Specifying a delivery date for a project

You may find it useful to specify a delivery date if the contract for a project specifies a date by which the project must be completed.

You can specify a delivery date for the programme of projects, and a delivery date for each chart or summary group that has been identified as being a project. You can use a project's delivery date as a deadline when rescheduling. If you do this, rather than using the finish date of the last task in the project, the project's late and free finish dates are set to the delivery date when rescheduling and float is calculated out to the project's delivery date. A delivery date provides a deadline for all tasks in the project, so any tasks that exceed the delivery date have negative float (ie they become super-critical) following a reschedule.

Setting a delivery date for a project is similar to setting a deadline flag on the project, apart from the fact that when you set a deadline flag, float is not calculated out to the flag's date when rescheduling.

The delivery date is also used when checking the quality of a schedule to calculate the project's maximum duration, which is the difference between the project's start date and its delivery date.

To specify a delivery date for the entire portfolio of projects:

Click File, then Properties to view the Properties tab of the Backstage view.
Enter the date by which the project must be delivered in the Delivery date field.

To specify a delivery date for a chart or summary group that has been identified as being a project:

In the project view, right-click the chart or summary group and select Properties. The Chart/Project Properties dialog appears.
Click the Project tab.
Enter the date by which the project must be delivered in the Delivery date field.
Click Close.

To specify that the delivery date should be used as a deadline when rescheduling

On the Home tab, in the Schedule group, click the Reschedule Branch dropdown and select Options. The Reschedule dialog appears.
Select the Use delivery date as deadline check box.
Click OK.

A project's delivery date is disregarded during rescheduling if any constraint other than a Start On or After flag has been applied to the expanded or summary task that represents the project.

To view the delivery date of projects, display the 'Project delivery date' field, from the Project information group of fields, in the spreadsheet.