Understanding manual and auto scheduling

Project has two task modes for scheduling tasks. When you set the task mode to Auto schedule, the program automatically calculates when the task should occur and how long it should take. With Manually scheduled mode you can fill in whatever task information you have, set the tasks start and finish dates and a few other nifty tricks. In this schedule Identify Requirements and Draft Budget are both auto scheduled tasks. I can see that by the icon in the Task mode cell.

Well with Auto schedule tasks Project uses the task durations and the link between the tasks to figure out the start and finish dates. So for example, the 25 days determines the finish date, based on the start date for identify requirements. And then, because of the link, Draft Budget has a start date right after the finish of Identify Requirements and its duration determines its finish date. In addition, if a change the duration of Identify Requirements, let's say to 20 days, you can see thar Project recalculates the finish date for that task, because of the new duration and it also recalculates the dates for the next task, Draft Budget because of the link.

With Auto Scheduled tasks Project uses task values, the links, and resource assignments to figure out those start and finish dates. We'll explore how each of these components affect scheduling throughout this course. Now Manually Scheduled tasks are kind of like do-it-yourself scheduling, but they actually come in handy for several reasons. The first one is if you don't have all the information you need about a task. So let's say, you have a new task, review requirements with management, and literally that's all you know.

Well in that case, we can insert a Manually Scheduled task. So I'm going to click ID 5 because I want the new task to come in above that and then I go and I insert a new task and I can just type the name of the task, when I press the Down arrow, you can see a couple of things. First of all the Task mode cell has a pushpin with a question mark. Well, the pushpin says it's manually scheduled and the question mark says, that there's more information you are going to have to fill in before this task is done.

And you can see that the Duration, Start and Finish are all empty. Well let's say, you have to talk to your manager about when this meeting is going to happen. So you can type yourself a note. Just put it in the Start field. So now the note is there and you can remind yourself what you have to do. Well let's say, some time has passed and your manager gets back to you and says that the meeting is going to be September 5. Well, you can go back to the Start cell, type in September 5 and you can see that a cap appears in the timescale to say that well, at least you have a start date, but that's still all you have.

With Manually Scheduled tasks you can actually pin both dates to the calendar. So for example, if you have things like scheduled meetings or maybe training classes that have specific dates, you can type both dates in the Start and Finish field. So let's say, this meeting is going to be a two-day meeting, so we'll type September 6 into the Finish cell. Well now, a couple of things happen. First of all because there's a Start and Finish date, Project knows how long the task is, so it fills in the duration of two days.

You can also see that the taskbar has two end caps because you've got both dates and the question mark is gone from the pushpin because now you've provided all the information you have to; there's a third reason you might want to use Manually Scheduled tasks and that's if you're fairly new to scheduling and you just don't have time to master all of Project's other scheduling features, you can just come in create a quick task list, fill in a few estimated dates and you've got a schedule you can work with.

Auto Scheduled task simplify your work as a project manager because Project handles calculating when tasks should occur. But Manually Scheduled tasks are great, when you don't have complete task information yet, you want to set specific task dates, or you just want to blast out a quick and dirty schedule.