Project Dependencies and Relative Lengths

Did you know... that you can create dependencies with relative lengths?  That's right -- an absolute measure is not required.  So, to be specific, say you have the following:

(1) Task 1 is 10 days in duration.

(2) Task 2 links to Task 1 (it's own length is irrelevant).

(3) You want Task 2 to start after 40% of Task 1 is completed.

Of course, that's the cool part -- that you don't know how long it will take Task 1 to actually run, AND you don't know specifically how far from either end you really want it, you can use the format below (for instance, you can have Task 2 start 2 days before Task 1 is finished, regardless of how long Task 1 takes, by saying 1FS-2d).

Well, you can specify the above relationship as:  1SS+40% (if the spirit of the relationship dictates the start from the Task 1 starting point) -or- 1FS-60% (if the spirit of the relationship dictates starting from the end point).  In THIS case, using RELATIVE progress link lags, the two statements can be considered equivalent (NOT so for absolute SS or FS relationships specified in time units, of course).

Comments

[PM Hut]

This is a good tip. It gets a bit tricky though if you have multiple relative dependencies. Eg. Task2 starts after 40% of Task1 gets finished. Task 3 starts once 70% of task2 gets done. The schedule will probably be harder to read.