Hey Luca,

maybe you should try to not only set child/parent-relationships. Instead, you can set the "follows" or "is followed" by relations. With that I found that timelines behave the way you would like them to. It could look like this:

Milestone 1  --followed by--> phase 1 (incl. subtasks) --follow by--> Milestone 2  --> etc.

So if you change durations inside phase 1, the milestone 2 onwards should move aswell.

I use the follows and followed relationship but still see the same behaviour as described by Luca: delays in scheduled are reflected correctly but end dates moving forward does not result in earlier scheduling of the followers.

I'm using OpenProject Community 12.4.2 in a Docker container.

Am I missing something?

Maybe it helps to illustrate the behaviour.

This is the initial status: Follower Task depends on Prerequisite Task.

Prereq Task gets delayed and I change the end date of that task to Mar 15 - Follower Task gets rescheduled to Mar 16 because of the follower relationship:

When I schedule the end date of Prereq Task back to Mar 1, Follower Task is not preponed accordingly:

I noticed this same behavior. While I am using the hosted version in a trial, this is one of the things that I came across in my testing of the platform as a viable solution.

I want to be able to have templates of different project types (small, medium, large) with different workflows, and be able to:

1. Update the initial date and have changes cascade throughout the project. (Typical waterfall methodology), and
2. If some phases are expected to take less time, adjusting the tasks in those phases should then bring the dates backward.
3. I have been using the follows/followed by for the phases, but also have to have some Requires (and thus Required by in those). I have these to follow a consistent procedure.

I came across the exact same issue as Luca. Is this an issue where you can't shorten phases, or am I missing something and perhaps having too many dependencies?

I am also experiencing similar behavior. This is very frustrating with long chains of tasks that I need to manually adjust to start directly after the predecessor task when the predecessor is shortened in duration. I experience this although I am using the "Precedes"/"Follows" relationships.

 I am running OpenProject 12.4.2 on Docker. From this link: https://www.openproject.org/docs/user-guide/gantt-chart/scheduling/ I find the following regarding automatic scheduling:

When you move a work package past the set start date of its follower, the followers start date will be adjusted to its predecessor’s finish date. This is not the case the other way round.

Bolding is mine. I am not exactly sure what the latter sentence means exactly, but this could indicate the this behavior is as designed. It could also mean that moving the follower does not adjust the predecessor.