When making your schedules, which option do you prefer for entering the project finish deadline and why?
A) To enter a Finish Constraint to the Overall Project
B) To enter a Finish Constraint to the last activity
C) To enter a Finish Constraint to the Overall Project but in order to prevent positive float in critical path also enter buffer activity or activities


D) Do not enter a finish constraint (in this case keep in mind that the variance can still be tracked with comparison to baseline)

E. Assign a deadline to the last task in the project.

Thanks , two questions:

what is the difference of your answer from Choice B above?

And why this is better than the other choices?

Choice B is a constraint, not a deadline.

Why better? Deadlines do not interrupt the scheduling engine nor change calculation of total slack.

You're welcome.

I have almost always used no constraints. MY work is in civil engineering (mostly) where deadlines and constraints tend not to work. My job is to produce a workable, viable programme within the available time, and th esite team do their best to keep to it. Having no constraints/ deadlines means that as soon as th eprogramme is updated we get a revised planned completion date, and can react accordingly.

we also have client instructions, delays etc that need to be added into the programme and need to see these to assess any delay or benefit. by leaving the end date open, it is much easier to assess and evaluate current stage of work.

As a caveat, the contract completion date will usually be put into the programme as a Do Not Start Before, but this will only be used as a reference marker. Often (usually) this date will change anyway, and is therefore not a constraint or deadline as such.
My answer is based on site work (real world, if you like). If our project is overrunning I need to find a critical path and see i fwe can amend it - this is much easier with an unconstrained timeline, than one where a finish dare is forced and 90% of your programme shows as critical as it has been given negative float because of this.

This si not to say that the other options are invalid, but I think that the you need to consider the purpose and intention of the programme as well as the field it is being used in, which would be more relevent than an arbitary catch all answer.

Thanks Julie,

I tried the deadline option as you suggested on a small trial schedule I have. And as you said, it did not affect the calculation of dates, however it DID influence the total slack values, for that activity and the ones coming before that activity (or its predecessors). Or did I do something wrong?

I agree with you and this is practical and most widely used method. however theoretically, this should not be the case, as a project must have a definite finish date. SO I wanted to know what people are doing... And this would affect the performance reporting adversely

When I add a deadline beyond the schedule date, the Total Slack calculation is not affected. Certainly if I miss the deadline I expect to see negative total slack. Project 2010 SP-2