Evaluating the Project Schedule
The fat lady won’t sing until the finish dates in Project meet the project’s deadlines and
the project price is right. Keep fine-tuning the Project schedule until
both the schedule and price are in line. This second round of work is
also a good time to correct any errors lurking in your schedule, as the
box on Double-Checking the Schedule
describes. In this section, you’ll learn how to review dates and costs
in your Project file. You’ll also learn how to find the best tasks to
change.
Comparing Finish Dates to Deadlines
Finish dates are conspicuous in the Gantt Chart timescale, because
that’s where task bars end. The Finish field also appears in the Entry,
Schedule, Summary, Usage, and Variance tables, to name a few. But what
you really want is to see whether the finish dates come on or before
the project’s deadlines.
During planning, you can compare the finish date for the project and
key milestones to the deadlines requested by stakeholders. However, as
you learned on Preventing Unwanted Date Constraints,
the Deadline field helps track important dates during planning and
project execution. You can filter the task list to focus on tasks with
deadlines, and look for missed deadline indicators to identify problem areas.
Tip
Tasks that finish on time during planning may not stay that way when
the work begins. Missed deadline indicators appear as soon as estimated
finish dates are later than their corresponding deadline dates, so it’s
a good idea to check for missed deadline indicators regularly.
When you assign a date in a task’s Deadline field, a deadline arrow
appears at that date in the Gantt Chart timescale (the arrow may be
solid green or outlined in black, depending on the view). The task’s
finish date is late if the task bar ends to the right of the arrow.
However, these deadline arrows aren’t especially eye-catching. Filtering
the task list to show missed deadlines makes them easier to see. The
missed deadline indicator is another hint that the finish date isn’t
working. Here’s how to compare finish dates with deadlines:
-
To show only tasks with
deadlines, choose View→Data, click the down arrow next to the filter
box, and then choose More Filters. In the More Filters dialog box,
double-click Tasks With Deadlines.
Project shows tasks with deadlines but also shows the summary tasks to which they belong, as you can see in Figure 1.
-
To find tasks that miss their
deadlines, look in the Indicators column in the Entry table for red
diamonds with exclamation points inside.
If tasks miss their deadlines by a mile, the deadline arrows in the
timescale may be a long way from the end of the task bar, so the two
may not be visible in the timescale at the same time, depending on the
timescale units. Remember, you can drag the Zoom slider in the status bar to change the time periods that appear in the timescale.
By scanning the Indicators column for missed deadline indicators,
you can identify the tasks to focus on. Of course, if you don’t see any
missed deadline indicators, you can move on to checking whether the
project’s cost works.
