Finish No Later Than

[Saviz]

Hi,

Please advise:

I am unable to set a Correct Finish No Later Than constraint on a milestone
task.(No predecessor)

Scenario:
Date I want: Start:1/05/07 Finish 1/05/07
When I change the constraint to FNLT,the start date jumps to project start
date.
How can I specify a finish date and have a FNLT constraint applied on it?

Thanks,

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

What you see IS Finish no Later than (the project start date is no later
than the cosnstraint date so OK)
If you want to see the exact date, you need Must Finish On.

HTH

 

[Steve House]

A 'Finish No Later Than' constraint means the project schedule will never
show the milestone any later than the specified date, even if it is
impossible that you will be able to achieve it. Far better is to use the
Deadline field to show the date the milestone must be completed by and leave
its constraint to ASAP. That way your plan will a) show the required
completion of the milestone with a marker; b) show the date on which the
milestone most likely WILL occur if you proceed to work the current plan,
whether that date is ahead of, on, or behind the required date; and c)
red-flag with an indicator if your milestone will finish late, giving you
warning so you can do something about it while there's still time. The
project plan is not just to document what you want to occur. Rather it is
to predict what most likely will occur if you organize the work and deploy
the resources in a certain way. You don't tell it the dates things should
occur, it tells you the dates things will be able to occur. If those dates
meet your requirements, great, but if they don't you need to reorganize the
workflow and redeploy the resources to make a real change, not just use
constraints to force it to appear to be in compliance with your preconceived
notions of how things ought to work. Project is designed to give you a
reality check regarding whether you'll meet your objectives or not - let it
do its job.