Contingency duration based on predecessors

Thomas Herbig

I was wondering if it is possible to create a task whose duration is determined by two predecessors, one from backward planning and one from forward constraints.  I would like to use this, among others, to show dynamic contingency periods in my project.

 

Let's take the simplest example, a project with the following three lines:

1. Milestone 1 at the start of the project, say, 8/29/16.

2. Milestone 2 at the required completion date of the project, say, 9/30/16.

3. A task, "Contingency," with a non-zero duration.  The end date of this task should be determined backwards by the predecessor on Line 2, while the start of the task should be determined forward by the predecessor on Line 1.

 

 

That's not what I want.  Is there a way of getting this done?

 

Thanks

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Thomas-- We don't currently support constraints in Smartsheet, so as far as I'm aware, this wouldn't currently be possible. This is definitely something our team can consider implementing in a future release and I'll pass along your input!

Thomas Herbig

Thank you.  Yes, this would be important; other project planning tools have it and I like it.

Antoine Falempin

A workaround for the dynamic duration of the item task.

As we cannot out of the box get a dynamic calculation out of the dependencies.

Workaround :  --> create two child items (0 duration milestone) : ==> the parent will get the duration between the milestones.

Master task

- one item with the start dependency

- one item with the stop dependency

==> duration is then automatically calculated.