Schedule by Completion vs Schedule by Start

[DebbieSc]

Hi Debbie, I believe that Scheduled from Start Date is more intuitive for most people (and software). I also think it is very common to have deadlines that need to be hit at the end and/or along the way (spoiler alert: Multiple Critical Path within Workfront coming to a LEAP conversation near you). With (ideally?) more work often scheduled than can be performed by workers available, it is also typical to leave things to as late as possible, despite the good intentions and advantages of acting as soon as possible. With all those conflicting realities at work, I'd suggest experimenting, then using whatever approach seems to work best for your team. This "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=703ea634-9d8c-4cbe-909b-01a8bcbd0cf0&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer#bm703ea634-9d8c-4cbe-909b-01a8bcbd0cf0">post might give you some ideas that help, too. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Debbie, I believe that Scheduled from Start Date is more intuitive for most people (and software). I also think it is very common to have deadlines that need to be hit at the end and/or along the way (spoiler alert: Multiple Critical Path within Workfront coming to a LEAP conversation near you). With (ideally?) more work often scheduled than can be performed by workers available, it is also typical to leave things to as late as possible, despite the good intentions and advantages of acting as soon as possible. With all those conflicting realities at work, I'd suggest experimenting, then using whatever approach seems to work best for your team. This "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=703ea634-9d8c-4cbe-909b-01a8bcbd0cf0&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer#bm703ea634-9d8c-4cbe-909b-01a8bcbd0cf0">post might give you some ideas that help, too. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[JillAc]

There are people in this group who are very opposed to Schedule by Completion Date. Therefore, I have tried it both ways – by Start Date (and make a Must Finish By the last task in the project) or by Completion Date and allow the project to tell you when it should have started (pretty much always in the past, we are late launching almost everything). We too have very hard date completion dates, so I am most comfortable with the Completion Date method because it tells you right away how many days off your plan is. So if today, I launch a project that has a template that takes 40 days, and the deadline 20 days away, the first task calculates a due date 20 days in the past, and I can keep adjusting the durations until the first task is set for today, so I can easily launch a project without it already being late. I find it very hard to do this with the Schedule by Start Date because I find it hard to see where the plan gets bunched up and by how many days it's bunched up, and whether I have fixed it when I change the durations. The main downside (for me) is after the project has started and several tasks on the critical path are at 100%, and when I recalibrate the remaining schedule, the project doesn't recalculate properly to the completion date. The only way to fix that to get a new plan that properly counts the days, is to find the first task in the critical path and set a Must Start By date on that task. I still have trouble telling if my new plan is working, but then I look at a couple key dates (i.e. release to printer) in the middle of the project to see if they are correct (which means getting out the actual physical calendar and making sure I am counting the days correctly) and I also use the status icons on each task to see if any turn red. When I use Schedule by Start Date, and the last task is Must Finish By, I have a lot of trouble getting it all to work and to figure out how many days my plan is wrong. Finding the red icons, and trying to mash 40 days into 20 is much harder for me this way. I would love to hear how other people manage it, it's a big question I have too.

[MichelleJa]

We use by completion date because of being deadline based, but we did start our Workfront transition by using the by start date. However, by using the start date, I found we were constantly manipulating timeframes due to vacations and deadlines from other departments. When we switched to by completion date and set a majority of our tasks to be "as late as possible", they have lined up with minimal timeline changes. Michelle Jackson Colony Brands, Inc.

[DebbieSc]

Thank you all for your feedback. From Boot Camp, I definitely had the understanding that if I used any setting besides Schedule from Start Date that I would lose all auto-calculation functionality of the dates. I will continue to test the two options to see what works best in our environment. Debbie Scalf BCBST - Corporate Communications

[VicAl]

It does depend on the nature of your projects. Some people have very small and repeatable projects that they constantly do with the same tasks. Perhaps from Completion is ok for them. But yes if you use from Completion Date you lose any insight to where you're tracking. That's the problem with that method. And it's mind numbing to use (especially if you use predecessors – which you should �� ). Someone here equated it to driving in reverse and I LOVE that analogy. The only use I can find for working backwards is to determine when you need to Start a project. But even then I can do the same by creating my project plan from Start Date, see the timeline and I can do the math as to when we need to start. Locking Dates is a large risk and I personally advise against it in the most aggressive and vehement way possible �� . Triple Stamped, no backsies. If you have hard dates that can't be missed (yes everyone does) you can still have your hard dates and revel in the joy that your special date can't change, it's THAT important. We get it. However, your project plan should still give you valuable information about where you're at and where you're headed. So you can still advertise and boast about making your date, but your project plan should tell you if you're behind schedule and how far behind. Then you can adjust appropriately. If you lock dates, especially end dates, you lose that insight until you approach that locked date and realize you have a ton of work still left to do – and the chaos ensues. The project plan is early warning detection. The earlier you know you're behind, the easier to recover. Locking dates in any fashion prevents that. So I always advice to have a Target Implementation Date (that you advertise and can keep in a separate field), and the Implementation Date that your plan shows. Then the PM works to keep them equal by making small adjustments along the way. OK stepping off the soap box �� Sorry I know everyone has their way that works for them, but I feel this information can really help PM's from having to scramble at the end of every project. By doing this, I'm able to avoid that mess at the end. It's small course corrections throughout as opposed to calamity at the end.