Planning Dates for WBS Elements

Project planning includes the following business aspects:

• Dates
• Costs
• Revenues
• Material
• Resource
• Payments

You prioritize certain aspects depending on the type of the project. For example, in a customer project, the planned finish date is of major relevance. In contrast, in investment projects, the budgeted costs might be more important than other aspects. The aspects of planning are mutually dependent. For example, to keep a deadline, you must allocate more resources. By doing so, you are likely to increase costs.

James is a project planner at Hybrid Machinery. Linda works there as a controller. They are discussing the necessity of planning dates in projects.

Planned dates for WBS elements are called basic dates. You can enter basic dates manually in tables or graphically in a Gantt chart.

You can use the following transactions to enter basic dates:

• Project Planning Board (CJ2B)
• Project Builder (CJ20N)
• Change WBS (CJ02)
• Project Editor (PSHLP20)

In this lesson, we focus on using the Project Planning Board to plan dates for WBS elements. 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.

You can enter the following three sets of dates for WBS elements:

• Basic dates
• Forecast dates
• Actual dates