Deciding when to confirm resource assignments

Summary: Confirming a soft assignment is a decision about timing. Leaving it late keeps your options open, but if you leave it until the task starts, LYNX-X makes the decision for you.

Applies to

Definition

A soft assignment is LYNX-X's recommendation: it has matched a skill to someone who holds it, but nobody has agreed to it. Confirming turns that recommendation into a commitment to a named person.

Who makes that call depends on how your organisation works: the project manager in the plan, a team manager from My activities, or a standing resource meeting.

Purpose

Confirm too early and you commit to a person before you need to, closing off a better match that might have appeared. Confirm too late and a task can start with nobody having agreed to do it.

Between those two risks, the guidance is straightforward: confirm as late as the plan allows, and no later than the start of the task.

What happens if you never decide

The deadline is not one LYNX-X enforces by refusing to proceed. It enforces it by deciding for you.

Set a task to Started while it still carries a soft assignment, and LYNX-X confirms the resource it had recommended. LYNX-X does not refuse the change, and the task begins tracking effort against that person.

LYNX-X recommended them because they are qualified and available, but it is a decision made by default rather than on purpose. If it matters who does the work, decide before the task starts.

Late does not mean locked in

Confirming is reversible, but not by reversing what caused it. Setting a started task back to Not started restores its progress figures and leaves the resource confirmed.

To genuinely hand the choice back, open the resource selector from the Assignments tab and select Let Lynx decide. The assignment returns to soft, and LYNX-X resumes recommending.

So "as late as possible" is sound advice rather than a risk: you can change your mind, provided you know which control actually does it. See Converting a soft assignment to a hard assignment.

Key concepts

• As late as the plan allows: every day you wait is a day of options.
• Before the task starts: past that point the decision has been made, whether or not you made it.
• Reversible, deliberately: Let Lynx decide returns an assignment to soft; un-starting the task does not.

Related articles

• Choosing how to assign work
• Converting a soft assignment to a hard assignment

Revision history