Repeating date-based tasks (feature request)
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#88 Repeating date-based tasks (feature request)
Date-based or "overhead" tasks in xProcess can span over an extended period (e.g. a general overhead task consuming a percentage of everyone's time over the whole project) but xProcess assumes the task should be scheduled on every day in the period. It is not currently possible to define a date-based task that repeats at regular intervals such as every 2nd Tuesday or the second Friday or the month. This is useful for repeating events in approaches such as Scrum. Another motivation is the desire to integrate xProcess with team members diaries. Since such events are easy to define in most calendar systems having this feature makes such integration more straightforward.
UI suggestions: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/xprocess/index.php?title=US105:_Define_a_Repeating_Date-based_Task
I would certainly welcome this feature - it would also be very useful on some of out non-scrum projects.
Regarding the end date:
- At the moment the UI suggests two options for setting the end date: 1) never and 2) a calendar date.
- Will it be possible to specify start and end dates relative to other Tasks as it is currently possible with overhead tasks?
- Will it be possible to specify that a task should end after a set number of iterations?
Does a Daily repeating task with "Repeat every: 1 days" differ from a "normal" overhead task?
To reply to the 2nd comment first: you're right - as far as the scheduler is concerned a non-repeating event (e.g. a training course Mon-Fri) will be schedule every day in the period and so will behave in exactly the same way as an event that repeats every 1 day in the same period.
The "Repeats" attribute can take 4 values: NONE, DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY; The RepeatsEvery takes an integer (say 1). The summary text for [NONE] and [DAILY, 1] could be very similar but should indicate the difference. E.G.
NONE: Non-repeating date-based task. Scheduled every day in the period.
DAILY, 1: Date-based task repeating every 1 day in the period.
To reply to the first comment:
Repeating tasks can only be specified in the case of date-based (i.e. overhead) tasks.
The end date of an overhead / date-based task is referred to as the "earliest end date" as the date may be made later by an "end after" constraint. If NEVER is selected as the earliest end date the scheduler will schedule the task up to the end date of the project. If it a specified date it will be scheduled up to this date unless there is an end-after constraint (which may be the end date of another task).
Hope this helps.
Just a further not on my comment - constraints change the schedule order of tasks and so this may not give the desired effect. Generally date-based tasks are scheduled before effort-based ones but a constraint means the depended on task is scheduled first.
... and one more clarification. If an overhead/date-based task has a dependency (start-after or end-after) on the forecast date of an effort-based task it is not scheduled until the effort-based task has been scheduled in it current priority order. It does not promote the depended-on task to be scheduled with the overhead tasks. This is good for start-after constraints but it not so good for end-after ones as the team's time may have been allocated to other tasks before the overhead task is scheduled. We may need to look at this use case and change this behaviour. (I'd like to improve the constraints spec first as discussed in issue 4778206 - https://sourceforge.net/projects/xprocess/forums/forum/910969/topic/4778206\)
Thank you for clarifying the effects on scheduling when adding dependency constraints to overhead tasks.
Just a note to explain our need for working with dependencies rather than calendar dates:
We regularly plan projects on a high level well in advance and sometimes before the start date is fixed. We do ,however, have a good idea of the duration of some work packages/tasks and the interdependencies and so can put up a plan based on an assumed start date. If the remaining start/end dates can be calculated based on dependencies and resource availability we can be rather flexible and easily adjust the planning when the missing dates become clear.
... It is possible with the current version of xProcess to do what we need by adding additional "milestone" tasks and some extra dependencies but it is not very intuitive.
I've raised a new issue for constraints (3489911) so we should transfer that discussion there to get spec right. This issue is just the repeating event item.It maybe we need a significant change on the way constraints work with date-based /overhead tasks and forecast dates.