Newbie Question - How to Set Non-critical milestone as final task

[Kevin]

Hi, I've been pouring over old posts and can't find an answer. Maybe I
came across it and didn't understand, so if so, I appologize in
advance.

The quick question:
Without defining Predecessors and not setting deadlines, is it possible
to set a task to be the final task within a subgroup?

The reason why:
I have a bunch of tasks in a subgroup (call it "Phase 1") defining the
critical path in my schedule. I would like to set up a milestone
markers within "Phase 1" to indicate when an external task should be
complete by. These markers should be the very last tasks occuring with
"Phase 1", but should not drive its duration. This could easily be
done with Predecessors, but would require lots and lots of them to
ensure that it is indeed the last task within "Phase 1." It would work
but be very ugly.

Thanks for any help,

Kevin

 

[Haris Rashid]

hi Kevin,

The objective of scheduling in MS Project is to let the sequence and
dependencies of tasks derive the end date. Preferably you should use this as
such. However, for your situation you can try either scheduling from the
finish date or you can add contraints to the tasks. Contraints will work if
your project has a fixed end date.

Regards,

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Phase 1 would be a summary task with all its component tasks indented
underneath it. Place the milestone after all the subtasks but outdented
back out to the same level as the summary task. Link the Summary task to
the milestone FS so the end date of the summary drives the milestone's date.
This, IMHO, is one of the rare exceptions to the general rule of not linking
summary tasks - in this case doing so provides an accurate picture of the
reality. The date you see for the milestone will always be the date that
the latest finishing subtask in the summary finishes because that's what
determines the finish of the summary.