Good Day to All,
I am a relative newbie to the PL and am currently carrying out a project, whereby there are a lot of tasks to be completed per week by a varying number of resources and I was wondering if anyone uses any tools to control the tasks and the issuing of tasks and completion of task updates. I have in the order of 6000 tasks to be performed over a month or two and would appreciate any tips on a way forward. I have all the tasks set up in Microsoft Project, but can't see a good way to control these tasks and to maintain a high visibility of status.
Many thank in advance,
Tom
Controlling a High Number of Tasks to be Peformed
Hi Tom
After trying different ideas we came back to using an Excel based task monitor. We can configure it exactly how we want to and making changes to the format is very quick.
Conditional formatting and the sort features are very useful i.e. orange when a task is 1 week from it's deadline, red when it becomes late, sort to show everything by team name, in order of due date etc.
On another note, I do wonder whether the Project Manager should be controlling this many (6,000) task level activities? You may run the risk of falling into the micro-managing trap.
I like to capture key deliverables in the project plan but the finer detail of how to achieve it is delegated to the specialist Team Managers. I normally request team plans and the Excel task monitors from them so I can review progress against my top level plan.
After trying different ideas we came back to using an Excel based task monitor. We can configure it exactly how we want to and making changes to the format is very quick.
Conditional formatting and the sort features are very useful i.e. orange when a task is 1 week from it's deadline, red when it becomes late, sort to show everything by team name, in order of due date etc.
On another note, I do wonder whether the Project Manager should be controlling this many (6,000) task level activities? You may run the risk of falling into the micro-managing trap.
I like to capture key deliverables in the project plan but the finer detail of how to achieve it is delegated to the specialist Team Managers. I normally request team plans and the Excel task monitors from them so I can review progress against my top level plan.