If this lag was modeled to have a normal 4 day lag there would be a 6 ‘elapsed day’ lag as Microsoft Project assumes that the paint won’t dry over the weekend. On the Gantt chart you can see that the paint takes exactly 4 days to dry which includes the weekend. In order to achieve this lag with a duration of 4ed was added to the link between the two tasks. Once that task is finished you need to wait 4 elapsed days before the next task may begin. For ease of adoption, if your team regularly uses Microsoft products, like Excel and Word, then using MS Project will. As you can see below there is a task ‘Paint walls’. Comparing Smartsheet vs Project vs Wrike vs Trello, the cost to get in the first level is fairly competitive, but if you want to go up to tier 2 or 3, then the cost gets much higher than the Trello, Wrike, or Smartsheet pricing. And I selected Smartsheet in preference to Project Plan 365 which is another MS Project competitor due significant issues with performance, etc that I was having with a trial licence.

So if you are waiting for a task such as ‘Paint to Dry’ before you can ‘Apply Second Coat’ you can make use of the edays to model this delay or ‘Lag’ as the paint can dry regardless of whether it is the weekend or if it falls on a holiday. Neither of these activities require any ‘work effort’ but they do affect the duration of the project. For example: ‘Waiting for a package to be delivered’ or ‘Waiting for paint to dry’. A ‘lag’ is used to model an external delay. For example if you need a task to be scheduled over 10 consecutive days including weekends and ignoring resource availability you could set the duration to ‘10 edays’Īn example where this feature is particularly useful is when you are modeling delays or ‘Lags’ in Microsoft Project. Elapsed days are used when a task’s duration needs to disregard any ‘nonworking time’ or resource constraints. In Microsoft Project it is possible to model duration in terms of ‘elapsed’ days. Microsoft Project is a simple, yet powerful tool to manage work from quick projects.

Here is a quick blog to introduce Microsoft Project users to a quick and easy tip when dealing with task durations and elapsed days. Smartsheets intuitive online project management app is used broadly across organizations to track and manage diverse types of work for teams large and small, from enterprise companies to SMBs.

Smartsheet vs ms project