Microsoft® Project 2007 Bible

Chapter 9. Resolving Scheduling Problems

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding why scheduling conflicts occur

• Resolving scheduling conflicts

• Using the critical path to shorten a project

Scheduling conflicts are the bane of the project manager's existence. Scheduling conflicts typically fall into the following categories:

• Your project is taking longer than you had planned.

• Your resources are overassigned.

This chapter considers the first problem and focuses on identifying and then resolving scheduling problems; Chapter 10 focuses on the second problem.

Scheduling conflicts announce themselves in a number of ways. Changing views and filtering information by using the techniques that are described in Chapters 6 and 7 may identify some glaring problem that's inherent in your original logic. For example, if you filter your project to view only incomplete tasks or slipping tasks, you may spot some problems. More likely, however, you'll unknowingly create a problem by using a task constraint, which is explained in the next section.

Resolving Scheduling Conflicts

Project provides several techniques that you can use to resolve scheduling conflicts. This section covers the following strategies:

• Adding resources

• Using overtime

• Adding time

• Adjusting slack

• Changing constraints

• Adjusting dependencies

• Splitting a task

As you work through the following sections, I suggest that you tum on Change Highlighting if you previously turned it off. Change Highlighting will help you identify the tasks affected by any changes you ...