You can assign expected start and finish dates, and duration
to leaf-level WBS elements (elements that do not have any child elements).
You can enter values for any two of the fields - start date, finish
date, and duration - and the third field is calculated and displayed.
Calculation of dates and duration is done based on the available working
days specified in the project calendar.
About this task
When you create a WBS element, the element inherits the default
start date from the parent element. If the parent element start date
is the current or a future date, the default start date of the element
is the parent element start date. If the parent element start date
is already past, the default start date of the element is the current
date. If the current date is marked as an exception in the project
calendar, the next working date is set as the start date. The default
finish date is the same as the start date, and the default duration
is one day.
You can assign dates and duration to WBS elements that
do not have any child elements. If an element has a child element,
the dates and duration of the parent element cannot be edited, and
are determined by the dates and duration of the child elements.
If
a task has a constraint date, then the task dates must be in compliance
with the constraint date. For example, if a finish date exceeds the
Finish No Later Than constraint date for a work item, then on saving,
a message is displayed, and you must either remove the constraint,
or modify the dates or duration so that the finish date is equal to
or earlier than the constraint date.
What to do next
You can now apply constraints to task dates, and create dependencies
between project tasks.