Dear fellow PP members,

With the introduction of MSP 2010, Microsoft came up with a new feature called “User-Controlled Scheduling”.

Since this name suggests that -until now- users had no control over a MSP schedule whatsoever, I immediately started to play around with it, in an attempt to get the facts behind this revelation.

Here is what I’ve discovered so far:

• Each line in MSP 2010 is either in “Auto Scheduled” or “Manually Scheduled” mode. (there is no escape)
• Auto Scheduled
  • In this mode, (summary) tasks and milestones behave completely identical to the classical pattern. In other words: a schedule that entirely consists of Auto Scheduled lines will yield the exact same results as what you were used to.
• Manually Scheduled
  • This is like switching a specific line to manual Calculation Mode, which means schedule logic is ignored, until you recalculate all dates by clicking on “respect links”
  • The manual summary tasks have a profound impact on the scheduling behavior
  • For instance, it sets an invisible start-no-earlier-than constraint on all Auto Scheduled tasks directly underneath the (manual) Summary task.
  • Float is calculated by the difference between the finish date of the Summary task and the latest finish date of the tasks directly underneath.
  • Summary Task hierarchy is ignored, so a manually-scheduled sub phase can lie outside the parent Summary (dates) and still show positive total float, based on the previous calculation.
  • This impacts the entire path obviously, and despite the visible free float generated by the imposed (invisible) start-no-earlier-than constraints, all tasks on this path can still have the same negative total float. ?!?

To be honest this feature gives me the creeps, as any common definition of critical path (and float) will go completely out of the window.

Really curious what other experience is out there…. (not just float calculation, but also any sensible application of manually scheduled (summary) tasks in a true CPM network.

Thanks,

Niek.