project management glossary

target finish date

 The date planned to finish work on an activity.

 The user's imposed finish date for an activity or a project as a whole. A target finish date is used if there are pre-defined commitment dates. Most PM software will not schedule a late finish date later than the target finish date. Your favorite PM software may alert you to negative float which occurs when a late finish date is later than a target finish date. This is caused by the duration of predecessors which makes it impossible to meet the target finish date. The negative float can be eliminated by reducing the duration of predecessors, increasing parallelism, or extending the target finish date.

target finish, activity

 The user's imposed finish date for an activity. A Target Finish date is used if there are pre-defined commitment dates.

target finish, project

 A date imposed on a project as a whole, usually by the user.

target plan

 The plan prioritized by critical total float taken from the current schedule.