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Hammock Task Creation

GChundrlek

One of my clients uses Hammock Tasks to represent Project Management and Organizational Change Management in their projects.

A Hammock Task is one whose Start and Finish dates are driven by different Milestones. The Start Date would be the date of one Milestone and the Finish Date would be the date of a subsequent Milestone. For example the "Organizational Change Management" task would have a Start Date of the "System Design" milestone and a Finish Date of the "Handover to Operations" milestone.

In other Project Management tools, I could link the date cell from the relevant Milestones, but it doesn't look like I can do it in Smartsheet. How can I make the Start Date for a task dependent on one Milestone and the End Date for the same task dependent on another Milestone, thereby creating a Hammock Task?

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Formulas

functionality

Project Management

Cell linking

Accepted answers

khasimbashashaik

hey, @ GChundrlek,

Smartsheet doesn’t natively support Hammock Tasks, you have to use a workaround. Because sheets with active dependencies disabled can use formulas directly, but sheets with dependencies enabled lock down those date columns

Link/formula the Start Date to the first milestone date
Link/formula the Finish Date to the second milestone date

This works well visually, but the task duration becomes driven by those milestone dates rather than dependency logic itself.

let's connect if you need any help

All comments

khasimbashashaik

Link/formula the Start Date to the first milestone date
Link/formula the Finish Date to the second milestone date

This works well visually, but the task duration becomes driven by those milestone dates rather than dependency logic itself.

let's connect if you need any help

GChundrlek

That the task duration is driven by the milestones is the point of a Hammock Task. Project Managers use them to represent work such as Organizational Change Management, Project Management, or other work that happens across a block of related tasks and not just as a single task. We assign people to that work, and expect them to perform that work for however long those related tasks take. The people assigned to the Hammock Task are not the ones assigned to the related tasks. If, for example, a Design task takes less time than expected or if Construction is delayed or if parts arrive late, that will directly affect the amount of time the Project Manager and/or Organizational Change Manager will need to be on the project.

Because this client has dependencies enabled, what you're saying is that I cannot link or use a formula on the Start and Finish date columns. That's disappointing and I don't want to add more columns that will only be used for one or two rows so I will have to manually adjust the dates until Smartsheet allows this functionality that has existed in other Project Management solutions for decades.

GChundrlek

That the task duration is driven by the milestone dates is the entire point of a Hammock Task. It represents Project Management, Organizational Change Management, or other supporting work that happens across a block of related tasks instead of as one discrete piece of work.

This client has dependencies enabled. Therefore, it appears that I cannot link to the date columns, nor can I use a formula on them. I would rather not add columns so it appears that I will have to either manually adjust the dates or add a comment to the line designating the Hammock Task.

khasimbashashaik

Hi @GChundrlek
That makes sense, and you’re absolutely right — the milestone-driven duration is exactly the purpose of a true Hammock Task.

Unfortunately, with dependencies enabled in Smartsheet, the date columns become restricted, so the workaround options are pretty limited. At that point, manually maintaining the dates or adding notes or comments is probably the cleanest approach without adding extra helper columns.

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