How to create a Task whose end date is dependent on the start date of the next task

A
arif khan 👤 Member for 14 years 10 months

Hi,

I have two tasks, Task A and Task B. Task A starts on 1/Sep/2011 and Task B starts on 1/Dec/2011. Task A's Finish is dependent on Task A's start i.e. it finishes 20 days (exact) after Task B starts. In case Task B's start date moves to say 15/Dec/2011, Task A's finish should automatically move to reflect the new finish date.

How do I represent this relationship in MS project?

Thank you

Arif

A
arif khan 👤 Member for 14 years 10 months

Hi Mike,

I have sent you my Project file at the email addr. you indicated in your earlier response. The "Suspect Date" was identified by MS Project (I am running Project Professional 2010) by underlining the Finish date with a RED line (similar to what MS Word would do if you misspelt a word.

Thanks

Arif

A
arif khan 👤 Member for 14 years 10 months

Thanks MikeW

As per your suggestion, this is what I did:

Created Task A and Task B with the two start dates i.e. 1/Sep/2011 and 1/Dec 2011, all other fields I left them as blank (i.e. duration and finish date)

For Task A in the Predecessors field, I put in 2SF+20days and without altering the start dates of the two tasks, MS Project automatically calculated duration and finish date for Task A.

The problem comes in when I change the Start date of Task B from 1/Dec/2011 to 15/Dec/2011, I was expecting Task A to automatically change the finish date from 28/Dec/2011 to 11/Jan/2012, but all it did was mark the Finish date of Task A as suspect. How do I setu it up such that automatically the Finish date would change without affecting the Start date of Task A.

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