WBS and Hammock Activities

haven’t encountered actually, but P3’s definition of Hammocks is that: it is to have one predecessor and one successor to define or drive its duration; I guess if the last activity in your WBS ends with the completion date and also serve as the successor activity to your Hammock, then I guess that’s where the problem occurs. (but i’m not sure)

The hammocks are summarising fine, the problem occurs when a hammock activity, within a WBS level, reaches 100% complete.

the only thing I can think of is to abandon WBS activities all together and convert them to hammocks.

I just created a simple test schedule.

it seems that you can only have WBS OR Hammock activities.

i don’t understand what you mean exactly, but I guess you’re referring to Activity Codes or coded activities against WBS..you can always roll-up activities to represent a summary but Hammock I guess has different function, it also summarises activities but in a different way I guess.

P3 has two summary activity types
- Hammock, which uses logic to summarise
- WBS, which uses WBS Code to summarise

I was using Hammock summary activities within a WBS summary activity and P3 couldnt handle it.


By the way... is there much work going on in Antarctia? :)

if you got spare one for me in Australia, then why not?

i can find out what exactly your problem is (if you don’t mind)

I hope that test file I emailed you demonstrates the problem clearly.

I have to admit that it’s the first time for me to see that kind of demostration/presentation (Test Project that you sent). I’m not professionally trained in P3, I just learned it by chance by myself. I usually worked on Activity Codes...but give me time and let me try!

cheers

you know what? I maybe stupid! but I suppose I’ll never use that kind of presentation; Why?; I think it’s conflicting, you got three (3) driving functions! WBS; Hammocks; and Tasks! and it would be very difficult to organize (at least from my experience). Why not try using Activity Codes? i’m not sure,.. you know better that I...

cheers

i suggest that you use rolled-up activities, but some are saying that it does’nt work in calculating exact Free Floats and Total Floats; i just don’t have the time to find it myself

The reason I use summary activities instead of rolled up summaries is because I need to record activity data (earned value and actual cost) at a higher level than my detailed schedule.

sorry, (maybe I just don’t understand it); but I’ve tried once using rolled-up with costs inputs and it works fine. I think it’s just a matter of organization, which you don’t have to conflict as one function might drive the other.

I think i’m not qualified to help you, I believe there were lots of authorized persons ’round here..

cheers

Hi All,

I was searching in all Forum the best “Forum Discussion Category” where I can place my question about Hammocks and I found your topic.

Although, my problem is not related to Hammock and roll up to WBS, I would like to forward my problem to the members to this discussion.

I have created some Hammocks for the purpose of allocating Man-hours and creating the man-hours distribution (based on early/late dates) using a trapezoidal curve.

I did it successfully but some hammocks did not show the proper late finish DATES according to the successors linked to Hammocks. I got some dates out of control.

My solution was to create Milestones with a mandatory finish DATE. I linked all the Hammocks to these Milestones so that the backward calculation of dates (late dates) was done correctly.

Does anyone have experienced same problem.

Looking forward any comment.

carmen

Hi Brennan ,

I read all your posts and created a test project & it seems to me that my project works well . my project has 9 activities , 3 task under 1 hammock & 2 task under another hammock & 1 task which is not under any hammock & 1 Wbs activity. all the activities have the same wbs code , i updated it and when the hammocks reach 100% , Wbs Activity works normal.

can u send your project to me , so i see what’s the problem & what’s the difference between my project & yours?

Hi Ali,

I have forwarded you the test schedule.

Try adding another activity, outside of your WBS summary, which finnished later than the activities under your WBS summary.

You will find that your WBS activity runs out to the overall completion date, not the completion date of the activities it is suppose to be summarising.

Thanks for your assistance with this.

Carmen, Your issue on Hammocks summarising float incorrectly is a bit off topic from WBS activities not summarising hammocks correctly, its probably worth creating a separate thread to work that one through. I would be interested in seeing a test schedule which replicates the problem you have described. Cheers, Brennan bwestworth@gmail.com

Hi Brennan,

Thanks for your answer. I got your E-mail and I will send the schedule in forthcoming days.

Give me some TIME, I am busy with JUN’07 Cut-off and I need to put the schedule in the same conditions when that happened. Do not forget that I did some tricks in oreder to get the proper late dates.

Thanks again & nice week

PS: Personally I do not like hammocks. I would rather work with codes for summarizing. Hammocks for me are the unwanted activities.

Brennan,

Fascinating issue. If you can send me the file please to chankc288-88@yahoo.com

Thanks

Hi Brennan

Long time no c
Try to answer your question, when a activity is marked with finished, all the effect of its successor logic is gone. As a result, if you only have one activity then your "Latest finish date" will become project completion date.

HTH

Alex

WBS activities don’t summarise correctly if there is a hammock contained under that WBS level.

try changing an updated (with actuals)WBS activity into a Hammock, Hammocks overrules actuals!

i don’t prefer to use Hammocks or WBS because you can never roll them up! therefore you cannot summarize them!