How to turn off all automatic scheduling in MS Project 2010?

Question

MS Project 2010 tries to be smart and tries to figure out correct dates and times.

Unsurprisingly, it fails miserably once scheduling becomes just a little unusual. So now I have the following problem:

1. When I set the end date right, MS Project changes the time it takes to something wrong.
2. When I set the time it takes right, MS Project changes the end date to something wrong.

Every time I set one of them to the actual correct value the other is set to a wrong value.

What can I do? What I would like best would be to just turn off all automatic guessing.

Answer 1

You probably want to set your task to "Fixed Duration" mode (double click on the task -> Advanced -> Task Type). You can also set "Fixed Duration" as the default mode for tasks in Options menu.

Here is why: MS-Project will always maintain the following equation consistent:

Duration = Work / Resources

• Duration are the working days between the start and end date of your task
• Work are the estimated number of hours it takes to complete the task and
• Resources is 100% if you assign one guy.

So whatever you touch, MS-Project will adjust the other values to make the equation consistent. Selecting "Fixed Duration" you tell MS-Project to modify the resource assignation value if you change the duration of the task. That's probably what you want.

Cheers, Frank