How does Retained Logic, Progress Override and Actual Dates in Scheduling Options work?

In Primavera P6, there are three options in the Scheduling Options dialog as follows:

• Retained Logic
• Progress Override
• Actual Dates

Primavera P6 Scheduling Options dialog

These three options control how Primavera P6 calculates “Out of Sequence Progress”.

To demonstrate how these options work, let’s look at a simple project including 3 activities described in the screenshot below:

The activity logic dictates that A2 should not begin until A1 has been completed, but in the real world sometimes A2 could be started and finished even though A1 has not been started – this is known as Out of Sequence Progress.

Out of Sequence Progress

How does Primavera P6 deal with this situation?

It depends on which scheduling option was chosen.

Scheduling using the Retained Logic option:

The logic of the activity is retained and enforced, and so Activity A3 cannot be started until activity A1 has been completed, as shown below.

Scheduling using the Retained Logic option

Scheduling using the Progress Override option:

The out of sequence progress overrides the logic of the activity, and so activity A3 is scheduled independently of the predecessor of A2. In other words, activity A1 is no longer considered to be a predecessor of activity A3.

Scheduling using the Progress Override option

Scheduling using the Actual Dates option:

When scheduling the project using the Actual Dates option, the actual dates override the logic of the activity, and so activity A3 is scheduled to begin as soon as activity A2 is complete, even if activity A2 has an actual finish date after the data date.

Scheduling using the Actual Dates option