Start And Finish Dates On Investments, Allocations, Tasks, Assignments

Products

Clarity PPM On Premise Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

What are the rules and relationships of the Start and Finish dates on Investments (including projects), Allocations, Tasks and Assignments?

Resolution

Summary

Project/Investment Dates must encompass the minimum/maximum dates of the Task Dates and or the Staff Allocation-specific dates (if set).
Ideas do not have tasks as projects and custom investments do. Therefore their dates are not time constrained and use midnight dates for their start and finish times.
- Task dates normally use an 9 hour day (8 am to 5 pm) depending on the time zone for the user. These match standard calendar shifts.
Within the Task WBS, Summary tasks must encompass the minimum/maximum dates of the child Tasks.
If Assignments are created on tasks, changing the Assignment Dates will impact the Task Date as it must encompass the minimum/maximum assignment dates.

Subprojects

When Subprojects are added into a Master Project, the dates of the Master Project will expand to cover the Start and Finish dates of the subproject.
If the Subproject dates are adjusted inwards between the current duration of the Master Project, the dates of the Master Project will not shrink.

External Dependencies

When any Investment includes an External Dependent Task, the dates of the external task do NOT impact the dates of the current investment.
The Investment Start and Finish Dates remain unchanged even when there are tasks within the current investment dependent on external tasks that have dates that fall outside the dates of the current investment.

Allocations

When Staff members are added to an investment, the allocation defaults to using the Investment dates.
The 'Start' and 'Finish' dates on the Staff Allocation rows are blank when staff is added because it assumes that the Investment Start and Finish Dates are to be used.
Entering allocation-specific dates for Staff members that extend beyond the investment dates, will change the investment dates.
Once specific dates are entered on the staff properties or into the specific time periods (TSV) these override the default allocation settings for the resource.
If the investment's start and/or finish dates are changed, the allocations are updated to reflect the new dates. This includes any periods outside the new dates even if the values were entered in the TSV or per-period metrics. Note that if the resources are hard booked and the user trying to change the investment dates does not have hard book rights, the investment dates can be moved in but not out.
If Autoscheduling is used, and there are allocation-specific dates on Staff, the Allocations may fall outside of the Investment-specific dates. Allocation-specific dates are considered 'manual' dates that are fixed and therefore are NOT impacted by Autoscheduling. After publishing a Tentative Schedule, if the Investment Dates changed and the allocations fall outside of the Investment-specific dates, manually update the dates of the allocations or update the dates of the Investment to realign the staffing allocations.

Tasks

Task Dates are impacted by the 'Actuals Thru Date' when actuals are posted on the associated assignments. This can cause the Task Dates to not update or get automatically reset to a different date if you try to change the date.

Simple Rules regarding changing only the Start Date of a Task vs only changing the Finish Date of a Task (without the impact of posted actuals):

If you change only the Start Date of a task, it is assumed that you want to keep the duration of the task and the Finish Date will move accordingly
If you change only the Finish Date of a task, it is assumed that you are changing the duration of the task and the Start Date will NOT change
When the Start date or Finish date of a child task is changed that falls outside of the parent, Summary Task, that Summary Task's dates will change accordingly
When any Task's Start date or Finish date falls outside of the Project/Investment's dates, the dates for the investment will be extended accordingly
If you 'shrink' or 'bring in' the minimum/maximum Start and Finish Dates on ALL child tasks, the parent, Summary Task will reflect the new min/max dates of all the children tasks
'Shrinking' all Task dates does not 'shrink' the investment dates - investment dates are only changed when the task or allocation dates are adjusted to extend beyond the set dates
Summary tasks inherit the dates from their children. In order to change the summary task dates, the children's dates must be changed first.
Milestones are one day tasks, you can only change the finish date, not the start date. The start date will change when the finish date changes.
Reference KB: Extending task Finish date impact to ETC on assignments

Assignments

The ETC and Assignment Dates are impacted by the 'Actuals Thru Date' when actuals are posted to the assignment. This can cause assignment dates to not update or to get automatically reset to a different date if you try to change the date.

For Assignments, changing either the Start or Finish date assumes the assignment duration is being changed.

Simple rules for Assignment Dates (without the impact of posted actuals)

When Assignment dates are changed, the Assignment ETC remains the same (assuming the Staff Allocation and Availability is the same for the new date range) and redistributed within the new date range regardless of shrinking or expanding the duration of the assignment
You can change the Assignment Start date forward only. You cannot change it to a date prior to the Task Start Date. If you change only the Start Date of an assignment, the assignment Finish Date does not change; the duration of the assignment is changed accordingly (reduced)
If you change only the Finish Date of an assignment, the Start Date does not change; the duration of the assignment is changed accordingly
When the Assignment Finish date is changed that falls outside of the Task's dates, the Task Dates are extended and all following Task date rules to impact parent summary task dates and investment dates are rolled up
If you 'shrink' or 'bring in' the minimum/maximum Start and Finish Dates on ALL assignments for a Task, the Task Dates 'shrink'
If the assignment is Not Started and there is 0 ETC the assignment finish date will default the the task finish date.

What can impact / change dates?

Changing the dates can be accomplished via the below

Direct field entry in Classic
Direct field entry or Bulk Edit in Modern UX
PPM Gantt, OWB, or MSP
XOG Input
API Integration
Rally to Clarity Integration

Updating the Start or Finish date fields independently is possible in some or all of the areas mentioned above, especially in the Modern UX.

When using XOG or Integrations, be sure to supply both Start and Finish dates on the task. If you do not, Clarity will move the Finish date based on the change to the Start date.