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Planview Customer Success Center

Understand Actual Start and Actual Finish Dates

So what's the difference between planned start and finish dates and actual start and finish dates?

While planned start dates and planned finish dates for cards can be set within a card on a AgilePlace board, the actual start dates and actual finish dates for cards cannot be adjusted.

A planned start or finish date represents the goals a user has for when they want to start specific pieces of work and when they want to finish that work.

           

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Though work is planned to be started or finished on certain dates, that work may not actually be completed on those days, and this is where actual start dates and actual finish dates come in. 

Understanding actual start dates and actual finish dates

  • Actual start date: the date on which a card was moved from the backlog to begin the work represented by that card. 
  • Actual finish date: the date on which a card was moved from an active position on the board to the archive to represent work that has been fully completed. 

Whether or not work is started or finished on the dates that were initially planned, the actual start date and actual finish date will be represented by several of the analytics features available within AgilePlace and in the details of an exported board. 

You are not able to set the actual start date or the actual finish date of a card on your board because these are accurate representations of when your work began and when it ended, regardless of the intended, or planned, start and finish dates.