which predecessor determines start date?

[hooploid]

When you are tracing through a schedule, is there an easy way to find out
which predecessor drives the start date of the task you are on?

I constantly find myself looking at a task which is not on the critical
path, and which has lots of predecessors, wondering which one is driving the
start date. What I do now is go to each of those predecessors and compare
finish dates to my task's start date. But there must be an easier way. It's
too bad Project doesn't just highlight it on the list of pred/successors in
the bottom pane--is there some feature I don't know about?

 

[Guidho]

No, there is no hidden feature.
The only optio is to compare finish dates of predecessors with the task
start date.

Maybe you can create a macro that automates this date comparison for
you, populating a text or number field with the 'driving' predecessor
name or ID.

In MS Project 2007, this is one of the new features. You can see Task
Drivers to identify this kind of information.

Hope this helps,
Guidho