Adjusting the Project Start Date

[tahajassim]

I have created a project which the planned start date was set to 1 Feb 2017 and then in the process I have discovered that the correct planned start date is 15 Jan 2017! Having used MS Project, it was very clear that I just needed to update the planned start date for the project and that should have fixed it, but it seems I am unable to do so!

It seems once the project is started and you start reporting some progress, you cannot adjust the planned start date to an earlier date.

I have tried searching the community but unfortunately I was not able to find a solution to this problem! I am really sure, I am not the first one who faced such issue

Regards,

/Taha

[tahajassim]

I some how managed to find a work around to change the planned start date, where I have exported the project into MS Project (xml).

I have modified the exported project in MS Project and change the project start date, and then import as a new project on the same original ServiceNow project and it worked!

I have an agile phase within the project whereby the progress was not accurately showing after import, however after moving a user story to a complete state, the total progress was properly calculated.

I am not sure if this is the right way to adjust the planned start date, but for now that's will do!

[Earl L]

Taha,

I'm skeptical that export/import through MS Project is the only way to adjust the project start date. Did you try changing the project status to either open or pending and making an adjustment to the start date after you change the status value?

I have a development instance (un-modified) and I can change the planned start date of the project, even though the project status is "Work in progress" and tasks have been completed. When I make that kind of change, if tasks have already been completed, I do get an error message saying that it's an invalid update and the planned start date cannot be changed for tasks that have already been started. However, the system does apply the change to the overall (project level) planned start date. Obviously it wouldn't have changed the dates for anything that had been completed or work-in-progress.

One question I have about this. Why is the planned start date important to get absolutely correct when there is an actual start date field as well? I would think the actual start date is the one that you want to make sure reflects the real start date for the project. Except, I suppose, if you wanted to make sure that your plan and actual were always the same. I can see how this could be important for some people, but personally I wouldn't pay much attention to the fact that those two might be different.

Earl

[tahajassim]

Hello Earl,

I have tried your suggestion by changing the project status to an earlier state and it did not work! The reason I needed to change the planned start date, is that I want to add tasks on earlier date, and I am unable to create them as I am restricted by the project planned start date. I have noticed that the actual start date is not editable as well.

I assume that a project must follow   life cycle by which you define the plan and then start the project and report progress. However, there are situation, where we need to have more control on the dates, for example I want to reflect the actual date for a complete task that happened one week ago! I assume, if we do it in ServiceNow it would take the current date, while I am looking for a specific date in the past.

/Taha

[arun_vydianatha]

tahajassim Under Project > Settings > Preferences

there is a property "Enable altering of planned date(s) for task in WIP/Closed"

Turn that property ON, then   you will be able to modify dates of project which is in WIP state