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> What's a Manual Task? It's a task in a schedule that has its dates hardcoded and thus will not move, which is really insanely wrongheaded. A scheduling tool l

by vaduz 6y ago

> What's a Manual Task? It's a task in a schedule that has its dates hardcoded and thus will not move, which is really insanely wrongheaded. A scheduling tool like this is, at a basic level, all about assembling a list of tasks with durations (and, ideally, assigned resources and work and costs) that are connected by a chain of logic. If an early task is delayed 3 weeks, you'll see that in later tasks that depend on the first task. [...] A "Manual Task" just ignores all that. That's assuming that all your tasks are movable. If there is a task that can only be completed in a certain time period (and there are some activities that you cannot or will not move in any organisation), you plan around it. It will not move just based on your whims or your schedule. And yes, it can mean that your auto-schedule makes no sense if something gets delayed and the task causes your critical path scheduling not to make sense any more, but that is the price you pay in the real world. It's a weird hill to die on. > Imagine Excel introduces a feature called Manual Math that allows you to override the rules of arithmetic. If you want the total to say 10,000 but the column has entries that sum to 12,234, just turn on Manual Math! Imagine if someone was able to type in a flat, straight up not calculated number in a calculation spreadsheet, overriding any formula that you have put in. The world would end.

ubermonkey 6y ago
You're thinking of this the wrong way (and, not to put too fine a point on it, NOT in the way project management professionals do). A critical path project has a chain of tasks. Task A must complete before B which must complete before C, and so forth. If A is delayed, but you've turned off the critical path engine by making C a "manual task", then C's forecast dates *WILL NOT REFLECT* the anticipated move to the right as a result of A's delay. This is a HUGE problem. You rely on forecast dates being live, and showing true projections of reality (or as true as possible). You can even seat deadlines, and generate alerts if a task isn't going to meet one. But if you nail something down because it quote-unquote can't slip, you're preventing the software from telling you when a slip is coming. That is very, very, very dumb. It's also entirely predictable that someone on HN would try to tell me it isn't. And yes, you can put literal numbers in spreadsheets. But bad things DO happen when people represent values as sums (or as otherwise calculated based on other values) when they are in fact not. That's what "manual tasks" are.

by vaduz 6y ago

ubermonkey 6y ago

You're thinking of this the wrong way (and, not to put too fine a point on it, NOT in the way project management professionals do). A critical path project has a chain of tasks. Task A must complete before B which must complete before C, and so forth. If A is delayed, but you've turned off the critical path engine by making C a "manual task", then C's forecast dates *WILL NOT REFLECT* the anticipated move to the right as a result of A's delay. This is a HUGE problem. You rely on forecast dates being live, and showing true projections of reality (or as true as possible). You can even seat deadlines, and generate alerts if a task isn't going to meet one. But if you nail something down because it quote-unquote can't slip, you're preventing the software from telling you when a slip is coming. That is very, very, very dumb. It's also entirely predictable that someone on HN would try to tell me it isn't. And yes, you can put literal numbers in spreadsheets. But bad things DO happen when people represent values as sums (or as otherwise calculated based on other values) when they are in fact not. That's what "manual tasks" are.