Scheduling Project From the Finish Date

Wondering how late you can start your project and finish by the promised completion date? Let Microsoft Project calculate the start date for you.

From the Project ribbon in Microsoft Project, select Project Information.

By default Project schedules all task to start As soon as possible from the Project Start Date. Calculating from the Project Finish Date, will change the constraint for all tasks to begin As late as possible.

Schedule from the Project Finish Date when you need to determine when a project must start so that it finishes on a specific required date. Project automatically assigns the As Late as Possible constraint to the finish date of all auto scheduled tasks in the project plan. All slack will be removed from the project plan resulting in every task now being on the critical path. Best practice would be to start earlier than the calculated Start Date since you will not make your promised finish date if any one of the tasks in the schedule slip.

Hope this helps! Please contact us with questions.