TBD or Blank Date Option

[Bootney]

Anyone know of a way to enter a blank or TBD in task
Start/End fields? This should clearly be an option to
show that you are tracking/forcasting what needs to be
done, but an exact date is not yet possible.

 

[John]

Bootney,
No, Project does not have that "option" and it really isn't necessary.
If you already have a plan to accomplish some end goal, then you also
have an idea of how long you expect each task to take (Duration) and
when you intend to start the whole project, whether now or sometime in
the future. Project's underlying scheduling engine does not use "fuzzy"
logic, rather, it calculates all time related data to the nearest minute
because only then can it provide accurate time related scheduling.

Don't worry that the dates shown may not be correct once the project is
started. The whole project timeline can easily be shifted in one fell
swoop by using the "adjust dates" add-in on the Analysis toolbar.

As far as tracking/forecasting, tracking can only be validly
accomplished if a plan is firm (i.e. real dates) and a baseline has been
set. There should be no problem with tentative dates in a forecast. One
caution on forecasting, some people try to put to much detail in an
initial plan for forecasting and it soon gets to unwieldy or complex.
Depending on the forecasting timeframe (i.e. near or far), sometimes the
best approach is to keep future tasks in planning format. For example,
instead of describing all the tasks necessary to design, build and test
a widget, just lay out the major phases. This approach even works well
for projects with time spans of a year or more. Lay out tasks in the
near term (e.g. next 6 months) as detail and those in the future as
planning package groups.

By the way, if you are still dead set on having a plan with "TBD" for
Start and Finish, I suggest you substitute spare text (TBD) or date (NA)
fields in the active view. Real dates will still exist in the normal
Start and Finish fields, but you can always present what you want.

Hope this helps.

John
Project MVP

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

On top of John's precious remarks, you may also consider the following.
One could argue that Project shouldn't even display Start and Finish fields,
only Early Start, Late Start, Early Finish and Late Finish. The whole point
is that you have to manage between these limits.

And also this: when you DO fix a date (not that this is recommended but new
users to Project just seem to need that for survival) by a Must Option that
will be visible in the Indicator column.

HTH

 

[Guest]

I will follow your suggestion on changing the view
fields. In this case, it is necessary. I have 10 sites
scheduled to work on in November and I have entered those
sites in project. We will move from one to the other
sequentially. Each site is a task to complete. The
problem - Someone has to go to that site in October to
determine if each site will take 4,6,or 10 days to
complete. We will then be able to plug in actual dates
on each site (task) after we get this info. When someone
sees this report from project they assume the dates in
the Gant Chart view are accurate and this makes room for
grave misunderstanding. We have a plan for this very
large project, however it is open ended to an extent and
we don't know firm dates until weeks before begining the
work, yet we have to represent them as definite tasks.
The dates on the other sites become firm after they are
surveyed and are now mixed with inacurate dates from the
unsurveyed sites. Who knows which dates to believe now?
Project really should allow better flexability with this.
Also, the ability attach more than one file on the notes
tab of a task would be nice. Thanks for taking the time
to answer me.