Question about workback and this Project with Hard Deadline and Gantt template

James Keuning

A lot of workback questions get answered by pointing to this Project with Hard Deadline and Gantt template. Can anyone explain what I am missing? The first line asks the users to enter deadline as a milestone in the first row, "to create a work-back schedule." But I can't see how this is actually helping with a workback. Even taken as it is found, with the data in the template, the deadline is before any of the tasks.

What am I missing here? And how can I create a workback? I am about to build one from scratch, but I don't want to take them time if there is a head start out there,..

Fabian B

Running into the same issue.

Would appreciate an answer.

Cheers!

Genevieve P.

Hi @James Keuning and @Fabian B

You're correct, the template doesn't automatically adjust anything when you add in a date to the top row. I'm not sure what the intended functionality of the template is, other than perhaps to set a milestone so that you can visually ensure no underlying dates cross that line in the Gantt chart. Please provide your feedback about the template through the form attached on the top row!

I would suggest creating your project sheet, then using the Baseline feature to track the variance. You may also want to take a look at the new TotalFloat function that was released last week, see here.

Cheers,

Genevieve

HollieSimone

The template isn't structured correctly, no predecessors added. Looks as though they uploaded the wrong version of the template.

James Keuning

It's frustrating that it's not better supported, but there a sorta-workback is possible. You need to be very careful to not use more than one SF predecessor because Smartsheet will grab the earlier of the two dates, when you want it to grab the later for workback purposes.

Also, incidentally and which most of you already know, I workback is useful in a situation where you have far off deadline, with plenty of time to get there, and you need to know when to start. So let's say you need to replace all workstations in your organization within 3 years, and it will likely take a year or two to complete the work. The workback helps you start at the deadline, and figure out when you need to kick off the project. If you have a project with a deadline in a year, and you have no idea how you will get everything done, a workback is not going to help you. Typical waterfall dependencies and Smartsheet's designed predecessor feature will help you get there, because you are mostly going to be concerned with schedule compression.

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=9f369746ea6e404f9164b3f8e5cc4a5c

Luke McCarthy

Hi @James Keuning,

I am trying to get the workback feature to function correctly, but I can't see how you have made the end of one line dependent on the start of the following line.

Any help appreciated! Thank you.

Luke McCarthy

Sorry for the double post. For anyone that is struggling with this, I found the answer to the following post very useful:

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/77229/using-successor-links-instead-of-predecessor-links

James Keuning

@Luke McCarthy

Hi Luke. I think I used that link as the impetus for the solution. But I also think I saw it literally spelled out somewhere. It’s really as simple as using SF instead of the default FS, and using negative duration.

There is a major gotcha, which I document on my “Server room done” lines.