Phase Timing in Project Management

[former_member192883]

Hello Everyone,

Here is the use case that I am struggling with ,

We schedule all the phases using start/finish constraints.

Example Scenario:

Phase -1 start date is June 1st and finish date is June 30th

Phase 2 start date is July 1st and finish date is July 31st.

When I change the Phase -1 finish date to July 31st , Phase-2 timing is still the same, It doesn't adjust the timing on successor Phase automatically based on predecessor phase timing.

Do you guys know If there is any settings in the configuration or changes to the template would allow this change ?

Thank you

Mohan

[ravi_ekambaram · Accepted solution]

Hi Mohan,

Whenever you put start/end date constraints, scheduling in PPM will ignore the predecessor/successor timing during forward/backward scheduling. So that is the reason it has not changed your phase 2 timings.

This is a standard behavior in PPM. Constraints like must start/finish will fix your timeline in project elements and scheduling will not touch those elements.

I would suggest you to avoid using constraints and instead of this you can use 'Duration' to control the  project elements. Change in duration of phase 1 will also change the dates of phase 2. Try this..

Hope this has clarified your query & in case of any further clarifications, please let us know.

Regards,

Ravi

[ravi_ekambaram]

Hi Mohan,

If your queries are answered, please close the thread by choosing the correct answer. If you have resolved your query on your own, then share with the community and choose your post as correct answer.

This helps members to know quickly the answers for the post for which they are searching.

Refer below blog for further details on closing the thread.

http://scn.sap.com/community/support/blog/2013/04/03/how-to-close-a-discussion-and-why

Regards,

Ravi

[former_member192883]

Hi Ravi,

I am sorry for delay in closing this question.

Client requirement is to use constraints for Phase dates so as per the PPM standard functionality  successor phase dates doesn't change automatically once predecessor phase dates are changed.

Mohan

[ravi_ekambaram]

Hi Mohan,

Yes, If you use constraints, then date change will not happen during scheduling. If you are looking for such kind of feature, better to use duration.

Regards,

Ravi

[former_member192883]

Hello Ravi,

I have another use case that I am trying to work it out in standard PPM .

We have different sets of templates to create different projects. There is a case where, Phase timing need to be reduced to some weeks/days and that should automatically adjust the duration on milestones and the tasks belong to that Phase. For example,

In standard template, Phase-1 duration is 2 months, user will use the same template to create a new customer project but this time, Phase-1 duration is 1 month.

Tasks that belong to Phase-1 already have some duration assigned to them.

is there a way tasks duration can be adjusted automatically as per Phase timing ?

Thank you

Mohan

[ravi_ekambaram]

Hi Mohan,

System cannot adjust the duration automatically. Suppose in a case where there are 20 tasks under a phase having different durations in a top-down scheduling scenario, how the system can identify which task duration has to be changed? System will just give you warning saying that the time period of tasks is out the time frame of phase, the project manager/planner has to decide upon where to adjust the durations. So, system will not adjust the duration.

Hope this clarifies your query.

Regards,

Ravi

[former_member192883]

Hello Ravi,

Thanks for your quick reply. That's what I thought.

I was looking for a different method to manage this requirement.

Mohan