Question

We have a series of global milestone dependencies setup for the next release. However, the work in one of the milestones is blocked in the per user timeline, despite it having no dependencies:

One series of dependencies is setup like this: May->June->July->"Final Release"

With deadlines set for the end of each month and a deadline set for the final release.

There's also: "Other work"->"Final Release"

"Other work" has no dependencies, a deadline after the "july" milestone and a start date before the "may" milestone.

However, everyone's "Other Work" displays as blocked until the May/June/July work is completed.

Any idea where the problem lies?

thanks

gwagner

Answer 1

I discovered today (FC2046946) that EBS interprets milestones as a basic unit. Borrowing the analogy from a process scheduler, each milestone seems to be atomic and EBS absolutely will not slice it into smaller pieces to be scheduled in between other jobs. Adding completion dates and setting dependencies alters the order in which EBS tries to schedule the job, but it doesn't alter the fundamental property that apparently EBS believes the whole organization operates on one milestone at a time, which is a very silly assumption.

What is going on in your case is that EBS thinks that "Other Work" has to happen at some (singular) position in the list, i.e.

May->June->July->Other Work->Final Release

It chose this position for Other Work based on the completion date for Other Work relative to the completion date for your other milestones.

Whereas in "real life", your timeline will probably happen like this:

Other Work Part #1 -> May -> Other Work Part #2 -> June -> Other Work Part #3 -> July ...

I'm not sure what to tell you other than file a bug, as the result was not what I expected either.

Answer 2

While I still believe the behavior I saw above was weird, I think I've found the intended workaround:

• don't use milestone dependencies within a project. Just use completion dates. Since the milestones are strictly ordered, it basically does the right thing.

The rule appears to be: Only use milestone dependencies between projects (or a project & global milestones).

Cheers,

gwagner