Team Planner in MS Project Professional

[Kish27]

Hi

I have a situation where I had a resource being overallocated on a particular day just by 0.13hr. Then I did a resource leveling and nothing happened still shows red man icon. (Resource leveling is set with Level only within available slack not checked).

Then I looked at task via the Team Planner and managed to move the conflict task slightly to the right and resolved the issue with small increase in cost.

However when I returned to my Gantt Chart view all my critical tasks that were highlighted in red in my Gantt chart view no longer is shown in red. I tried to display the critical tasks from the report ribbon shows nothing.

Question:- Why is this happening? How do I get my critical task highlighted in red again AFTER the adjustment made via Team Planner. 

Appreciate for any help from the community.

Best Rgds

kish

[#2]

Hi Guys
My apologies with regard to above discussion topic after investigating in detail I found that it was not the issue with the Team Planner. What happen was I lost the critical path after I did resource leveling.

My question now is why the whole critical path is loss? I can understand during leveling some tasks will get shifted and a new critical path will be there....but totally disappear surely this is not correct. Then how does MS Project calculate the project end date without a critical path.

How do I get my critical path display again as red AFTER resource scheduling?

Best Rgds
Kish

[#3]

kish27,
First of all check that the option to show a critical path is still checked (Format > Bar Styles < Critical Tasks). If that's checked, then I'd look at the Total Slack field or the Critical field. In the default mode any task with total slack greater than zero will NOT be critical.

John

[#4]

Hi John
Option for Critical Path is still checked. I added to the Total Slack Field and Critical Filed and did the leveling again. This is what I see:

All those critical task I had before leveling the Critical Field changed from Yes to No. The critical task before leveling the Total Slack field showed 0 and after the leveling all had 1 day in the field.

After leveling I had only one small task shown as critical which has a duration of 2 days, The project plan at the project summary line shows the project has a duration of 107 days and finishes about 5months from the start.

If the leveling had level most of the task and there is only one critical path as I mentioned what I am confused is how MS Project calculates the project end date? From my understanding is the longest path in the project is the Critical path and it is also determines the earliest date the project will finish. How does this information is derive for the one critical of duration of 2 days I have left.

I have attached the mpp file for your reference if u want to look at it. When u open the file you will see the resource conflicts red man and also the critical task highlighted in red. Just select resource level all and see what happens only one task remains that is critical.

Sorry could not attach the mpp I just can't see the attach option.
best rgds
Kish

[#5]

@Kish27 

You can't directly attach files to posts on this forum. You can either attach screen shots or you can make your file available via dropbox or other accessible places or you could e-mail me your file.

If after leveling, all tasks except one are showing a non-zero total slack then apparently the leveling process ended up injecting slack into your plan. Depending on the size and complexity of your file using "level all" can make finding out what happened a tedious process. You might try leveling just parts (i.e. selected resources) of your plan to narrow down the reason for the positive slack.

John

[#6]

@John-project 

Hi John

The project is not complex and I could easily go through leveling one resource at a time. There are only two resources in conflict. One is David at two task higher up in the file and Patricia conflicting at the two shown in snap shot below at Task 44 and 45. 

First I started to level David and no issues my critical tasks were all in tack with some slight variation on the dates etc which is expected.  Looks like David and the two task higher up in my files is not the cause my problem. So I reverted back again just before I level David.

Now I started leveling Patricia at Task 44 all my critical tasks that I had was forced injected as you said by one day of slack except Task 46. I revert back again and repeated for Task 46 and the results was the same. The culprit is in these two tasks with Patricia. I looked at it I just cannot see what is the cause of it unless I missing something here.

I could resolve this issue just by re-scheduling Task 45 to start with one day of lag from its  predecessor (44FS-1day). Then do Level all and all looks fine with no loss of my critical tasks.

But this does not answer my question  as to why my original problem of losing my critical task during leveling. I am just curious as to why Task 44 and Task 45 with Patricia as shown below is an issue so I can understand this and not to repeat this same mistake.

Your input much appreciated to my query.

Best Rgds

[#7 · Accepted solution]

kish27,
Taking a quick look at your screen shot it looks like task 44 has no successor and that's probably why it is not on the critical path. In a good plan every task should have a predecessor, with a few exceptions, but every task MUST have a successor, even if it's the final milestone.
John

[#8]

Hi John

You are right on this. **bleep** how I missed this link and it was glaring as well. I added the successor and all was good.

I guess this discussion can be closed. Thanks once again for your effort and being patience with my queries.

Just be before I end is there a utility/report where I can run to report on tasks that have missing successors so that in future we don't make the same mistake again.
Best Rgds

[#9]

kish27,
You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.
There aren't any built-in reports for general file auditing (e.g. summary line links, missing predecessors or successors, etc.) but it's easy enough to develop your own with a custom filter or series of filters. That's how I do it.

John