Planning Basic Dates in a Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)
James, who works as a project planner for Hybrid Machinery, and Linda who works as a project controller, discuss the usage of basic dates when creating costing or investment projects.
Planned dates for WBS elements are called basic dates. You can enter basic dates manually in tables or graphically in a Gantt chart.
Note
See the following video to follow their conversation:WBS Basic Dates
You can use the following applications to enter basic dates:
- Project Builder
- Project Planning Board
- Change WBS
You can enter or change basic dates manually and maintain them directly in detail screens. To reduce the time and effort involved in planning, a range of functions is available to support WBS date planning. Basic dates, for instance, can be extrapolated from lower to higher-level WBS elements, or passed on from higher-level to lower-level WBS elements. You can check the consistency of date planning within the WBS structure. However, unlike networks, you cannot schedule WBS elements.
In the execution phase, you can also enter actual dates in the Project Planning Board and compare them directly with the planned basic dates. In addition to basic dates and actual dates, you can maintain forecast dates for WBS elements.
To summarize: you can enter the following three sets of dates for WBS elements:
- Basic dates
- Forecast dates
- Actual dates
