Hi,

my Blog reader has a problem with scheduling Task ahead of planned time! I will reproduce his scenario in MS PROJECT 2016!.

First I’m going to create simple Project with two Tasks:

Now I’m going to create two Resources (John and Mary), and I will Assign john to the Task 1, and Mary to the Task 2:

and:

OK! Let’s say that Task 1 has started as Scheduled and it was done 25%:

I will get:

Now, let’s say that Task 2 is also done 25%, but it has started two day earlier (e.g. 6.2.2018). Do not ask me how can is it possible that Task 2 has started before Task1 is finished. It is scenario.

and:

I’ve got this:

Now, my Blog reader asks why are Actual Start date and Current Start date the same:

Well,  the answer is obvious. Actual and Current start date are same, because Task 2 has been started at some date, and that is Current start date. It is not saved in a plan, otherwise I will have to save the Baseline, and this Baseline Start date will remain intact, no matter if Start date is changed.

Now, I will set Status date to 06.02.2018, and I will update the project to reschedule uncompleted tasks to after the Status Date:

and:

I’ve got this:

Now, my Blog reader asks why are Start dates unchanged? Because, MS PROJECT has rescheduled only unfinished part of both Tasks. So, because Tasks were started before rescheduling, theirs Start Dates remains as they were.

Now, the major problem occurs. My blog reader did this: “Now I want to make  Task 2 100% complete based on its earlier Actual Start Date and original Duration, so I  enter the Actual Finish Date in the Update Tasks dialog box:”

The Result is:

The question is: “Why is Duration 0,75 days?” Well, first of all we rescheduled uncompleted part of Tasks after the Status date, which was 06.02.2018. What happened? The rest of Task 2 was supposed to continue at Friday, 09.02.2018. And since we told that it was finished before that date, (e.g. 08.02.2018), from 07.02.2018 to 08.02.2018 nothing happened, because in that period the Task is not scheduled! So if you say that it was finished at 08.02.2018, it is considered done, with no additional work. It means the real duration of the Task was 0,75 days (25% of three days which was planned).

Hope this helps.

Regards!