we'll talk more about that in future lessons.
• 03:07 So at this point you might be thinking,
• 03:09 okay well if there's a calendar constraint, that's nice.
• 03:13 But, you know,
• 03:14 what about trying to figure out how long this whole project's gonna take?
• 03:18 Cuz right now everything's starting at the same time.
• 03:21 So what you can do is use a column called the predecessors.
• 03:25 And there's actually another column called successors, and I'll just go ahead and
• 03:29 insert that column by right clicking on a column name, and
• 03:32 choosing Insert Column and typing successors.
• 03:39 What you'll notice once I start doing a predecessor,
• 03:42 the successor column will start filling in accordingly.
• 03:46 Now, what, let's watch what happens here.
• 03:49 Here is test number 2.
• 03:50 It cannot happen until after I've done some research.
• 03:54 So I'll go ahead and type 1.
• 03:55 And what I'm gonna do is link task 2 to task 1, and press enter.
• 04:01 Now look over here on the Gantt chart and you can see, my task got pushed out.
• 04:06 And these blue highlights on the start and
• 04:08 finish is Project telling you that the dates have changed.
• 04:13 And I'll go ahead again, and type 2 and 3, and now I have
• 04:20 a project schedule where Microsoft Project helped to calculate the dates for me.
• 04:26 And this is what we call relationship constraints.
• 04:29 Another way Microsoft Project's scheduling engine uses constraints is with resources.
• 04:36 Now with resources you have a lot of options to turn certain features
• 04:40 on or off.
• 04:41 But let's go ahead and just do something simple so I can show you the point.
• 04:45 Click the View tab, and click Resource Sheet,
• 04:48 and I'm just gonna add, two resources.
• 04:51 I'll type in Me, My Wife.
• 04:56 Now I'm going to type, sorry select Gantt chart.
• 05:00 And over here we're going to add to this five day task, me.
• 05:05 Let's just say that I thought it was just going to be me doing the test driving.
• 05:10 So you can see the task is still at five days.
• 05:12 Now watch what happens to the task when I choose my wife.
• 05:17 The task just split in half to two and a half days.
• 05:20 And it changed the duration of the overall project.
• 05:23 And I can see how that 2.5 days affected the start and finish date
• 05:29 of a number of different tasks, by way of their highlighting in that blue color.
• 05:33 So that's a basic overview of Microsoft Project's scheduling engine.
• 05:37 Of course there's a lot more to it and there's a lot of features that we can turn
• 05:41 on and off to control how Microsoft Project calculates dates.
• 05:46 But what we talked about are the three primary constraint types.
• 05:50 One are dates, based on a calendar.
• 05:53 Another is, predecessor and successor relationships.
• 05:57 And finally, we can use resources to further constrain dates on a project.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.