Project 07: Input Milestones Vs. Project Tasks

[JimS]

I am building a project file that has roughly 200 inputs that are
driving roughly 400 tasks. The project ultimately must finish on a
specified date. I need the 400 tasks to be completed as soon as
possible in order to meet the deadline. For the sake of other teams
providing the inputs, I need to define the latest date in which the
inputs can be provided and not affect the deadline to my project.
Please advise how I can set up the project.

My approach was to define the Inputs with a constraint of "As Late As
Possible" and the tasks with a constraint "As Soon As Possible". The
approach assumed that if an input was linked as a predecesor to a task,
the task duration would push back the Finish Date of the input in order
to meet the deadline. This worked some of the time, but some of the
inputs have a very late Finish Date causing the task to go beyond the
project deadline. I noticed that there are resources that are sitting
idle between tasks because of this late delivery of some inputs.

Any thoughts / suggestions apart from forcing the inputs to be
available on random dates until everything simply "works out"?

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

No need to set any constraint other than ASAP. Build the schedule of the
tasks. Make sure you have no tasks without a successor. Tie any loose ends
into a finish milestone. Input the inputs as predecessors to those tasks.
Insert the Late Finish column and Look at the late finish dates of the
inputs. That should give you the latest possible time they can be delivered
without affecting the finish date.

-Jack Dahlgren