Best Practice for extending project end dates

[CBuckwal]

We're interested in best practices for extending project time/end dates, when the project deadline has delays and time extension has been approved. We mostly create templates for projects with Calculated Assignment tasks with As Soon As Possible task constraints, using predecessors. Occasionally we use the Must Finish On task constraint for date sensitive tasks. We don't have a dedicated group of project managers, so users generally manage their own projects. We try to keep the template set up uncomplicated. My questions are below:

1- As a standard, should we be updating the task planned durations when a project is given more time (assuming the updated task constraint is As Soon As Possible)? This method keeps the task planned start date the same and by extending the planned duration on the tasks that are involved in delays, this seems to make sense. 

2- If instead, we change task planned completion dates to match the new planned end date, the task constraint changes to Must Finish On. Is that expected? This method of extending project time changes the task planned start date, which may or may not make sense due to the type of project delay,

3- Is there any way to report on time extensions added to projects?

Thanks for any insights on this topic.

[KellieGardner]

My personal preference is to extend the duration of the task instead of manually moving and picking dates. I know some of my project managers prefer to move dates however, I feel like that could get complicated if you are having to shift dates for multiple tasks more than just once as projects extend. I'm not a fan of the "hard" constraint types unless it truly is a hard deadline.

#3: You could do a task report to pull in a column for the default baseline task planned completion or duration and then a column for the duration or planned completion as it is now. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/workfront/using/manage-work/projects/create-projects/create-...

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @CBuckwal,

You're on the right track, in my opinion:

1. is a good and common standard, as is "stretching" the duration of the task that is going long, although to avoid distortion (if that task is done, but for some reason, the next cannot yet start), another option is to inject and modify a lag that represents the delay
2. that is As Designed, in that Workfront assumes that a user entering a particular date means "that date, specifically" (by changing the constraint to Fixed Dates), which although reasonable, is not obvious, so as a workaround, I suggest you add the Task Constraint to all commonly-used views and include conditional formatting to highlight any entries that are not ASAP in red, to help educate your users of that behavior (and encourage them to correct it "back" to ASAP, thereby removing the red)
3. To compliment what you've got going, I invite you to consider our Multi Baseline Report solution, which lets you assess “Baseline Drift” by tagging Tasks with custom icons then filtering for Projects, Tasks, and Baselines of interest., and includes a video showing it in action

Regards,

Doug