Schedule Project Plan
Explanation
The project schedule is established when the planned dates, i.e. Early
Start and Early Finish dates, have been determined
for all project activities. The dates can be set either manually or through
a scheduling calculation.
To manually establish the project schedule,
values for early dates and total work days are directly entered for each activity.
It is also possible to update early start dates, early finish dates and/or total
work days by dragging or moving activity bars in the Gantt chart.
Scheduling calculation can be performed in the
Project Scheduler/ Project Gantt
to determine the activity start and finish dates. Logical dependencies are created
between activities to form an activity network,
which is used as input into a scheduling calculation. Scheduling will result
in updated activity start and finish dates, and critical activities, i.e. activities
with Total Float less than or equal to zero, will be indicated.
Project Scheduler
offers two ways to perform the schedule calculation.
Schedule with
Start
Date: Enter a start date to schedule activities
to begin on the project’s start date and calculates the project’s finish date
based on the last activity to finish.
Schedule with
End Date: Enter a project finish date to
calculate the project’s start date. Use this method to determine when a project
must start so that it finishes on a specific required date entered.
The scheduling calculation takes the following into account:
- The project calendar (working and non-working days)
- The project start date or if none, the earliest activity early start
date
- The total work days value for each activity, together with the Hours
per Work Day value for the project
- The project schedule network consisting of activity dependencies (predecessor,
successor, dependency type and lag) including the activity dependencies
from other projects.
- Activity constraints
- Actual start and finish dates
To enhance analysis capabilities Project Scheduler
offers;
- A summary of the changes to the activities as a result of the calculation
- Scheduling Log to present warnings and information messages which
would be a result of the calculated schedule
- Additional constraint types to give the project planner more scheduling
flexibility
- Multi Projects Scheduling to schedule multiple projects simultaneously.
Scheduling considers all the projects that are selected for scheduling. Schedule
date (start/finish) provided are taken to schedule calculation. The scheduling
calculation is done to the minute. Quick Schedule action command
is enabled only for single project.
The selected timescale in the Gantt does not affect the scheduling calculation
but is used for display purposes only.Activity network diagram in Gantt
is visualized based on early dates.
Prerequisites
- Activities must exist.
- For scheduling in the Project Scheduler/ Project Gantt,
the user must have access to the entire project.
System Effects
- When activity early start and finish dates are updated, either manually
or through scheduling, the Gantt chart is updated.
- If activity bars in the Gantt chart are dragged or moved, the corresponding
activity early start and finish dates are updated.
- Any changes in the Activity List area is updated in Gantt Chat area
upon save.
- If a scheduling calculation is performed, the following values are updated:
- The activity early start and early finish dates.
- The activity late start and late finish dates.
- The free and total float for each activity.
- The project planned start date.
- The project planned finish date.
- Changing activity early start and finish dates, either manually or through
scheduling, can affect objects that may be connected to the activity, for
example:
- The required date for a miscellaneous demand or a connected project
delivery item is based on the activity early finish date.
- Project exceptions may be created.
- The period to which resources are assigned follows the activity
early start and early finish dates.
- Employee allocations with specific Date From and Date To and that
are not fixed, follow the activity early start and finish dates. Fixed
allocations will not be moved. Employee allocations without specific
Date From and Date To follow the activity early start and early finish
dates as allocation dates.