Playing What-If Games
There’s more than one way to skin a cat—or plan a project. The
project stakeholders may ask for the moon. Then when they see how much
it costs to land on that hunk of rock, they might backpedal and ask for
alternative plans. How much less would it cost if we cut this portion
of the scope? How much longer will it take if we add these change
requests to the plan? And invariably, why can’t we do all this extra
work in the same timeframe and for the same cost? Project 2010 has two
new features to help you evaluate alternatives: inactive tasks and the Compare Project feature. This section shows you how to use both.
If nothing seems to shorten the schedule or reduce the budget, a
reduction in scope may be in order. You don’t get to eliminate scope;
only the stakeholders can, and even then, only if the project customer
approves. Decisions have a way of changing, so making tasks inactive
(new in Project 2010) is a great way to cut scope. Should the
stakeholders decide to revert to the original plan, you can reactivate
the inactive tasks without skipping a beat.
Tip
Inactive tasks also work well if you want to document nice-to-have work. Create tasks, assign resources, and
fill in other fields; then make the tasks inactive. Their values are
visible (and editable) but don’t affect your project schedule. If you
find that the project has the time and budget for the work, you can
make them active.
Making tasks inactive removes their values from your project’s
rolled-up schedule and cost. However, the tasks, their resource
assignments, and field values remain in the plan, as Figure 14
shows, so you have a record of what you cut out. You can edit inactive
tasks as you do active tasks. If you reactivate the tasks, you don’t
have to re-enter any information.
Changing tasks to inactive is a snap: Select one or more tasks in a
task-oriented view and then choose Task→Schedule→Inactivate. The
inactive tasks immediately change to gray with a strikethrough line
drawn through their values in the table area. However, you can edit an
inactive task’s values by double-clicking it to open the Task
Information dialog box or by editing directly in the table cells.
To reactivate a task, select it, and then choose Task→Schedule→Inactivate once again.
For more involved what-if games, it might be useful to make a second
copy of your Project file. With a backup safely in place, you can edit
to your heart’s content while keeping both the original file and the
new one. That way, you can examine both options in detail to see which
one is better. For example, you may save copies of a Project file to
compare changes in the critical path as you shorten it or at different
stages of project execution. No longer must you open files side by
side, using your left and right index fingers as you scan through the
corresponding fields in each file. In Project 2010, the Compare Projects feature simplifies these types of comparisons.
Say a remodeling contractor prepares a plan for remodeling your
condo to set up a home theater. The price is higher than you had hoped,
so you ask for an alternative plan that doesn’t cost as much. You want
to see exactly where the contractor cut costs, though, so you don’t end
up with the right price and the wrong TV. The Compare Projects feature
produces a comparison report that compares values from two files side
by side along with a column showing the difference between the two. In
addition, the timescale includes two sets of task bars, so you can
visually compare when tasks start and finish.
Here’s how to compare two versions of the same project:
-
Open the two project files you
want to compare and select the one that’s your current version. Then
choose Project→Reports→Compare Projects.
The Compare Project Versions dialog box opens with the “Compare the
current project (<project_name>) to this previous version” label
at the top, where <project name> is the name of the active
project.
-
In the drop-down list, choose the name of the previous version you want to compare with your current file.
If the other file isn’t open, click Browse and then, in the Open dialog box, choose the file you want to compare.
Note
Compare Projects uses current to identify the values for the first file you selected and previous
to identify the values for the file you selected in the Compare Project
Versions dialog box. That’s why it’s easier to keep things straight if
you select your current file version first.
-
In the Task Table drop-down list,
choose the table that contains the fields you want to compare. In the
Resource Table drop-down list, choose the table that contains the
resource fields you want to compare.
The comparison table that Compare Projects builds can become
unwieldy, because it includes three columns for each field in the
original table you selected. To focus on the information you care about
most, consider creating a custom table that contains only the fields you want to compare—for example, for tasks, Task Name, Duration, Finish Date, and Cost.
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Click OK.
A message box tells you it’s creating a comparison report, and windows flicker on and off for a few seconds. When things calm down, you see a Comparison Report window at the top and the two versions you’re comparing at the bottom, as Figure 15 shows.
A legend on the left side of the Comparison Report window identifies the symbols it uses:
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Tasks that appear only in the current project include a plus sign.
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Tasks that appear only in the previous version include a minus sign
to indicate that the task has been removed in the current version.
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The task bars for the current version are green.
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The task bars for the previous version are blue.
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For each column in the table you selected, the Comparison Report
displays three columns. For example, Cost: Current shows the cost for
the current version. Cost: Previous shows the cost for the previous
version. And Cost: Diff shows the difference in the values between the
two versions.
The Compare Projects tab appears between the File tab and the Task
tab on the ribbon. You can choose Task Comparison or Resource
Comparison to switch between the task table and resource table you
specified. By choosing Compare Projects→Show→Filter and then choosing a
filter, you can view different aspects of the comparison. For example,
in the drop-down list, choose “Changed items” to see only the tasks or
resources that changed between the versions. You can also view items
that appear only in the current or previous version. If you want to
view a task in each version, select the task in the Comparison Report
window and then choose Compare Projects→Compare→Go to Item. Project
highlights the task in the windows for each version.
