Published Master Schedule Opens Working Schedules

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    • #414718
      Richard Lynch
      Participant

      Hi All,

      I have a situation that when I publish a program level Master schedule with Subprojects on an enterprise PWA Server all my subprojects and Master project publish as per normal expectations. All reporting data bases and PWA webpages etc all get updated with the correct infomation.
      The problem is that when I open the published Master schedule the next day, it opens the working subproject schedules… This is a major problem as one of the subprojects was used to run a scenario that shifted the total program by 2 months including the Go-live….

      Is there a setting in PWA i should check (i have admin rights) to prevent this corruption of information from the working database into the Published database of PWA…

      Thanks
      Richard

    • #414720
      Larry Christofaro
      Participant

      Hi Richard, probably not the answer you are looking for but best solution is to correct the project in problem. Master projects is all about integrating schedules. Recommendation might be to keep the master project unpublished until all projects are updated correctly.

      There are other options to master projects that you can consider. The Deliverables features is one option. There are also other third party tools that provide solutions, but at a cost.

      You might already know this, but hope it helps…

    • #414721
      Daryl Deffler
      Participant

      Good Morning Richard
      I haven’t played too much with master/sub projects, but one question comes to mind.
      Why do you have a “What If” scenario schedule included in your published master schedule?
      It seems to me that the easiest solution is to simply remove that schedule from the master. There are formal steps for decoupling the two schedules (which I’d have to research), but you might be ably to inactivate the sub-project task in the master schedule. Just a thought.
      If the problem schedule must be included because of actual hours, other work, or other scenarios, then Larry is spot on. The problem needs to be corrected in the sub-project schedule.

    • #414722
      Larry Christofaro
      Participant

      Great point Daryl. If it is truly a what-if scenario, you might want to use inactive tasks to indicate these tasks as what-if. The PM can understand and document the impact of the scenario, then inactivate the tasks before publishing the project until the scenario is approved. Make sense? Are we close?

    • #414728
      Richard Lynch
      Participant

      Hi Larry,
      Thanks for the input.

      Couple of points for consideration.
      1. I have 7 integrated (hard Linked) sub-projects in the Program. Total line count across the program is approx 15k lines
      2. I have enterprise level outline codes to group the critical path activities cross projects within the program so that I can open up the master and subprojects and Run a high level gantt view. (design,build,Unit Test, System Test, SIT UAT OAT, Training, DATA load, Environment Prep, Go- live etc)
      3. the Sub-projects all update working schedule through COB Wednesday nights. I open Program schedule (Master and subs) on Thursday to review impacts to program timeline and then Publish the program to the portfolio. I then run all time line and exception reports Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

      This week one the project schedulers jumped into a “working” schedule early Friday morning and made changes to the sub-project. When i re-ran a report from the published schedule to change gantt bar colour (blame the boss) I identified a significant slip to the timeline dates.

      This highlighted that the Program master schedule (published to PWA) is loading information from the Working schedule (non-published).

      I’ve never come across this pollution of the published schedule with info from the working schedules.

      We use the PWA Test server for scenario analysis and What Ifs.
      We use the deliverable functionality of Server and hyperlinks to Change requests and Sharepoint based Risks and Issues and document repositories.

      Thanks.

    • #414730
      Larry Christofaro
      Participant

      Richard, are you opening the working version of the Master project (the default open)? If you are, try opening the published version. Access the project open dialog box and select open from the Published store. That will automatically open the project read only. To the best of my knowledge, opening the working version will automatically update to the working versions of the sub-project. Another try is to open up the master project read only. I’m not sure that will work and I don’t have a master project on hand to test. Please let us know how that works.

    • #414731
      Richard Lynch
      Participant

      Hi Larry,
      Definitely opening the Published version from the Server and it is pulling in the correct status date. However i ran a test with the project scheduler to update a specific line in the sub-project (working version).
      When I open the published program master file the updated working file info came across..
      My understanding was that the Reporting Data store (published) is completely separate from the working files and that the publish function moves a copy of the working files to the reporting database and SharePoint interface.
      Feeling confused and thats a good effort as I’ve been working in PWA on large programs for a long time as Senior PM and Program master Scheduler….
      Richard

    • #414735
      Larry Christofaro
      Participant

      Wow, if what you are saying is true (and I’m not doubting that) then I’m also surprised. Hard to believe that the published version master project is pointing to the working version sub-projects. I agree that it copies the file during a publish, but I would assume it fixes the pointers to the associated sub-projects accordingly. Not sure I have another thought on how to handle the scenario, but something that PMs should know. I learned something on this forum. Maybe someone else an pipe in with additional information and ideas.

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