Using Project Life Cycles correctly

I find it hard to understand how this feature is intended to be used effectively and I was unable to find any official resources on your website concerning this topic. Below a few road blocks I hit without really understanding what I am doing wrong, if it is possible, or if there is a work around to reach a similar goal.

Scheduling of project phases seems pretty counter intuitive to me. I found out by trail and error, that there phases are always "boardering" each other, they don't overlap and there is no "lag" and OpenProject adjusts the scheduling automatically. So the duration of a phase seems to have the highest weight in this scheduling model (if I re-schedule Planing to later, all subsequent phases get shifted, even though there might be a hard deadline in place). Even though duration is setting the tone, I can't use the "Days" field to schedule the project phase.
Is there any kind of scheduling connection in place between phases and work packages? I don't seem to get a warning, that a work package due date is behind the assigned phase's end-date. Shouldn't this be rescheduled automatically?
How do I use the phase-gates? I can't seem to be able to assign work package milestones to that. How is this intended to be used - what benefit does it have to activate a gate?
Generally speaking, how (or is it even possible) to plan a project deadline oriented? My projects have an exact date where stuff has to be installed. If my workload during Executing is too high, I have to descope work from the project (triaging, trying to make the best out of a tight situation). And similarly, am I able to let OpenProject handle any automatic scheduling backwards. For example, before everything is installed on a certain deadline, I'd like to have a three week testing period for my customer (posing a new deadline for when virtually all tasks for a project have to be completed).

Replies (2)

RE: Using Project Life Cycles correctly - Added by Trisha Renken-Sebastian 5 days ago

I can't answer all of your questions, but I do have something for one of them:

Generally speaking, how (or is it even possible) to plan a project deadline oriented? My projects have an exact date where stuff has to be installed. If my workload during Executing is too high, I have to descope work from the project (triaging, trying to make the best out of a tight situation). And similarly, am I able to let OpenProject handle any automatic scheduling backwards. For example, before everything is installed on a certain deadline, I'd like to have a three week testing period for my customer (posing a new deadline for when virtually all tasks for a project have to be completed).

We have a project like that we're tracking where our deadline is in Spring 2026. Your instincts are good where you start with the end of the project and start listing the tasks in reverse chronological order. The questions we asked ourselves were:

What do we need to do to consider this finally done and dusted?
Do we have the resources we need in order to complete the work?
How much time will it take us to do one or more of these things? Do they conflict in any way?

It's always okay to list work packages and then set the relations and the timing afterwards. For example, if the tasks you created are things like:

Purchase the necessary cleaning supplies.
Research the best cleaners to use for all types of floorings that will be encountered.
Arrange for access to the office for the cleaners.
Sign contract with cleaning crew.

And then you realize that you also need to move some boxes out of one area of the office, it's perfectly alright to create the new work package and then insert it correctly as a predecessor or a successor to a different work package.

Hope that was helpful!

RE: Using Project Life Cycles correctly - Added by Rince wind 3 days ago

And then you realize that you also need to move some boxes out of one area of the office, it's perfectly alright to create the new work package and then insert it correctly as a predecessor or a successor to a different work package.

Hope that was helpful!

The problem is, how is OpenProject assisting you with deadline oriented planning. None of these Work Packages are automatically scheduled, because they need to have a predecessor which the first one obviously doesn't have.

Did you get that to work, that if you move the Deadline, all other work packages follow the moving deadline?

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