Deadline dates - any one use them?

[anovak]

Anyone make use of the Deadline dates at the task level or do you just
compare forecast against baseline?

Thanks,
Andy Novak
UNT

 

[Ueli]

Andy,

We (almost) always use deadlines to mark delivery dates. Entering the same
date as a 'must finish on' restriction on the task prevents the schedule from
updating dynamically. When the forecast for the start date of a task slips
behind the deadline, you get a nice graphical alert in the Gantt Chart and
can take measures to bring the task (or the whole project) back on track.

If you are using hard restrictions (must finish on) MSP tries to find a
solution for you when you update a task that affects the one with the
restriction. Those solutions are in general no the best, and you keep getting
popup alerts saying that due to restrictions MSP can't reschedule and so on.

Finally it´s all about dynamic scheduling, and I can recommend the great
book with the same name from Eric Uyttewaal. Even written for MSP 2003 it´s
still valid and very useful.

Hope that helps.

 

[alavinsky]

Anyone make use of the Deadline dates at the task level or do you just
compare forecast against baseline?

Thanks,
Andy Novak
UNT

I use them quite frequently in fact. They're typically used when you
have a date by which you absolutely must have something done. A lot
of inexperienced users set constraints for that scenario, but actually
the deadline is more appropriate.

I usually create a couple of custom fields around this, one being a
calculation of the difference between the finish and the deadline
(i.e. buffer), and one taking a measure of the difference between the
deadline and the baseline finish (original buffer), then comparing the
two (Duration1 / Duration2) which gives me buffer penetration for the
task.

It's a bit more complicated than that as you need to add a couple of
nested "if" statements to account for the tasks that have already
completed, or have no deadline, but you get the picture.

-A

 

[Rod Gill]

I agree. You should never use a date constraint for must finish by dates,
always use deadlines. Deadlines do affect the critical path and when a task
finishes after a deadline the indicator field flags the late finish and you
see immediately something needs to change for you to finish on time.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Marc Soester [MVP]]

Hi Andy,

Ueli, Alavinsky and Rod are absolutley right. Deadlines is a great way to
ensure that you reach your deadline. the big advantage is that you dont set a
hard constraint and the scheduleing still works based on your dependencies.
At the same time it will show you a red excalmation mark on your task
information if your schedule cannot reach this deadline on time.

I always recommend the usage of the deadlines.
Hope this helps