Hammocks in Open Plan
A hammock is an activity that does not influence the time analysis of a project but provides a means for reporting on the start and finish of a group of related activities.
Open Plan calculates the duration of a hammock based on the start of the earliest activity serving as the hammock start and the finish of the latest activity serving as the hammock finish.
To set up a hammock in Open Plan, you must first create an activity and define it as a hammock. Once you have created the hammock activity, you must define at least one relationship between the start of the hammock and the activity (or activities) that represent the beginning of the hammock. You can then define relationships between the finish of the hammock and the activity (or activities) that represent the end of the hammock.
Like subprojects, the durations of hammock activities are calculated each time the network is time-analyzed. In addition, resource requirements assigned to hammocks have no effect on resource scheduling calculations other than restricting resource availabilities for other activities.
Open Plan allows multiple starts and finishes to a hammock, and some or all of these can themselves be hammock activities. You cannot, however, define a hammock as a predecessor to a non-hammock. This restriction means that hammocks can never have any impact on the schedules of non-hammock activities.
Although hammocks have many flexible features, their use is limited by the fact that it may be difficult to determine exactly which activities are included in the given hammock. Codes and hierarchical projects are other features of Open Plan that can be used to summarize information without the restrictions imposed by hammocks.