Workable backlog

Use the workable backlog counters to track the tasks in the Do week (the first week of the Lookahead, where tasks can be committed; it should be the current calendar week). The counters Should Do, Can Do, Will Do and Did sit in the Lookahead and Do tab headers.

The counters update in real time:

• Should Do: the number of tasks in the Do week, that is, tasks with working days in the Do week. It counts tasks by their base dates, not their expected dates. A task's base dates are set when it first falls in the Do week of a generated Lookahead, or when it is created inside the Do week; they do not change after that. So a delayed task outside the Do week still counts as Should Do if its base dates fall in the Do week.
• Can Do: the Should Do tasks with no open constraint on the task, on its activity, or on any task before it in the same activity. Dependencies on tasks in other activities do not count. When a constraint is added to a task in the Do week, Can Do goes down by one.
• Will Do: the Can Do tasks the project team has committed. When a task is committed to the Do tab, Will Do goes up.
• Did: the committed tasks completed in the Do week. When a task is completed as planned in the Do tab, Did goes up. It counts tasks whose actual progress equals or exceeds the progress allocated for the week.

For workable backlog performance in Insights, see Workable backlogs.

Cross dependencies and Can Do

A task may be blocked only by a cross dependency (a dependency on a task in another activity). If there is no open constraint on the task, on its activity, or on any task before it in the same activity, it still counts as Can Do.

In this example, the two tasks are in different activities. The task Not counted in 'Can Do' has a constraint, so it is not counted in Can Do. It has an SS0 successor (Start-Start, lag 0): the task Counted in Can Do. That task cannot be committed, but it still counts as Can Do.

Whether a predecessor has started does not affect Can Do. Only open constraints do.