Hello :)

During my project planning meeting, I noticed a colleuge changed the dates from the " finish date " column. Is this ok to do? During the training I can remember trainer mention that we should not change these dates.

Basically the scenario was a tast was not started and there was going to be a delay in the lab. so he went ahead and changed the dates finish to about a week ahead.

Can this affect the overall project negatively?

I asked him why did we not just increase the duration, but realistically the tasks only takes about a week its only going to start much later than planned, if we increased the duration is basically increasing the time the task takes to happen.

I hope I have not confused you

Please assist.

Kind regards
Sudeep

Hi Sudeep,

It is not a good idea to change dates in MS Project as this applies "constraints" to the schedule.

Changing the Finish Date for a task applies the Finish No Earlier Than constraint which can artificially delay the scheduling of the task and as a result delay subsequent "successor" tasks.

Changing dates and applying constraints can also have an impact on the "critical path" in your schedule.

As a rule dates should be an output from not an input to the schedule in MS Project.

If you do apply a constraint to a task for a valid reason do yourself a favour and add a note to the task explaining why the constraint is being applied - should you need to review and revise your schedule it may be that the original reason for the constraint may no longer be valid.

To check your schedule for Constrained tasks use the "Tasks with Fixed Dates" Filter.

Happy Planning

Dominic