Spinning my wheels

[hatman]

Anyone else frustrated by Microsoft Project? Well, I didn;t expect to be... it all seemed so simple... especially considering I am simply mining data from an existing file, and I'm doing so using Excel (there had to be a tie in).

Everything was going fine, until one of the users asked me why my macro was performing some random calculation on some of her durations. I re-assured her that there are no calculations... the values are simply reported as they come out of Project. She then proceeded to show me a print-out of her schedule, marked up in red ink with the differing durations that those very same tasks have in my Excel Program.

I won;t bore you with the details of the debugging and analysis I launched into. Eventually, my co-worker opened the Project file on her computer, and I opened exactly the same file on my machine using Prject at exactly the same time. The duration values were COMPLETELY different on the 2 machines. I haven't parsed this out, but a spot check shows that certain people can open the file, and the duration values match those that the file owner placed there. Other people (like me) open the same file on their machine, without making any changes, and all of those same values are different. The excel is fine, but some setting in Project is screwed up. Problem is, I can;t figure out WHAT that setting is, and none of the Project gurus have been able to advise me.

I;d be much obliged if anyone has any thoughts... I am quickly running out of resources who can help me, and I'm no closer to an explanation for this behaviour, much less a solution.

 

[Taul]

not sure if this is of any help to you, it is taken from the ms project tutorial. But I'm guessing you may have checked this already

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"If a resource’s workday is eight hours and he or she is assigned to work on a task at 100% Units (for eight hours of work), then the Duration is eight hours (one day by default).

Now let’s say you change the Units to 50%. Then the Duration becomes 16 hours or two days, because if a person is working half of an eight-hour day on this task, then it will take them 16 hours (two days) to complete eight hours of work.

Lots of people will attempt to argue with this formula, but save your breath and time by just accepting it. It is a Microsoft Project truism, and even if you do not agree with it, this formula is what Project uses"
*******

 

[Cindy Ellis]

Same as above...not sure this will help, but it seems that it has to do with calendars. One bit from help:
"If you change the working times on a calendar, remember that Project uses settings on the Calendar tab to determine how many hours define a day, week, or month. If the working time in a calendar differs from the Hours per day or Hours per week settings on the Calendar tab, the Duration field may not display the duration value that you expect. For example, if a calendar is set up with a four-hour work day, but the default hours per day is set to eight hours (in the Options dialog box), then a one day task will appear across two days. You may want to consider matching the calendar settings to the working time on the Calendar tab."
Another spot in help mentions "If you use Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 and you are connected to Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, calendars are implemented for your organization on Project Server. Contact your server administrator to see whether local calendars have been enabled on Office Project Professional 2007."
Could it be that some people have access to a Project Server calendar for the project, and others don't have that access?
(Just speculating, but since I use Project a lot, I'm interested in the answer).
Cindy

 

[hatman]

Thanx guys, you got me looking in a direction I didn;t expect. I ended up at this article, which got me thinking. In my attempt to capture only the pertinent parts of my particular scenario, I think I may have failed to mention something that may be very important. See if this starts to make sense:

1) Each scheduler is responsible for one or more pieces of hardware, including subassemblies.
2) Each scheduler creates and maintains a single individual Project file for each piece of hardware.
3) Each seperate Project file is built from a template that has all of the manufacturing facilities loaded in as resources.
4) Each scheduler builds his/her schedule, assigning resources, using no calendars, fixed duration workloads, creating links and basically massaging the schdeule through the lab as desired independent of any other hardware or influences.
5) A lab coordinator takes of these 50+ files and rolls them together into a single Master Lab Schedule, resulting in multiple pieces of hardware (tasks) that share the same resources at the same time.

You start to see where this is going? In order to maintain the relationship of Duration = Work/assignment Units, the Master Schedule must make an adjustment to prevent the resource capability from being exceeded. As a result, the durations of all of the tasks sharing the same resource get shortened.

What gets a little wild is that when I open a sub-file first, the hours are what the scheduler entered manually... then I open teh Master Schedule, and the hours from the sub-file I already have open get preserved in the Master File, but all of the other tasks sharing those resources get adjusted to make the math work. If I open the Master Schedule first, all of the tasks that share the same resources get EQUALLY adjusted to make the math work, so when I then open one o fthe sub-files, those adjusted durations get pushed down to the sub-file in the same session. Since I am opening all of these files readonly, none of these changes get saved, so I can reliably repeat it.

This explains why all of the schedulers have complained for years why the Master Schedule is always all screwed up, never showing the durations they actually enetered.

Feel free to shoot holes in my theory... but I think this explains the situation, if not how to fix it. Seems like the way that group has chosen to implement Project has resulted in behaviour they themselves don;t understand. Trust me, everyone in the department that I have spoken to either shrugs their shoulders or curses, but basically explains that "Project does soemthing screwy and messes up all the numbers I put in". If there is an individual who truly understand this, I haven't found them yet.

 

[hatman]

So it gets more interesting. After a morning spent playing with a bunch of these source files, what I discovered is that I can open a single source file, and the duration hours are what the scheduleres entered. Without changing ANYTHING, I simply press F9 to calculate now, and all of the durations with resources associated with them change... to exactly the numbers I see in teh global master file. So it seems that each individual schedule is broken before the owner even saves teh file. Worse, I open that file on the Owner's computer, press F9, and NOTHING CHANGES> As far as I can see, al of teh Tools->Options settings are the same... so what the heck is going on?