Every so often I am asked to reproduce a project management technique in MS Project that is not a named feature in the software. Such is the case in this blog entry regarding “hammock” tasks.
A hammock task is a task that has a variable duration. The duration
is controlled entirely by other tasks in another or the same project. The start
and finish of the hammock is linked to the other tasks start or finish. The
duration of the hammock is recalculated when the linking tasks change their
dates.
Opinions about hammock tasks range from “don’t do it!” to
“always drive your level of effort tasks with the technique”. It’s easy to set
up a hammock task but there are caveats that you need to know before using the
technique in a production environment. I’ll cover some of those in this blog
entry as well.
A hammock task looks pretty inconspicuous:
The task names point out their function. The start of the
hammock is the paste linked start date from “Hammock Start Link” which I
formatted in bold red. The finish of the hammock is the paste linked finish
date from “Hammock Finish Link” formatted in bold green. Note the indicators in
the lower right of the hammock tasks date cells. These indicators are visual
markers telling us the dates are linked.
I will double the duration of task #2. This forces a recalculation and the duration
of the Hammock Task is changed to 6 days. The calculation may take a few
seconds, even on a very fast machine, so be patient.
Also note that this entire blog entry was made with Project
Pro in Manual Schedule mode, with a resource assigned at half time. This worked
well with a simple resource using the same calendar as the project and with no
overallocations. It is very likely that I would have to manually resolve any
task or resource scheduling issues in a more complicated project. This would be
true regardless of the scheduling mode selected.
Now for some caveats:
- Hammock tasks can be confusing to anyone reading your schedule. So include a note restating the purpose of the task. For example, is it to collect a level of effort for management resources? Synchronizing the project with other tasks or projects in a program schedule?
- Paste links can be lost easily, so visit the task and its position in your schedule often.
- Since a hammock task receives its dates as a paste link, the task probably should not have a predecessor or successor. If it is necessary to link with other tasks, revisit your need for a hammock task. Maybe a normal task will meet your needs?
- Hammock tasks are schedule driven and not resource driven. Be cautious when leveling resources. You might consider making the task a higher priority than other tasks so Project will skip the task when leveling the rest of the project.
