Hi Adam, I had a similar situation this month, but decided to go the other way: I defined a custom data field (well, 7 of them, to be more precise), each of which represents a Key Date for the large (24 month, multi-million dollar) Projects they represent. One of them -- the fifth -- is entered manually as the "start of the main event". The other six are all calculated dates (using +/- "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217196767-Understanding-Calculated-Data-Expressions">ADDDAYS ), so the set of Key Dates looks like this:
T-24 Months (e.g. theoretically, to hit the main event, when SHOULD we have started, given the 24 month lead time in our template)
T-12 Months (a big checkpoint meeting)
T-6 Months (another)
T-3 Months (another)
Outage Start (this is the manually entered start of the main event)
Outage Complete (which is calculated by adding the "Outage in Days" parameter to the Outage Start)
T+3 Lookback (the last one; all post-mortems should be complete by this time)
Now, in our Template, in addition to the real work that needs to happen for such Projects, we also created a Task that represents each of the above Key Dates, and (for good measure) tagged them with "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217298357-Associating-a-Milestone-with-a-Task">Milestones . Now (if you're still with me) for the cool part:
The Template is designed to align with the same intervals as the Key Intervals
In theory, then, when the Project starts, the Task Planned Start Date for the first 4 (which are "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217297287-As-Late-As-Possible">ALAP relative to number 5) and the Planned Completion Date for the last two (which are "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217297337-As-Soon-As-Possible">ASAP relative to number 5) should be exactly the same as the Key Dates stored at the Project Level
Enter Reality: over time, stuff happens, things shift, delays occur, the Projected dates all the Tasks get moved around
With hundreds of such large projects in flight, each with hundreds of Tasks in their Workplan, this technique allows PMs to cut through the noise and focus on the variances between the Project Level Key Dates and the Projected dates using an intuitive dashboard, one for each Key Date vs its corresponding Milestone Task. The result is one chart per Key Date, one bar per Project (really, "the Key Date's Task for That Project"), and a variance bar that goes negative if the Project is ahead of the scheduled Key Date, or positive if the schedule is slipping (exceeding) the Key Date. Here's an illustration:
With this dashboard in hand, Project Managers can then quickly focus on the largest exceptions by Key Date and adjust the Planned Dates as needed, noting that getting an earlier Key Date back on track often ripples through and corrects later Key Dates, given the dependency between Tasks in the Templates. Having just invented this, we've neither rolled it out officially nor field tested it, but conceptually, this is one of the most compelling Management By Exception dashboards I've ever come up with, and I'm very excited to see it in action! If you think this approach might work for your situation, I invite you to consider using a similar approach. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand!
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