Change duration instead of dates?

I have a similar question - we've had a shift in direction and our director wants to empower the PMs to make changes our project plan. Essentially, she wants to be able to use the Fixed Dates functionally of being able to edit the Due On date and having the duration update accordingly (without the start on date changing) and still have the remainder of the project update accordingly (due to the change). The only way I can see how to do this is to change all of the task constraints to Fixed Dates / Effort Driven. However, what does that do to the rest of the tasks with predecessors? (ex. I updated task 17 but task 18 didn't move). Christina Jarosz Ascensus

Just to add to the pile : I completely agree with Skye and Heather.

I definitely agree with Heather on this. Your PMs should have determined as a group what they all need to keep track of when running their projects and create a view targetting all of these fields. For me it's predecessors, task constraints, priority, planned start/completion dates and status, but I know for others it differs. -skye

It sounds like you have your project set to calculate from end date (schedule from .... Start Date, Completion Date), which will calculate backwards from the planned completion date. This will affect the default constraint on your project. If you are using predecessor relationships, you can use the duration and the initial start date of the first task, and the system will calculate the rest with a constraint of As Soon As Possible. If you set the schedule from Completion Date, all will calculate from the back end with a constraint of As Late As Possible. If you prefer to set each start date, you will override any predecessors, forcing the system to use a Must Start On constraint and calculate the completion date based on the duration. If you set a Planned Completion Date, it will force a Must End On constraint and calc the start date based on the duration. Setting both will force the duration, based on fixed date. Hope this helps. MG Marty Gawry - CapabilitySource

In addition to Skye's comment, you might want to create a View for your project task list that includes a column for Task Constraint. We encourage all our PMs to use such a view, so they can see what the constraint is set to for each task and how it changes depending on whether they change a date or a duration.

my advice is that you take a closer look at the Task Constraint field. You sound like your task constraint is set to fixed dates, but the behavior you desire, you might be better off with one of the other constraints. A list of all of them can be found here: "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217297147-Task-Constraint-Overview" title="https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217297147-Task-Constraint-Overview">https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/217297147-Task-Constraint-Overview for example, As Soon As Possible is one of the constraints that would calculate an end date based on your duration. -skye