SOME project managers want or need more scheduling control over their projects. That is, they want to be able to manually enter durations, start dates, and finish dates without having those entries recalculate other aspects of the schedule.

Other project managers need a scheduling engine that automatically calculates dates as soon as they enter or change task information. When they enter a task duration, they want the tool to figure the task’s finish date, and when they make a change, they don’t want to have to manually compute all the ripple effects throughout the schedule.

New in Microsoft Project 2010 is the ability to choose whether a task is scheduled manually or automatically. By default, all new tasks are set for manual scheduling, although this default setting can easily be changed. Manually scheduled tasks can be switched to automatic scheduling, and vice versa. You can have a mixture of manually and automatically scheduled tasks within a project plan. Whether you schedule manually or automatically or use a mixture of both can depend largely on your project planning style, the development stage of the plan, and the complexity of your project.

Controlling the scheduling yourself or letting Project 2010 calculate the schedule for you gives you the flexibility you need as a project manager. But with this flexibility, more awareness and responsibility are needed. Like many other choices you make in Project 2010, your selection of manual or automatic scheduling for some or all of your tasks can significantly affect how you use other aspects of Project 2010. Such issues will be pointed out where relevant in this chapter and throughout the book.

Manually Scheduling Tasks

With manually scheduled tasks—also known as user-controlled scheduling—when you type a task name, no duration, start date, or finish date is assumed or calculated for you by Project 2010. In fact, the Duration, Start, and Finish fields are blank. You are free to leave them blank until you have more information. You can enter a duration without dates. You can enter a start date without a finish date. You can even enter text in the Duration, Start, and Finish fields. (See Figure 5-1.)

Figure 5-1. Enter as much or as little scheduling information as you like for a manually scheduled task.

Manually scheduled tasks are marked with the pushpin icon in the Task Mode field of the Gantt Chart. If you enter two out of three bits of scheduling information—such as the duration and finish date or the start and finish date—the task is marked with a pushpin icon. If you enter no scheduling information, or maybe just one bit—such as just the duration or just the start date—the task is marked with a pushpin icon with a question mark.

Manually scheduled task icon

The chart area of the Gantt Chart also provides visual cues about the information entered for a manually scheduled task. (See Figure 5-2.)

More information needed icon

Figure 5-2. The Gantt Chart shows any manually scheduled information in the chart area.

Even for manually scheduled tasks, Project 2010 does do a little calculation, but it’s the calculation that Project assumes you want. As you can see, the three bits of scheduling information Project 2010 is looking for are duration, start date, and finish date. If you have any two of these three, Project 2010 extrapolates the third. That is, if you enter duration and start date, Project 2010 fills in the finish date. If you enter duration and finish date, the start date is provided for you. If you enter start and finish dates, Project 2010 fills in the duration.

Inside Out: Project 2010 is like a spreadsheet on scheduling steroids

If you’ve ever used Microsoft Excel to set up a project schedule, manual scheduling in Project 2010 will feel comfortable and familiar. Enter your tasks and as much or as little scheduling information as you want. You don’t need to worry about calculations getting out of your control. As a bonus, Project 2010 draws Gantt bars and calculates a third bit of scheduling information from any two that you enter.

With manual scheduling, you get the control you had when you used Excel for certain tasks or projects. Project 2010 does only minor calculations and makes some “educated guesses” about your scheduling information without getting in your way. Then, if you decide you want Project 2010 to take over the headache of figuring dates and durations, you can simply convert the task to automatic scheduling. This way, you’re getting the best of both worlds, and as much (or as little) flexibility, control, and scheduling power as you might want in a given situation.

You can even add new columns as though you were using Excel. In Project 2010, you can insert a column and label it whatever you want. You don’t have to go through a lot of steps to create a custom field and then add the column, which was necessary in previous versions of Microsoft Project.

Note

For more information about adding new columns to a table view in Project 2010, see Using Fields.