MS Project Best Practice Tips
October 7, 2009 by Ivor
Filed under MS Office Tips & Tricks
Here are 18 tips that make up “best practices” for using any version of MS Project:
1) Set the status date when reporting progress (up to the “status date”).
2) Autolink inserted or moved tasks should be turned Off.
3) Split In-progress tasks should be turned Off.
4) No unfinished work to the left of the status date.
5) No unstarted work to the left of the status date.
6) No started work to the right of the status date (you did not start tomorrow).
7) No finished work to the right of the status date (you did not finish tomorrow).
8) No logic on summary tasks (no predecessors, successors).
9) Detail tasks have predecessors and successors.
10) Detail tasks have at least one Finish to Start successor.
11) Resources assigned to detail tasks only, not summaries.
12) If you claim 100% on a task, it’s predecessors should be 100% complete as
well, unless there is a Start-to-Start Relationship.
13) Milestones do not have resources. Do you really need to work with resources in
the first place as this really complicates things a lot. There are other easier ways
to allocate task ownership.
14) Generally a milestone has predecessors OR successor, but not usually both
(this is optional).
15) There should never be negative lag on a task. Negative lag predicts the future
with certainty and that doesn’t exist.
16) Too much positive lag on a task probably indicates missing tasks, or incomplete
logic.
17) Constratint types: You want them to be As Soon As Possible as much as you
can. Start No Earlier Than, Finis As Late As Possible, and Finish No
Earlier Than are tollerable. Items like Must Finsh On, Must Start On, Finish
No Later Than, Start No Later Than are pretty much not a good thing.
18) Eliminate constraints other than ASAP as much as practical. A task with a
Start No Earlier Than 15/10/2009 is useless if the schedule logic has it
starting 01/11/2009.
