Hard vs. soft deadlines

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Bastian Bußhardt

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May 19, 2014, 12:46:59 AM5/19/14
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Hi,

Is is somehow possible to set hard and/or soft deadlines ? This would be very usefull for managing more complex tasks and projects.

Greetings,
Bastian

Dwight Arthur

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May 23, 2014, 11:22:03 AM5/23/14
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Hi, Bastian. I'm not sure if this is relevant to your needs but you might try putting the hard deadline as "due date" and the soft deadline as "start date". Nothing prevents you from working on a task before its start date, it just does not show up on "active task" reports. It would be easy to create a custom repory showing all active tasks plus all tasks that would be active if not for a future start date. If you want a more thorough explanation of how this could work, please post more detail about how you plan to use hard versus soft deadlines.
-Dwight

Trish Putnam

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May 23, 2014, 11:44:53 AM5/23/14
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Dwight's idea of using the start date as a soft deadline might be workable for you.  In my case, though, I actually use the start date as a start date for certain kinds of projects/tasks, so I think it would probably just introduce additional confusion.

My usual way of dealing with soft deadlines vs hard deadlines is to set the soft deadline as the due date, but include information about the hard deadline in the notes for the task, and tag tasks where the due date is a soft deadline with a context of @SoftDeadline. As I do my weekly review and plan for next week, I have a view which looks at all tasks with a context of @SoftDeadline for the next two weeks and assess whether the current deadline is achievable or needs to shift, then adjust accordingly.  You could adjust the timeframe of your view to suit your usual style, of course.



Regards -


On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 8:22 AM, Dwight Arthur <m...@dwightarthur.us> wrote:
Hi, Bastian. I'm not sure if this is relevant to your needs but you might try putting the hard deadline as "due date" and the soft deadline as "start date". Nothing prevents you from working on a task before its start date, it just does not show up on "active task" reports. It would be easy to create a custom repory showing all active tasks plus all tasks that would be active if not for a future start date. If you want a more thorough explanation of how this could work, please post more detail about how you plan to use hard versus soft deadlines.
-Dwight

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