Traditional Plan not staggering Start Dates correcty for a given resource
In a traditional plan, the same resource was assigned to two tasks. (Resource is allocated 50% to the project team). Both tasks have identical estimates (50 hours). The issue with the plan is that the calculated dates on the plan overlap for the two tasks (not exactly but for the entire time span, but I wouldn't expect them to overlap at all.
From looking at the work item Historys, here are the order of the updates...
Task A: Resource assigned, estimate entered on 1/15 and the Status changed to In Progress on 1/17.
Task B: Resource Assigned 1/13, Status changed to In Progress on 1/15 and then the estimate entered a few minutes following the Status change.
Task B is now calculating 1/15 - 2/21 dates and Task A is calculating 1/17 - 2/12. What is the root cause (key to know this so we can provide proper training? ...And how do I get the plan to correct itself without entering a constraint or predecessor links?
Accepted answer
Once you change a Task's status to 'In Progress', this sets its start date, so in your case Task A should have 1/17 set as its start date, and Task B the 1/15. So it seems normal that e.g. in the 'Work Breakdown and Schedule' Plan view, Task A and B 'bars' overlap between the 1/17 and 2/12.
From your data, the Scheduler indicates that the resource will spend time on Task A first, then on Task B (after the 2/12) - check on the 'Workbreakdown' view which of Task A or B is 'on top'.
If you 'Stop Working' on Task B, this will set its status back to 'New', in which case I believe your Task B 'bar' start date will be set to the 2/12 (just after Task A planned end date) - without the need to use predecessor links.