Issues with Task Finish Dates

[Garon]

We have changed the Project Option Settings - Calculation Tab
- Calculation Options to move start & end of completed parts to the Status
Date. All 4 options are checked (ON).

We have then defined the following tasks
Task 1 - Start on project start 08/22/05 - Work & Duration = 4d
Task 2 - Successor to Task 1 (1FS+5Days) - Planned Start = 08/26/05
- Work & Duration = 3d, Planned Finish 09/06/05
Task 3 - Successor to Task 2 (2FS) - Planned Start = 09/07/05
- Work & Duration = 1d, Planned Finish 09/07/05

We assigned and published the tasks and later in PWA the users start to
Status their assignments.

Status Date = Current Date (08/31/05)
The user has completed Task 2 early (worked hard and finished today) althoug
the tasks was scheduled to be finished on 09/06/05 (Next week).

After updating the PM and getting the update approved we review the details
in Project Professional. There is only a single resource assigned to the
Task.

The Gantt Chart View (Task View) shows the Task Finish Date and Actual
Finish Date are both showing 09/06/05, which we believe is incorrect.

The Task Usage for the Task (Assignments View) shows;
Task Finish and Actual Finish are both showing 09/06/05 - incorrect.
Assignment Finish and Assignment Actual Finish are both showing 08/31/05,
which we believe is correct.

The worst issue is that Task 2 Successor (Task 3) remains with a Start Date
of 09/07/05 and does not reset to allow an earlier start.

All Tasks are defined to "Start As Soon As Possible".

If the predecessor Task is finished early and I a task is set to "Start As
Soon As Possible" surely the task should reschedule to start all path
threads earlier.

QUERIES
a) Has anyone found a way to overcome this issue
b) Is this a fault or functional limitation
c) Is there some way around this or a process that can be run to update the
path correctly.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Garon:

The way "to overcome this issue" a.k.a. misunderstanding the system, is
either professional training or significant self-study. With that said,
let's try to understand what's happening here. I suspect you're using a
fixed-duration task type for this particular task, if that is true, the
system is behaving as expected. Can you verify that the task type in this
case is Fixed-Duration? If so, we'll take the next step in explaining the
behavior.

 

[Garon]

Gary,

I can assure you I have plenty of professional training (with the
accreditation to prove it) and have spent copious hours in self training.
The difficulty with Microsoft Project is that there are a large number of
option settings, each of which can create a significant change in behaviour.

The issue with your answer, aka your misunderstanding the complexity of the
problem, is that you have assumed that the person logging the issue does not
already have significant experience and training and that problem is a simple
one.

The actual answer is in fact that you need to set the "Split in Progress
Tasks" to unticked. If you do this and you have the "Move Start/End of
completed tasks ..." then you will get the exact behaviour that is required.

That is that the Finish Date will be set to the Status Date and that all
downstream (effected) tasks will be rescheduled to the new Task Finish Date.
Try it - you may learn something yourself.

A lot of trail and error and some of that experience you are talking about
and genuine answer can be found.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Garon:

I can't begin to tell you how much I learn from posts like yours. You asked
whether the behavior was an issue, a limitation, or requires a workaround
when none of these applied. I'm glad that my guidance was correct and
inspired you to take the initiative to master the tool behavior, even if you
mistook it for condenscension.