User's Guide to  

RiskyProject Professional

About Task Start Time, Finish Time, and Duration

To edit start and finish time or duration use the General tab of Task Information dialog box.

To open the Task Information dialog box use one of the following methods:

Double click on any read only field associated with task in data sheet.

• Press <Shift+F2>

• From the Project menu, choose Task Information.

• Use the Tasks toolbar if you select rows in data sheet

• Right-click on a task and choose Task Information from the shortcut menu 
  
  

You can schedule a task using several methods:

1. Enter task duration first. 

Start and finish times will be automatically calculated. If the duration is uncertain, enter low and high durations. Otherwise, low, high, and base durations will be the same. When you enter low and high durations, remember the following things:

• RiskyProject allows you define risks. 
  Remember that uncertainties, defined by low and high duration, must be due to factors other than the risks assigned to this task. Otherwise, you will double count the same risk factor. For example, if you have a risk “Increase duration due to changes of requirements”, you cannot estimate high duration to the task to account for potential changes of requirements.

• The actual meaning of low and high duration depends on the parameters defined in the Distribution tab of Task Information dialog box. By default, the distribution for duration is triangular.

• The default start time of a task is calculated based on predecessors. If a task does not have predecessors, the start time is either the current time, or the Default Time defined in the Options dialog box.

• The default low and high duration of a task is calculated based the duration settings defined in Options dialog box. Duration units (days, weeks, month, etc.) are also defined in the Options dialog box. Units for duration are the same for all projects.

2. Enter Start Time first.

This method is not recommended for scheduling tasks because the constraints will automatically be set to Start Not Early Than and may cause a scheduling conflict. You can define Low and High Start times in the Task Information dialog box.

3. Enter Finish Time first. 

This method is not a recommended for scheduling tasks because the constraints will automatically be set to Must Finish On and may cause a scheduling conflict. In this case, RiskyProject calculates the Start Time based on the Finish and duration. You cannot enter Low and High Finish Times. Low Finish Time = Low Start Time + Low Duration and High Finish Time = High Start Time + High Duration.

Note: If task is summary task durations, start and finish times are calculated values, therefore they will be read only in the General tab.