Setting Deadline Reminders

You might be tempted to enter a finish date on an automatically scheduled task or a Must Finish On constraint when you want a task to be completed by a certain date. But instead of a date constraint that might unnecessarily restrict the schedule, what you really need is a reminder or target toward which to move your schedule.

So rather than set a date constraint in such situations, set a deadline instead. A deadline appears as an indicator on your Gantt Chart as a target or goal, but it does not affect the scheduling of your tasks.

To set a deadline, follow these steps:

  1. Select the task for which you want to set a deadline.

  2. On the Task tab, in the Properties group, click Information.

  3. In the Task Information dialog box, click the Advanced tab.

  4. In the Deadline box, enter or select the deadline date.

    The deadline marker appears in the chart area of the Gantt Chart, as shown in Figure 6-14. Repeat steps 1 through 4 to change or remove a deadline if necessary. If you’re removing a deadline, select the date, and then press the Delete key.

The deadline provides a guide for important dates.

Figure 6-14. The deadline provides a guide for important dates.

Adjust Your Schedule to Hit Your Deadlines

When you have deadline flags set up in your project plan, you can graphically see the differences between your deadlines and the scheduled finish dates.

So what do you do when you have a discrepancy between the two?

The first thought is that the project schedule might simply give you the sanity check you needed to see whether your deadlines are realistic. If you think the task durations, dependencies, and constraints are all exactly as they should be, then the deadline might just need to be adjusted.

If you still really want to try to hit that deadline, there are various techniques to modify scope, refine the schedule, and change resource allocations to make the adjustments necessary to schedule the finish date closer to the deadline.

Note

For more information about shortening the schedule for certain tasks or the project as a whole, see Bringing in the Project Finish Date.

You can show deadlines in your task sheet as well by adding the Deadline field as a column. Follow these steps:

  1. Right-click the column heading to the right of where you want to insert the Deadline column, and then click Insert Column.

    Adjust Your Schedule to Hit Your Deadlines

    Insert Column

    Or, click the column heading, and then click Format, Columns, Insert Column.

    A new column is created and a drop-down list of available fields appears.

  2. In the list, click Deadline. You can type the first one or two characters to go straight to it in the list.

    The Deadline field shows any deadline dates that are already set and shows “NA” for tasks without deadlines. You can enter deadlines directly in this field.

If the schedule for a task moves beyond its deadline date, either because of normal scheduling calculations or because of actual progress information entered, an alert appears in the Indicators field, specifying that the task is scheduled to finish later than its deadline. (See Figure 6-15.)

If a deadline will be missed, the Deadline indicator provides the details.

Figure 6-15. If a deadline will be missed, the Deadline indicator provides the details.

You can set deadlines for manually as well as automatically scheduled tasks. You can also set deadlines for summary tasks as well as individual tasks. If the summary task’s deadline conflicts with the finish dates of any of the subtasks, the Deadline indicator specifies a missed deadline among the subtasks. You can also set deadlines for milestone tasks.

Inside Out: A deadline might affect scheduling after all

There are two instances in which a deadline can indeed affect task scheduling. The first is if you enter a deadline that falls before the end of the task’s total slack. The total slack is recalculated using the deadline date rather than the task’s late finish date. If the total slack reaches 0, the task becomes critical.

The second instance is if you set a deadline on a task with an As Late As Possible constraint. Suppose the task is scheduled to finish on the deadline date. However, if any predecessors slip, the task could still finish beyond its deadline.

Note

For more information about the critical path, slack, and late finish dates, see Working with the Critical Path and Critical Tasks.

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