A Task or Milestone with Must Start/Finish On or Start/Finish No Earlier Than, that are not needed. If these constraint dates are removed, the schedule for these task will not change.
Why does it matter if items in the project have date constraints?
To the maximum extend possible a schedule should be free of date constraints. The scheduled for project tasks that do not have date constraints are driven only by their duration, predecessors and, to some extent, their successors. This allows the schedule to be a reliable predictor of future dates and events and gives the analyst and project team an early warning of schedule delays that need to be resolved. Date constraints may hinder the schedulers ability to perform Critical Path Method (CPM) and Root Cause analysis because tasks are not as free flowing (able to move left and right per their predecessors) as they would be without date constraints.
Resolving Unnecessary Date Constraints
Perform the Audit and Click on each item in the resulting tasks list to go to the offending task. You can also click Filter for Items Below to display tasks with audit issues and record the offending condition in the Integrity Note log field.
Display the Project fields named Constraint Type and change it to As Soon As Possible
What Else to Consider
The DCMA 14 Point Assessment tests for "Hard Constrains"
Hard Constraint: Number of activities with hard (Must Start On or Must Finish On) or two-way constraints. Should not exceed 5%
