Constraints

[Saviz]

Hi,

Scenario:
I have to create a milestone in my schedule in a future date, however this
task does not a processors and setting a date manually creates a constraint
for the milestone.

-My Question is:
How can I create a task without adding constraint ?
What is the preferred approach for creating milestone in a future date?

 

[Rod Gill]

A milestone is a zero day duration task which is a point in time. TO create
it give any task a duration of zero. To set its date link it to the task
that the milestone follows and link tasks that follow to the milestone. If
the milestone has no predecessors and happens on a certain date, then it's a
constraint and I recommend creating a summary task near the top of the
schedule called constraints and put the milestone as a sub task of the
constraint summary task. Enter a date fro the milestone and add a note to
explain why it has a date. Only constraints should have a date in a
schedule. All other tasks should follow the constraint milestone.

--

Rod Gill
Project MVP

NEW!! Project VBA Book, for details visit: http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Steve House]

A milestone is not a date! It is an event that takes place in the project
that is sufficiently important to monitor. It may well have a date that it
needs to take place by but the always keep clear that the milestone is the
thing that happens and not the date it should happen on or before. An
example might be "Marketing Plan Approved" and it needs to happen by May
1st - in this case, the milestone is the plan's approval and its deadline is
May 01. But the plan will be approved whenever it is approved - it may be
early, on 15 April; it may be late, on 15 May; or it might be right on time
on the 1st. When it will happen depends on when it gets prepared and
submitted, when the person who has the sign-off authority gets around to
reading it, etc, etc. If those steps are tasks in your project, like
"Prepare Marketing Plan" would be then they are the precedecessors to the
milestone. If they're outside the project, such as the work schedule of the
sign-off person might be, then they're lags in the links between the
milestone and its in-project predecessors.

HTH