'Fraid not. Task durations should be an estimate of the actual length of
time it will take to perform the physical activity that produces the
deliverable, not the time you are allowing between when it can start and
when it must be completed. Your question sounds like you're thinking of
duration as being the amount of time allowed for the task and it most
emphatically is not! As such, it has neither a minimum nor a maximum
allowed value but rather is your best guess of what it really will take to
do the work. That's not to say you can't set a deadline that reflects the
date by which a task must be completed but that's not related to duration at
all. For example - a task that can begin as early as next Monday and needs
to be done by the following Friday and will require 1 hour of the resource's
time to do once he starts it has a duration of 1 hour, not 5 days.
I'm wondering. Is this law procedure something that requires someone doing
physical activity such as presenting a case in court for its length or is it
a matter of waiting for something to be returned or decided or approved such
as waiting for a ruling after a case has been submitted? If it is the
former then it is a task that has duration but you may wish to look more
closely at it as tasks this long are very often really aggregates of a group
of different tasks that really need to be broken out and scheduled
individually. If the latter, it really isn't a task at all but rather two
linked tasks, often milestones, one being the task at the start of the link
that markes the entry into the waiting period and the other the task at the
end that marks resumption of work after the waiting time is ended, with the
time between them, the 4 to 6 months in your example, being a lag time
inserted in the link.
