Tasks with Different Priorities May Not Schedule as Expected (159378)

SUMMARY

When scheduling tasks with different priorities and deadlines, the tasks may not be scheduled as expected.

As an example, create a new team file that is scheduled to begin on a Monday and add 3 tasks with Total Work of 16 hours each. Give the first task a deadline of Wednesday and the third task a deadline of Thursday. The tasks will be scheduled as follows:

   Task          Start          Finish
   1             Monday         Tuesday
   2             Friday         Monday of next week
   3             Wednesday      Thursday

Now change the priority of the second task to high and leave the priority for tasks 1 and 3 set to medium. The tasks will now be scheduled as follows:

   Task          Start          Finish
   1             Tuesday        Wednesday
   2             Friday         Monday of next week
   3             Monday         Thursday

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft Team Manager schedules the higher priority tasks first, and then checks to determine if any tasks are missing their deadlines. In the second example, Microsoft Team Manager schedules task 2 first because it has a higher priority. It then checks to see if it is missing any deadlines and first finds task 1 will miss the deadline. Microsoft Team Manager then schedules task 1 to meet the deadline as late as possible so that task 2 can be partially done earlier as a high priority task. It then finds task 3 will also miss the deadline and again schedules task 3 to meet the deadline as late as possible.