Constraints and Predecessors (2003)

Topic

New Reply

Is it possible to set a task so that it has a constraint of “Finish no later than”, but still have the task scheduled based upon the completion date of other predecessors in the project plan. What are the drawbacks of doing this?

Thanks!
Caroline

Reply | Quote

Replies

Caroline,

In Project by default tasks will honor dependency relationships until they conflict with the applied constraint. When there is a conflict the constraint will be honored. You can change this default in Tools, Options, Schedule by unchecking the check box for Tasks will honor their constraint date.

As for what are the pros and cons of FNLT constraints, you will get a message box telling you when you do something in the project plan that will conflict with the constraint (assuming you have not disabled this feature) and Project will let you override the message and accept the conflict. At that point you would need to look at that area of your project plan to see what is happening. In the alternative of using a FNLT constraint I prefer to use deadline markers. Deadlines are created in the Task Information dialog box on the Advanced tab. Deadlines will put a green arrow at the date set for the deadline on the Gantt Chart and if you create a conflict with the deadline you will see a red diamond in the indicators column telling you of the conflict. I find assigning deadlines to milestone markers the easiest to read, so for example I might put a phase complete deadline for each summary grouping in the plan and a deadline on the finish project milestone. This gives me a very quick look at where I am in the project in terms of where I would like to be.

Carla

Reply | Quote