Schedule Project Plan

Explanation

The project schedule is established when the planned early start and early finish dates have been determined for all project activities. The activity start and finish dates are either entered manually or determined through a scheduling calculation.

To manually establish the project schedule, values for activity dates and work days are directly entered for each activity. It is also possible to update activity early start and early finish dates by dragging or moving activity bars in the Gantt chart.

Alternatively, a scheduling calculation can be performed to determine the activity start and finish dates. Logical dependencies are created between activities to form an activity network, which is used as input into a scheduling calculation. Scheduling will result in updated activity start and finish dates, and critical activities will be indicated. The scheduling calculation takes the following into account:

• The project calendar (working and non-working days)
• The project start date or if none, the earliest activity start date
• Information about activity dependencies (predecessor, successor, dependency type and lag)
• The number of work days for each activity
• Constraints
• Actual start and finish dates

The scheduling calculation in IFS/Project only works with days as the planning unit, for example 1 day, 2 days, etc. The selected timescale in the Gantt does not affect the scheduling calculation but is used for display purposes only.

Prerequisites

• Activities must exist.
• You must have access to the entire project to schedule a project. 

System Effects

• When activity early start and finish dates are updated, either manually or through scheduling, the Gantt chart is updated.
• If activity bars in the Gantt chart are dragged or moved, the corresponding activity early start and finish dates are updated.
• If a scheduling calculation is performed, the following values are updated:
   
  • The activity early start and early finish dates
  • The activity late start and late finish dates
  • The free and total float for each activity
  • The project start and finish dates
• Changing activity early start and finish dates, either manually or through scheduling, can affect objects that may be connected to the activity:
   
  • The Required Date for a miscellaneous demand or a connected project delivery item is based on the activity early finish date.
  • Project exceptions may be created.
  • The period to which resources are assigned follows the activity early start and early finish dates.
  • Employee allocations with specific Date From and Date To and that are not fixed, follow the activity early start and finish dates. Fixed allocations will not be moved.
  • Employee allocations without specific Date From and Date To follow the activity early start and early finish dates as allocation dates.

Window

Gantt
Project Navigator/Planning
Activity/Planning

Related Window Descriptions

Project Navigator/Gantt
Project Navigator/Planning
Activity/Planning

Procedure

To manually update activity early start and finish dates:

1. In any window with activity information, change the value of the early start date or the early finish date, alternatively the number of work days.
2. To manually update activities in the Gantt tab, drag on the ends of the activity bars or drag the entire bar to another date.

To create an activity network:

1. In the Gantt tab, right-click and click Properties to open the Gantt Properties dialog. Check that the Show Dependencies check box is selected.
2. Right-click and click Create Dependencies Mode so that you can draw dependencies between activities directly in the Gantt chart.
3. Drag the pointer from one (predecessor) activity to another (successor) activity to create a finish-start dependency. Save your changes.
4. Pointing to a dependency, right-click and click Dependency Details. In the Dependency Details dialog, it is possible to change the dependency type, add a value for lag, or delete the dependency.
5. Dependencies information can also be added, updated or deleted in the Planning/Predecessors or Planning/Successors tabs.
6. Information about constraints is added in the Planning/Constraints tab.

To schedule a project:

1. In the Project Navigator window, query for the project that you wish to schedule.
2. Select the project level in the project navigator and select the Gantt tab.
3. In the Gantt tab, right-click and click Schedule Project. Alternatively, you can select the Refresh Client & Schedule Project function to first refresh the Gantt client with the latest activity information before performing the scheduling calculation. This second alternative should be used if activity information has been changed in another window after the Gantt window has been populated.
4. The results of the scheduling calculation can be previewed in the Gantt tab.
5. Save the changes to commit the results of the scheduling calculation.