Project 2007 "Backward Scheduling"

[aaronpw]

How do I set tasks to begin "X" days before another tasks "must finish on"
date?

 

[salgud]

How do I set tasks to begin "X" days before another tasks "must finish on"
date?

Start to start relationship with X days lag. BTW, in general, not the best
way to schedule, particularly with the MFO constraint. If more than a few
of your tasks are constrained, you're in trouble.

Hope this helps in your world.

 

[DavidC]

Hi Aaronpw,

You can use the FS-"x"d, so the second task finish is "x" days before the
start of the first task. This will show a start date for the first task as
late as possible but not as soon as possible. If you set a deadline task
that shows the first task must have started by the deadline date then you
have float and the ability to cover off any delays that may occur and not
have work being started at the last minute. For that simply set the deadline
task to be 'FS-"X"d' and then use that date as the deadline for the first
task.

Hope this is some help

Regards

DavidC

 

[aaronpw]

Might I email you away from this forum with additional detail?

 

[DavidC]

Sure,

try david.coatesatmightyriverdotcodotnz

Might I email you away from this forum with additional detail?

 

[Jim Aksel]

First, scheduling a "Must Finish On" date for a task is not a best practice.
If you can avoid it, please do.

Given task B is "Must Finish On" with predecessor "A" that you wish to start
17 days prior. You can change the task type of Task A to "As Late As
Possible" and then tweak it back to the desired start date using lag.

In general, it is not good to use negative lag (lead) on a task unless you
know that the lagged task will finish on a specific date with certainty.
This seems to be the case in your application.

However, what would happen if your task "B" finished early or late?
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Steve House]

Constraints in MS Project are restrictions on what the scheduling engine can
do and as such describe a physical reality that is imposed on the schedule -
the constraint condition is ALWAYS true no matter what we do in our project
schedule. When the boss says "This task must finish on XX date" or "That
deliverable must be ready no later than YY date" he's not describing
something that already exists, he's setting an objective for future
perfomance. The reason we use scheduling software is to help us determine
the workflow that will enable to meet those performance objectives - will
the way we're going to do the work meet the objectives we have to hit or
will it result in missing it? For it to do that we must let it freely
calculate the results we are likely to obtain if we attempt to proceed with
a particular workflow and resource deployment that we're considering, ie, if
we try it this way will we finish on-time? To see that we need to let
Project show us the results without interference, ie, without constraints
that basically force it to lie to us and promise we'll finish on-time
regardless of whether we're really going to be able to do that or not.