Total Float

Hi Justin, thanks for the feedback! Could you give me a little more information on what float is?

Float is the amount of time a task can be delayed without causing something else to go late.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_(project_management)

This would be extremely helpful for us as well so that on a project we can see for the tasks that are all logic tied together the amount of days that a task can be extended out before we impact any successor tasks/milestones (i.e., in Wrike before we have a "schedule conflict" identified). That way when trying to levelize our projects and resources to make sure that we have enough resources to meet the dates without having too much scheduled at one time, the float column in the Gantt chart/table/workload views would tell you how far you can extend out that task before you impact the overall project.

Hi, I totally agree with Brittany. Float is a pretty standard thing for PM's to get a view on how projects are performing and allow for resource smoothing and levelling. It would be really useful to have!

Agreed. 

I agree as well. Many times I have a range of time that a task can be completed. If I make tasks dependent on one another and move an earlier task, I need to go back and readjust everything. It would be nice to be able to define a slack period on tasks that would expand and contract as required when timelines are adjusted. I spend quite a bit of time going over my projects and relearning what it is that I am trying to achieve and readjusting all the timelines. It is somewhat of a waste of time to have to do that over and over each time I move something.

In order to facilitate this, a task also should be able to be 'locked down' similar to a milestone. Milestones do not move, there are certain tasks that cannot move as well. A work around for me is to have a milestone and then right after that have a task, that is tied to the milestone. This is the only way I can prevent a task from unintentionally moving.

This would be a huge help for us.

At this time, we're heavily considering moving away from Wrike to Oracle Primavera because of this lack of functionality.

Hey guys, thanks for your continued support for the suggestion. Your feedback is passed to our Product team and I'll get back to you when I have news.

Please don't forget to +1 the suggestion if you haven't already 👍

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Any update on this?

You've got a good article on how you manage critical paths: https://www.wrike.com/blog/critical-path-is-easy-as-123/

This article talks about float. Now all we need is a column for Total Float in Wrike.

The reason why this is important is you may have multiple paths throughout your programme; one of these being the critical path where total float = 0. There may be another path of tasks which could have total float = 1, meaning that if one task is delayed by 1 day, this path will now delay project completion. However; without the total float column, you have no visibility of any other paths in the programme, meaning you cannot tell this secondary path is only 1 day away from affecting project completion.

Thanks for providing the detail, @Tessa, really helpful.

What we need here now is more upvotes, as soon as this thread reaches 60 votes, we'll add a Product Status here. I'm bringing this topic up anyway, but votes help the Product Team estimate the popularity of suggestions on the Community. 

For now, I don't have any updates; I'll get back to you when I do. Happy posting 🙂

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Agreed.  Float is a necessity for any serious project management software.  I would love to see it added to the table view.

Total float would be very helpful in the Gantt Chart as well.

Yes. Total float please.

Would be very helpful to get total float in the API as well.

Thank you for the additional feedback Tessa Flaws! I'm checking with the team now to see if there's an update from them. I'll let you know if there is 👍

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

We really need float too! I don't understand how other companies manage large projects without being able to see how much float there is in a chain of tasks. 

Are there any production companies that use Wrike? How do they do it? Without knowing the total float, you only run into a scheduling conflict when it is too late, or am I missing something here? 

Elaine Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Elaine Wrike Team member Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Hi Elaine,

Thank you for getting back to us. To me it is disappointing that float is not in Wrike as it is the main metric in many project management frameworks, and in all fabrication plannings: it defines the early and late curve of your project. It shows the time difference between the 'agreed date' and the 'latest date' something can be finished.

I am afraid I do not understand your suggestion on lag and lead as float is per definition dynamic: when projects go slower than expected, your finish date moves in time towards your milestone, and your float decreases. 

Hi Nils Troll, thank you for getting back!

We're sorry to hear you're disappointed, but please rest assured that your feedback is passed on to the Product team. 

Elaine mentioned lead and lag time above just in case it can be helpful, but we understand that it's not the same as float. Thank you for pointing that out.

Please let us know if we can help with anything else. 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Is Wrike team going to add the "Total Float" to the program?

Hi Andre Gamanian! The team doesn't have total float in their immediate plans. Please make sure to upvote the original post above if you haven't yet - the number of votes helps the team understand how popular the suggestion is. Here's more detail on that, but please let me know if you have any questions!  

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

While I have upvoted the original post as suggested since we need the feature, Wrike team should really factor in other aspects besides how popular a ask is while deciding to build it. Given that wrike already calculates critical path, it is definitely calculating float at the backend (critical tasks are essentially those with zero float). It is merely a matter of building a front end (in form of a column in table view to show total/free float). Not a lot of overhead tbh. 

Welcome to the Community Aakarsh Srivastav 👋 Thank you for sharing your feedback, we continue passing it on even if this isn't currently planned by the team.

If you'd like to know what this Community has to offer, please check out our New to Community forum 🤗

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

The bottom line is always to get to the end on time and under budget.  Float has to be a really high priority or Wrike will just be a simple daily task PM software.  Hope it's coming soon.

David Clark dont get your hopes up. There are no plans what so ever for functionalities like this. 

Hi David Clark, welcome to the Community 🙂 Nils Troll is correct, there are no plans for this currently. We totally understand how this could be a useful addition, but there are no plans to work on this at the moment due to other priorities. However, we'll continue to pass on the feedback we receive here and if there's anything else we can help with please don't hesitate to ask. 

Elaine Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Elaine Wrike Team member Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Searched to figure out how to turn on float in Wrike and very disappointed to see that it's not available and that after 7 years of having the request from the community that it still hasn't been added. Seems like a relatively simple feature to add since the calculation is already happening for the critical path.

Hi Noah Hayes, welcome to the Community. Thank you for sharing your feedback with us, I understand this option would be important for you and your team and we're passing all your comments on to our Product Team 👍

As soon as we have any updates to share, we will come back to this thread to let you know about them. 

Allow me to mention that you can visit our New to Community forum to get the most out of your experience with our Community.