Hard-link tasks to allow earlier project completion

Christoph W. shared this idea 2 years ago
Voting Open

Allow to "hard-link" tasks in a way that the following task will always start after a pre-defined number of buffer working days (excl. weekends, holidays) after the end of its (linked) successor task. This would allow to also estimate earlier project completion in case tasks are completed earlier than expected along the line.

This functionality does exist currently for the extension of tasks (following tasks will be pushed backwards) but not in the opposite direction (following planned tasks will not start/end earlier even if the predecessor ends earlier).

Ideally this functionality would keep the resource occupancy in mind and offer options if shifting the tasks to an earlier time would lead to task overlaps for the same resource. Options could e.g. be e.g. starting the lower priority (or non critical-path) task after the overlap, change the resource etc. - for the meantime: at least warn. See also here: task-timing-based-on-resource-occupany

Replies (4)

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By the way, there is a feature "remove buffer time" that you can click manually but a) it does remove ALL the buffer time and b) most importantly it must continuously be updated manually. Nevertheless, the basic functionality seems to exist already, it's just not user friendly

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Slack time and dependency lag are different things. Slack time can be removed manually and you can select which tasks you want to remove slack from. There is currently no support for lag time on dependencies, but this has been requested several times. Resource overloading can be viewed in the Resource chart and can be levelled with the "Solve" feature. Lastly there is also a need for fixed-date tasks that cannot be rescheduled by dependencies, e.g. the date of a conference which requires preparation but which cannot move.

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I must admit that I was not aware of the 'solve' feature, this is a great start already! I do not quite understand its functioning principle though, the output is sometimes surprising to some degree. Where could I find more specific information on how 'solve' works? Is e.g. priority considered here and how can I influence (or at least foresee) the output? To me, it seems that it just shifts any task with a resource conflict, independent of task priorities in comparison and if the solution creates a new resource conflict, you would just have to iterate this until the solution fits? Doable in my simple example but I could image quite a hassle in complex project with tight time constraints?

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I fully agree on the fixed deadline tasks btw, I was only referring to tasks that are defined temporally only by their predecessor dependency and duration. A bit more detailed in my initial question but a bit too short here, excuse the confusion.

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