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Mandatory Finish - Longest Path ?!?!?!

7 replies [Last post]
C. Andre McMillan
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hi.

i have tried to do the following:

creating a Finish Milestone (called FINISH) with a Mandatory Finish with its only Predecessor another Milestone (PROJECTED FINISH). the idea is that the FINISH activity would never fluctuate while the PROJECTED FINISH would show the project Float.

the problem is that it will NOT show the Longest Path except when the project falls behind.

is there a setting or something that could make it work?

thank you.

Replies

C. Andre McMillan
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Mike - "There is no world where constraints have to be there except to define things that are outside the contractors control such as Last Date for Free Issue Material - Power Supply On etc.

Even then a Milestone linked to the affected task and set ALAP will do the same job.

Take all your constraints off and plan your project properly."

 

Mike,

in ALL my projects, we have an NTP Constraint and a Contract Completion Date Constraint and the Contractor is forced to schedule around those dates. which i know screws things up, but that's how it is.

CAM

C. Andre McMillan
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"Longest path is all the activities that are driving the latest activity of the project.

When you have a finish milestone constrained to finish later than the rest of the project, none of the other activites are driving the last activity in the project, hence they don't appear on the longest path filter.

If the project is running late, obviously the longest path now runs through those late activities so they appear on the filter. But until that point, you longest path is just your constrained milestone."

 

that makes complete sense. thank you very much Gary.

Rafael Davila
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I agree withg Gary, mandatory constraints tend to screw things. Even if not tied they might have some unexpected impact on computations such as resource leveling. on vacation from Mystic Seaport Connecticut best regards Rafael
Mike Testro
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Joined: 14 Dec 2005
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Hi C Andre

There is no world where constraints have to be there except to define things that are outside the contractors control such as Last Date for Free Issue Material - Power Supply On etc.

Even then a Milestone linked to the affected task and set ALAP will do the same job.

Take all your constraints off and plan your project properly.

Best regards

Mike Testro

Gary Whitehead
User offline. Last seen 5 years 20 weeks ago. Offline

Longest path is all the activities that are driving the latest activity of the project.

 

When you have a finish milestone constrained to finish later than the rest of the project, none of the other activites are driving the last activity in the project, hence they don't appear on the longest path filter.

 

If the project is running late, obviously the longest path now runs through those late activities so they appear on the filter. But until that point, you longest path is just your constrained milestone.

C. Andre McMillan
User offline. Last seen 25 weeks 2 days ago. Offline
Joined: 10 Feb 2012
Posts: 17
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yes, constraints are evil, but i live in a world where they have to be there.

i understand how to work around it, but i am perplexed that it shows the Longest Path only when the project is behind schedule. just doesn't make sense. Oracle won't help without more money in addition to the cost of the program.

thank you for responding, i appreciate it.

Gary Whitehead
User offline. Last seen 5 years 20 weeks ago. Offline

Delete the milestone with the mandy constraint, and use a project-level constraint instead.

-Enterprise>Projects.

View>Show on bottom>Project Details

Select your project, go to "Dates" tab in project details

Enter your "Must finish by" date

Open your project, F9 it, and filter on longest path.

 

 

My advise is to never use mandatory constraints on activities. It always screws something up.