Need help on Planned Start Date VS Actual Start Date VS Original Start date

[shaik_irfan]

Hi,

I have a project created on 2020-01-02 08:00:00 and i see the same date available in Planned Start Date and Original Start Date, basically the project needs to be started on 2020-01-02 08:00:00 but it got started on 2020-03-08 08:00:00 now i see the Actual Start date actually populated with same 2020-01-02 08:00:00.

Basically actual start date should populate the date when the project was started.

Can anyone please help me the definations  

[Harsh Vardhan]

it all depends, if you have any process set up to create project .

generally user first create Idea , once it has approved , create demand,

if demand will have project category and once your demand will get complete , you will create project from demand and then you can say the real start time of the project. but again it all depends on org. to org. 

this is more over process and TBH i am not into that domain , i would suggest look into the doc and watch the video on YouTube. 

[Harsh Vardhan]

 I actually wanted to know the OOB behaviour how it works if it just populate the planned start date though it future date when i start the project then what is the meaning of Actual start date then.

 planned start date/planned end date : it would be your tentative date of your project start and end date, when you will create a demand you will see the "Start Date" and "due date", the date which you will mention there that will be rollout on project "planned start date" and "planned end date" field if you create project from demand. 

Actual start date/Actual End date : there would be some of the scenario after project creation the date came in to "planned start date/planned end date " field would not be your "Actual start date/Actual End date" then you can propose new "Actual start date/Actual End date" on your project , this way you can use those fields on your project form. 

[simplyrik]

Not sure if this is related, but this is what I got from our team:  

"After building out the project plan, when flipping the task’s “State” field from “Pending” to “Work in Progress” the “Actual start date” field value would get auto-populated with the “Planned start date” field value which may or may not be the case.  The “Actual start date” value would always be that of the “Planned start date” value thus having a calculated duration variance of 0."

[shaik_irfan]

@simplyrik, What you said is right then why servicenow again having original strat date as a separate filed? Any purpose of having this

[simplyrik]

The way I see it, is during the planning Phase the PM may set a presumed Planned Start Date.  If that date slips for whatever business reason, it may be a requirement to capture that for reporting purposed on the overall Project Management Process.  e.g., % of projects that slipped original planned date. etc.