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.
- Activities with actual start or actual finish dates will not be updated by scheduling.
Note that updating the actual start or finish dates, either manually or through activity execution, will
automatically align the early start and finish dates with the actual dates.
- Hard constraints such as Must Start On and Must End On take priority over soft constraints such as Start Not
Earlier Than, End Not Later Than, and As Late As Possible.
- Milestone activities are zero-duration activities where the early start and early finish dates and times are
always the same.
- Updating the 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.