User's Guide to  

RiskyProject Professional

Project Deadlines

Project Deadlines are entered or edited in the Main Project Settings dialog box. Deadlines affect the results of the probabilistic calculations, but do not affect the results of baseline calculation.

• Earliest Project Start Time: if any task is started or finished before this date, the task and the complete project will be marked as canceled for the particular iteration. Start and finish time of the project will be adjusted. If finish time of the task date is before earliest project start time, the task will have zero duration and begin on the earliest project start time. 

• Latest Project Finish Time: if any task is started or finished after this date, the task and the complete project will be marked as canceled for the particular iteration. The start and finish time of the project will be adjusted. If the start date of the task is after latest project finish time, the task will have zero duration and begin on the latest project finish time.

• Maximum project duration: Actual project start time plus maximum project duration is the maximum project finish time. It affects the project schedule the same way as Latest Project Finish Time.
  
  When any task within a project reaches the project deadline, the project will be marked as canceled for the particular iteration. However, task duration, start and finish times can vary between the different iterations due to the risks and uncertainties; therefore, tasks can reach the deadline in one iteration, but do not in another. RiskyProject calculates the project success rate based on the number of iterations where the project is successfully completed.

To open the Project Settings dialog box:

1. From the Project menu, choose Main Project Settings. 
2. Define Earliest Project Start Time, Latest Project Finish Time, and Maximum project duration.

Example:

• Maximum Project Duration is 5 years

• Actual start time is Oct 1,2003

• Projected Finish time is Oct 1, 2009

• Project will be canceled because Oct 1,2003 + 5 years < Oct 1,2009

Maximum project duration is working time (not calendar time). For example, one month maximum project duration is 20 working days. It is done to make maximum project duration consistent to duration of any task.

Tip:

Earliest Project Start Time and Latest Project Finish Time are shown as red vertical lines on the Gantt chart. You cannot scroll Gantt charts beyond these dates.

Note: 

The probabilistic calculate cannot proceed and a warning will open if the project is outside of Earliest Project Start Time and Latest Project Finish Time. For example,

• Actual Project Start Time: Oct 1,2003

• Projected Finish Time: Oct 1,2009

• Earliest Project Start Time: Jan 1,1990

• Latest Project Finish Time: Jan 1,2003

In this case, the probabilistic calculation will not proceed.