Relationships and Modeling Changes

Editing Relationships

When you edit the schedule after applying a change, you need to make sure that the correct activities are included in the change. An activity really only contains predecessors. The successors displayed on the Relationships tab in PM Compass are not stored on the activity.

Thus, when you edit a relationship, make sure that the activity that owns the predecessor portion of the relationship is selected to be part of the change baseline; otherwise, it will not be applied to the live project during the complete step. In order to register the change, you may need to make a slight adjustment to, for example, the activity description.

The simplest way to make sure that the correct relationships are included in the change is to delete or change only the predecessor relationships, not the successors.

If you need to edit a successor relationship, first view it as a predecessor relationship using the Open Plan GOTO feature and then edit it.

Using the example below, you are on Activity A and you want to delete relationship B1, which is a successor to Activity A and a predecessor to Activity B. You click on relationship B1 and select GOTO, which changes the focus to Activity B. Since relationship B1 is a predecessor to Activity B, you can delete it, making sure that Activity B is marked as changed so that it is included in the change baseline.

Including a Relationship Change in the Change Baseline

When you edit an activity relationship in the Modeling Session view, PM Compass captures the change and it is applied to the live project; however, PM Compass does not populate the PMC Change Number column in the Open Plan schedule unless you edit something else for that activity. This means that the activity is not automatically included in the change baseline. If you want to include the activity in the change baseline, you must put something into the PMC Include in Baseline field in the Open Plan project.

Relationship to an Activity in a Different Change Request

PM Compass supports a relationship to an activity that is created in a different change request. As a Scheduler in a modeling session, you can create a new activity in one change request and then create a relationship to that activity in a different change request.

For more information, see Creating Relationships with a New Activity.

External Relationships

When you are modeling, and you create, update, or delete a relationship between two different subprojects and save that relationship, PM Compass displays that external relationship using subproject.activity ID to represent the external relationship. You can see this in the Schedule Change log and when viewed in Change Details on the Relationship tab.

When you load changes and the Schedule Change log includes a change to an external relationship between activities in different subprojects, you must open both subprojects using a master project that contains both so that PM Compass can create the external relationship between the subprojects.

Relationships in Master Projects

While PM Compass supports a relationship to an activity created in a different change request, PM Compass only supports relationships in a single master project; therefore, both ends of any relationship must be between subprojects that exist in the same master project.

When you modify a relationship within the same subproject to an inserted activity from a different workflow, PM Compass displays a deleted action for the predecessor/successor and an Added action for the external predecessor/successor in the Change Log dialog box.

When a relationship is linked to another workflow, the Change Log dialog box Field column displays External Predecessor or External Successor even if the linked activity is within the same subproject.

Change Log Entries

Relationships Within a Project

Change Log Entries for Activities/Steps/Relationships Not Linked to a Work Package

When you edit an activity, step, or relationship as part of a change request that is not linked to a work package, the Schedule Change Log still includes details of the change (for example, if you change the duration, the log shows the original and new values).

Change Log Entries for Created / Deleted Activities and Deleted Relationships


Learn more about...