Using both Project 202013 sub-projects in a master shell

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    • #413172
      Mick Campanis
      Guest

      I am responsible for creating an Integrated Master Schedule in Project using Project 2010. I have individual sub-project owners who are developing their sub-projects using both Project 2010 and 2013. Are their any issues that I will encounter if using a mixture of Project 2010 and 2013 files?

    • #413173
      Jigs Gaton
      Member

      Mick, in my experience it’s not a very good practice, even though theoretically everything should be OK. Something to put into your Risk Matrix! What I’ve seen the most is not incompatibilities between the data (.mpp is pretty stable), it’s all the rest that my go haywire. Visual representations within the interface, reporting and printing, etc. etc. and if you also have to consider folks OS environment: older software tends to run on older machines / OS’s, and that may introduce bugaboos as well. All that said, if round-tripping between 2013 and 2016, I would say no problem, but 2010 was not a good year.
      Cheers,
      Jigs

    • #413177

      Thanks for your insights Jigs. I am also wondering if we would experience issues if one sub-project user was using the “Standard” version and someone else was using the “Professional” version given there are some different features (e.g. active/inactive, etc.).

    • #413178
      Jigs Gaton
      Member

      Thx for the thx Nick. On Standard vs. Professional, I’ve run classes for years where I would always be using Pro and the students would use Standard, and I don’t recall any problem there…we would exchange files all day long, both simple projects and master plans all seemed to work fine, although we never go down into the weeds (VBA). Cheers, Jigs

    • #413237
      Oliver Gildersleeve Jr
      Guest

      Caution with 2010 Inactivate: It causes the follower to jump to the Project Start. When opened in 2016 and perhaps 2013, the following task Finish date remains as before the Inactivation. But on the table, “Schedule” you will see that the Late Finish goes to beginning of the Project. Since Total Slack is Late Finish minus Finish, you get BIG negative Total Slack. The fix in 2010 is to manually adjust the predecessors and successors to circumvent the Inactivated task.

      On a schedule created in 2016 and perhaps 2013, inactivating a task causes the successor task to take on the Start date of the Inactivated task.

    • #413238
      Thomas Boyle
      Guest

      Jigs’ comment, “2010 was not a good year,” made me laugh. From my perspective it was pretty solid, and in many respects 2013 and 2016 appeared to be a step down. I’ve only recently “upgraded” to 2016 (even 64-bit) on the newest machine. When moving files back and forth between versions, there are two main areas of concern:
      1. Active/Inactive. As already mentioned, inactive tasks are handled differently in the different versions. (Also Standard releases don’t allow modifying or manipulating the active flag, but the calculations are the same as Pro.) In 2010, an inactivated task is effectively removed from the schedule calculations, with otherwise unrestrained predecessors and successors being scheduled as open ends. I prefer that behavior, but most users don’t. When first introduced, Project 2013 inserted hidden FS links between the predecessors and successors of inactivated tasks, leading to behavior that most users seemed to like. If the inactivated task had overlapping predecessors or successors, however (e.g. SS or FF with a lag), then the new FS link could actually introduce a project delay. This may or may not have been fixed with a later update. Project 2016 seems to effectively compute the logic flow through most overlapping (inactive) tasks, though there still seem to be issues with mixed calendars and lags. I’ve not seen the late finish being pulled to the beginning of the project (with the resulting BIG negative slack) as described by Oliver; maybe it happens with reverse scheduling (which I never use).
      2. Resource Leveling. The default leveling rules seem to have been tweaked from 2010 to 2013 (and preserved from 2013 to 2016). In the absence of explicit priorities, the later versions seem to result in longer schedules.

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