Option 1 "delete the activities" shows they were part of the original scope as it does not imply you delete this already obsolete baseline.  The information is always available on the original baseline, just make it visible.

In next figure black bars belong to COMPARISON schedule; Termite Treatment has only black bar and data for comparison schedule. Termite Treatment has no current schedule data, otherwise would be misleading.

Option 2 "make the descoped activities 100% complete and make the actual start and finish dated equal to the date that you were informed to descope these activities" keeps no longer valid relationships active as well as many other values such as budget costs for deleted activities. As proposed the descoped activities will effect the schedule and most probably the critical path. If using retained logic such out-of-sequence progress might distort the schedule unless you do the right thing, delete them.

It is not enough to change activity durations to 0 and mark them as happening at some time when they never happened.

You are informed to delete activities before their start so just apply the rule to the following schedule if you were informed of the deletion next day project starts on Aug 29, 8:00 am.

Mike,
Just take a look at the following figure; it showcases a single scenario out of many where changing duration to 0 is not good enough. Activities have hundreds of fields and many might still be active if you only change a few.

If you deactivate incoming and outgoing links to Termite Treatment its start will move to DD distorting the schedule even more no matter if you keep duration or not.

If you change duration to 0 material (consumable) resources might distort the schedule.

GAO Schedule Assessment Guide Best Practices for Project Schedules suggests keeping deleted activities and logic while setting duration to 0. See page 140 of 240.

http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/674404.pdf

GAO is wrong, leaving deleted activities as well as leaving the original logic in place is not best practice:

• It is a poor workaround used when your software is incapable to show activities in included in one schedule version but not in another.
• I am not surprised with GAO recommendations as they are biased in favor of software incapable of dealing with comparison of schedules with deleted activities.
• Leaving deleted activities can distort cost loading if you if you miss to delete any fixed cost assignment.
• Leaving deleted activities can be confusing and misleading
• Incoming/outgoing remaining lags might need to be adjusted, mere change in activity duration do not tackle this issue.
• Leaving deleted activities can lead to wrong logic; it is a lazy scheduler approach.

Spider Project allows you to display deleted activities on a conspicuous way when comparing schedule versions and without the risk of interfering with current schedule. Easy, everything is transparent, no need to tweak schedule versions. If your software lacks enough functionality it is no excuse to promote such misleading and error prone practice. Cannot be any easier.

Best Regards,

Rafael

Mike,

1. When you delete activities you do not want to keep their logic, you want unobstructed view to current logic. For this purpose most software provides some ways to transfer the links and lags of deleted activities when it makes sense, some call it to dissolve an activity.  Some provide the option to add activity duration to the lags.  Always you will have to validate lags one by one; there are no reliable shortcuts to schedule modification.

2.When activities are deleted/"deleted" changing durations to 0 is not enough, in many cases in addition to lags logic must be revised.

> Lags will still be enforced. There exist software that do not even show links table and many do not know how to get reports they must go one by one and fix it.  A monumental task if hundreds of activities must be deleted.  When having inter-project relationships some software hides these links making it even harder.

> Budgets will still be applied to milestone activities distorting S Curves. Cost component might still be required for other areas so deleting the cost component is not an alternative, if you keep the milestones you must go fixing it one by one.  A monumental task if hundreds of activities must be deleted.

Please take a look at the following scenario, changing duration to 0 is not enough to get it right.

> In a tad more complex scenarios activities still produce renewable and consumable resources even if duration is changed to zero.

> In complex and not so complex scenarios it is safer to delete not "delete" these activities, fix the schedule logic, fix budgets and a bit more.

> If you keep "deleted" activities project statistics such as number of activities and other ratios will become meaningless.

A few years ago I was involved in a Vocational School Job; a building was re-designed due to unforeseen soil conditions. Everything changed, hundreds of activities no longer valid to be deleted.

Why the urge to keep hundreds/thousands of deleted activities? Such clutter is unnecessary.

A HUGE CLUTTER when dealing with portfolios of jobs related to each other.

When dealing with what-if scenarios many times the what-if scenario will have activities not existing in current schedule; frequently you work several what-if scenarios and need to compare one against the other. You need visibility to activities not existing in different schedules for comparison purposes. Good software must provide you with such visibility.

In next figure black bars belong to COMPARISON schedule; Termite Treatment has only black bar and data for comparison schedule. Termite Treatment has no current schedule data, otherwise would be misleading.

Best Regards,

Rafael

Robert,

The devil is in the details and you are paying attention to the details.

In my case it is easier to delete the remaining work because the software I use gives me the required visibility and at the same times solve any hidden issue with “deleted” activities and their links to remaining activities.

I recall a job in which because of unforeseen soil conditions a whole building was re-designed, hundreds of activities had to be deleted and hundreds created. 

By adding unused activity prefix/suffix every time we create new activities we solve the issue without risk duplicating old activity codes.  That you mentioned this issue tells me you know the details.

An example would be for new activities due to change order 21 the code can be A3023-CO21 (suffix CO21), many of us keep some activity coding rules as to make sorting, searching and filtering by activity code easier, by the same token some simple rules can prevent duplication of "old" codes.

Best Regards,

Rafael

I like Robert Bell approach as well but with some warning.

1. Will prevent activity ID/Code duplication, his experience shows here.

2. I believe cut and paste will delete links to other phases (WBS elements) while moving will not, the idea is to delete the links to other phases. Check on this as you do not want to keep active links to remaining activities no longer valid.  Maybe Robert manually delete the links making it equivalent to cut and paste.

3. Just make sure you follow Robert's recommendation about updating deleted activities, in particular concerning remaining durations, labor and non-labor resource loading, costs and budgets.

Best Regards,

Rafael

Mike,

Do you mean that milestones keep no logic, no cost assignments, no consumable resources production/consumption and no budgets, among many other values?

Rather than tweaking the schedule it is safer to delete the remaining activities not to be executed and make the necessary adjustments in updated version.

Those portions of activities partially executed must remain after adjusting remaining budget, they are integral part of the As-Built as well as of the updated Baseline (Re-Baseline).

For comparison purposes of what was then and what is now all you need to compare the schedules disclosing activities present in previous version but not in current version.

Best Regards,

Rafael