Hi again,

I'm going bonkers over project again

I created a template for others to be used. In the template, the plan dates and conditions work as desired.

Yesterday, I was able to adjust this plan to match my other projects plan dates. It took me ages to finally get the dates right.
Today, I was gonna do a How-to so that others won't have the same struggle...and it just won't work.



- template is scheduled from Project end date. Yet, all tasks in a specific case (included in a summary tasks) need to start as soon as possible.

So I set the first task 1 to Start No Later Than 25.08.2014.
As Task 2 has a SS relation to Task 1, I would expect it to also be 25.08., but it stays as is (17.07. in my case, as it was the templates start date)
Why?

I checked for any successors with constraint dates, for manually scheduled tasks, but all tasks seem clean.

I keep having this issue where dependencies aren't honored when they were before.

Help please?

When you schedule a project from a finish date, all tasks are constrained with an As Late As Possible constraint. so even though you have a S to S link between Task 1 and Task 2, it is still constrained with ALAP. Change the constraint to ASAP and it will honor the S to S relationship.

Constraints are stronger than links.

Thanks.
But I already changed all tasks in the respective phase to have the ASAP constraint, and still it won't honor the predecessor.

Tasks don't obey predecessors if:

There are constraints
There are actual dates against the tasks

Can you post a copy of the file so I can look? or post a screen shot as an attachment?

Hi Julie,

See attached file.
The area I keep having problems with is the Summary Task "Design" and all its subtasks.
Despite the "Schedule from Project End Date", the tasks need to start as soon as possible, on or after 25.08.
The project is purely milestone driven, duration is not driving in this case.

I figured giving Line 3 a Start No Later than 25.08. constraint and Line 5 a "3SS" dependency would do the trick, but it won't.

Maybe I'm missing something fundamentally, but I got it to work before (see attached screenshot).
Line 3 has a SNLT constraint of 25.08. and all others seemingly fall into line with a ASAP constraint.

Attached Images

Project_Template.jpg (110.4 KB, 14 views)

Attached Files

Project_Template.zip (70.2 KB, 8 views)

The template as you sent has a total project duration of 289 days. The finish date is set at August 24, 2015 and the calculated start date is July 17th, 2014. If I shorten the durations of tasks to align with your screen shot, I can accomplish what you show with a SNLT constraint on task 3.

With a project scheduled from a fixed finish date, the Start date of the project is calculated. Without constraining every single task you cannot accomplish the 289 days of duration starting on August 25.

So, what is the overall duration of your project?

A couple of other comments - all of your outline is one level off. The "A Project Name" task should be at line zero (Project summary task) and all other tasks should be out-dented by one level. I also wouldn't save a baseline in a template - leave the baseline values blank. I have re-set the tasks in the attached revised file

Attached Files

Revised Template.zip (70.2 KB, 12 views)

Hi Julie,

thanks for the feedback. Good points and already integrated into the template

Now I keep having one more issue: The duration in Line 0 won't change despite me changing the durations in the subtasks. The summary task considers these changes. Hence the project start date doesn't change and the SNLT constraint alone doesn't work.

You have a number of must start on constraints in your project which are interrupting the scheduling engine. I question the utility of constraints in a template. They will never be correct relative to the finish date assuming your projects don't all occur with the same finish date.

Hmmm, they do indeed have the same finish date, hence the scheduling from Project End date.

But how does this relate to the issue that Line 0 duration does not change, despite me changing the duration of Tasks? I changed the overall duration to 262 PDs, yet the Line 0 duration still says 289 PD and Start date of 17.07.

If you haven't changed the overall duration then the project summary task line will not change. You must still have a task that begins on July 17.

Filter the list of tasks looking for the July 17 start date. Post the file again and I can help more readily.