The situation is that when initially setting up a fixed bid project, we may know a rough timeline for completing a group of work. But, we haven't yet defined all the tasks for that category of work. So, I've been setting up my task with the estimated hours, duration and making sure dates align with what was specified in the statement of work. But as soon as I add any tasks below (I tried making it a milestone too), then that task or milestone becomes a hammock/roll up and everything originally input on that task is lost including dependencies. I can set up a budgeted work column to retain the original budget hours, but I am wondering if there is a similar field to use for duration or for the due date. Otherwise, the duration and date rollups change and that info is lost.
What is the best practice for this case? I would assume there are other organizations that add a task after a project has started that would encounter this same scenario. I know you can set up a baseline schedule, but that seems a little different since i'm adding tasks. I only care about the comparison so that I am managing to the estimated budget hours for a hammock task. Is it best as I set up a project to set up dummy sub-tasks so that they are already hammock tasks/milestones? In effect placing all the estimate info into the sub-level instead of the milestone level? And then add more tasks and adjust continually? This approach seems clunky... Please demonstrate the best way to do set this up.
Thank you.
