Mariam said:
Hi, I have created a new project for which I have set the duration of time to
be x amount of days. My tasks are dependant (have predeccessors) and I would
like to be able to enter a start date (baseline) and according to the
durations have the following tasks to be populated with their respective
dates. Is this possible? If not exactly this, is their something similar?
At this point i have to manually fill in the baseline start, baseline
finish, actual start...
Thanks for your time,
Mariam
Mariam,
Whoa! It sounds like you are going about this backwards. First the
schedule should be laid in, then the baseline is set (not manually), and
as the project progresses, actual information (e.g. Actual Start, Actual
Finish, etc.) may need to be entered.
From what you describe, you have the basic elements, Task descriptions,
estimated Durations and inter-dependencies between tasks. The only tasks
that should have a Start date manually entered are those without
Predecessors and those are normally the exception. Then as long as
calculation is set to automatic (Tools/Options/Calculation tab), Project
will automatically calculate all task Start and Finish dates based on
the information you entered. So yes, Project does "populate" tasks with
the correct dates. That's what it is designed to do.
Once your plan is as you want it (i.e. all necessary tasks are included
to achieve the end goal, usually some completion milestone, and the
Durations and links between tasks actually allow the end milestone to
occur on or before it is due), then a baseline should be set
(Tools/Tracking/Save Baseline). With a working schedule (the active
plan) and a baseline (the original plan), earned value and progress
metrics can be used to see how well the overall project is doing.
If tasks start on their estimated Start date and complete on the
estimated Finish date (a rarity), there is no need to enter data into
the Actual Start and Actual Finish fields - Project will do that for you
automatically. However, if things don't go according to plan then you do
need to enter real dates into the Actual Start and/or Actual Finish
fields.
Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
