Critical path and automatic dates

Monument works out every date from the links

Once stages or tasks are linked, you don't place most of their dates by hand any more. Monument works them out: a linked task keeps the start you gave it until a link pushes it later, and then it moves only as far as it has to. The gap between a task and the one before it is room to move, not wasted space; Monument calls that room float.

The rule that matters most: a link only pushes, it never pulls. If the task before Concept Design finishes early, or someone shortens it, Concept Design does not follow it forward. It stays exactly where you put it, and the gap it now has in front of it is float. Only a push, from a link, a stage, or a fixed date, ever moves a date later.

See what's driving the finish: the Schedule check tab

Open the project's Schedule check tab to see which tasks actually control Riverside Apartments' finish date. It sits beside Overview in the project's side panel and on the project's own page. The Schedule check button in the schedule toolbar opens it too: its badge counts what needs a look across every project. Turn on the Critical path switch at the top of the tab, and Monument colours every bar by how much room it has. The tab's What the Gantt shows list explains each of these marks. Monument colours every bar by how much room it has:

• Red, no amber edge — no room to move at all. Moving this task moves the project's finish, or a milestone's deadline. This is the critical path.
• Amber edge — five working days or fewer before the finish or a deadline. Still safe today, but close enough to watch.
• A red striped overrun with a label like −3d — the task is already running past its latest finish, and the label is exactly how many working days late.
• A milestone flag with an amber edge and a label like 3d — the milestone has that many working days spare before its deadline, within your near-critical days (five unless changed in Settings > Projects). A late milestone is red, as before; a milestone with no deadline stays plain. Hover the flag to see the spare days.
• A faded red edge — the stage or task is finished, and it led straight into the critical path. Finished work can't slip, so it never counts as critical or at risk, but the faded red lets the whole chain read from its first stage to its last. Hover it to see "Completed — was on the critical path". A finished row that led in with days to spare stays plain.
• A bold link sets the date of the row it points to; a dashed amber link is broken — the saved dates don't actually allow it (usually after an import, or a dragged edit nobody saved).

The Critical path and Float switches apply to the whole schedule, not only to the project whose tab you opened. Baseline stays in the schedule toolbar.

• Baseline draws the project's saved comparison baseline as a thin grey bar under each task, so you can see at a glance what moved since it was saved. See baselines and versions for how a baseline becomes the active comparison.
• Float draws a faint dashed bar after each task, reaching to the latest date it could finish without moving the project's finish. The gap between the solid bar and the end of the dashed one is the float: room that task can lose before the finish moves. A small tick on the dashed bar marks the latest it could finish without missing the next milestone it feeds; hover the tick to see the milestone and the room, e.g. "Tender issued · 3 working days". There's no tick when that milestone has as much room as the finish, or is already missed (the red overrun shows that). Because the bar runs to the finish, a task that shares its room with the tasks after it draws its dashed bar over theirs — that's the shared room, not an error. Deadlines and lateness still use the smallest room: a task late for anything shows the red overrun and its −3d label.

Hover a bar for the detail

Hovering any bar opens a card with the figures behind the colour:

• Scheduled — the dates the bar is drawn at.
• Latest — the latest it could start and finish without moving the finish or a deadline.
• Float — how much room it has, in working days, or "Late by N working days" once it's run out.
• Driven by — the task (or milestone) whose date is actually setting this one.
• Deadline — if this row has one.
• Moved from the original plan — how many working days its start and finish have shifted since the active baseline, once one exists.

The same room-to-move figures (earliest start, latest start, the room before the next task and before the finish, and what's driving it) also sit in the task's own panel, on its Overview tab, so you don't need the Gantt open to check them.

Deadlines and fixed dates hold the line

A deadline is a "finish by" date you can put on a task, a stage, the project itself, or a milestone. It never moves a task earlier by itself, but once the critical-path calculation says a row will finish after its deadline, Monument flags it: a small red flag on that row (a project's deadline draws as a red line down through all its rows instead), red in the hover card, and "Late by N working days" wherever float is shown. On a milestone, the deadline is also the date billing uses — see creating milestones and planning revenue for why no drag ever moves it.

A fixed date pins a task or stage to a specific date regardless of what its links would otherwise allow: start no earlier than, finish no later than, must start on, or must finish on. A pin icon on the bar's edge marks it. Fixed dates win over links — if a link would otherwise ask the row to start sooner or later than its fixed date allows, the fixed date wins and the conflict is reported, not silently dropped.

Set both in the panel of a task, a stage or the project row: the Timing section on its Overview tab shows Deadline and Fixed date. In edit mode, pick a deadline date, or pick a fixed-date rule and then its date. No fixed date removes one. Each change waits in the save bar like any other edit.

Milestones and their links

Milestones show in the Milestones panel, not on the task rows. On the schedule of all projects they appear once you select a project; on a project's own page they all show. Each flag stands on the milestone's typed date, which is its deadline and billing date. Hover a flag to see its forecast: the date its links require, and how many working days that is before or past the deadline. Without a link into it, the forecast is the typed date. Moving its criteria tasks does not change the forecast: criteria only decide what it bills and what progress it needs.

To make a milestone follow work, link a task's start or finish to it. Open the milestone's Criteria tab and use Add under Comes after. Choose the task's start or finish and an optional delay in working days or weeks. With several links, the latest date wins. Links only push the forecast later; they never pull it earlier. The typed date stays its deadline and billing date. A late milestone shows Late when its work cannot reach the target by then.

A milestone can also come before work, such as "Tender issued" before the tender period. Use Comes before in the same tab. Click a row in either list to change its type or delay, or remove it. Monument refuses loops and names the loop. Lock keeps a milestone on its typed date even when it has incoming links. A lock icon marks its flag.

The schedule health check

The project's Schedule check tab sums the project up first: its forecast finish, how many tasks are critical and near-critical, how many deadlines are missed, and the next milestone at risk. Below that, Checks lists everything the calculation found for this project, worst first, each naming the exact rows involved:

Missed deadlines, Late, Fixed date conflicts, Loops, Unfinished work past its end date, Fixed dates, Long delays on links (more than 10 working days — often a missing task in disguise), Overlaps on links, Missing links, and Mostly unlinked (a project where more than half the tasks have no links, so its critical path means little).

Two findings carry a one-click fix in edit mode: Remove this link on a loop, and Remove fixed date on a fixed-date conflict. Clicking any other row opens that task so you can look at it directly. When nothing needs attention, the list simply says "Nothing to check. Every deadline holds and every task is linked."

Drag rules: what moves, what snaps back, what never moves

• Dragging a task later pushes every linked task after it only as far as it has to — a task with float absorbs the move and doesn't shift at all.
• Dragging a task earlier than its links allow pushes the tasks before it earlier, just as far as each link needs, and on up the chain; tasks with room stay where they are. A task that already has time logged, has a fixed date or is completed never moves: the drag stops at the latest date that still keeps that link, and says why ("Can't start before Concept Design finishes").
• Milestones never stop a drag. A milestone linked to a task's date follows that task; any other milestone stays on its date, and a link from it gets the lead time the move needs.
• Dragging the end of a bar changes that task's length instead of moving it.
• Shift-drag moves only that task, earlier or later. The tasks linked before and after it stay where they are. Each link it crosses keeps its type and gets the lead time (overlap) or gap that keeps the other task in place.
• Option-drag (Alt-drag on Windows) moves the whole chain: the dragged task and everything linked after it, by the same number of days. Moving earlier past a link keeps its type and adds the needed lead time (overlap).
• Neither drag ever moves a milestone's own date: that date is its deadline and billing date, and only changes when you edit it on the milestone itself. A linked milestone's forecast follows the moved tasks and warns when late; its flag stays put.
• After you commit an edit, a toast summarises what actually happened: how many tasks moved and by how many days, and whether the critical path now runs through different tasks.
• While you're still dragging, an impact note under the pointer tells you what the drop will do: green "Within float, no impact" when nothing downstream is affected; amber "Uses most of the float on this chain" when the edit eats more than half of the smallest float along the way; red, naming exactly what moves — "Tender issued moves 1 day later, 1 day past deadline."
• One Undo reverses the whole edit: the drag itself and every task it pushed, together.

There is no "pull the chain back in" action. To bring work in after it's drifted later, drag it earlier yourself, or Option-drag the whole chain earlier; Monument never does it for you.

To link a run of tasks quickly, select them with Cmd-click or Shift-click in edit mode and use Link in order in the side panel. See building the work programme for the details.

Troubleshooting

• I dragged a task back and the ones after it didn't follow. That's expected. A link only pushes later, it never pulls earlier, so the gap you opened up is now float on the task after it — not a bug, and not lost work.
• A link line is dashed and amber. The link is broken: the two rows' saved dates don't actually satisfy it any more, usually after an import or an edit that was never saved. Click the line to change its type or delay, or remove it.
• I can't drag a task as early as I want. Something is holding it: another link, the stage it sits in, or a fixed date. The snap-back message under the pointer names which one; open the project's Schedule check tab if you want the full list of everything holding a row back.
• The critical path looks wrong on a project with hardly any links. It probably is — with most tasks unlinked, "what drives the finish" isn't a meaningful question yet. Schedule checks flags this as Mostly unlinked; link the real sequence of work before trusting the red bars.

Where this fits next

This builds directly on build the work programme: once stages are linked, this is how to read what Monument worked out from those links, and what a drag will actually do before you make it. From here, baselines and versions freezes a moment of the plan to compare against later, and creating milestones and planning revenue covers how a milestone's own date behaves once work is linked up to it.