I believe Task Start Date becomes most interesting in Objective CTAs, where (1) you are more likely to have more project-like work occurring than in other CTA types and (2) you have a Gantt chart view of the Success Plan.

With a Start Date, you can see the “Project Plan” in a Gantt chart view, which helps determine not only when Tasks should wrap up, but when they begin. With the Gantt chart you get a better idea of which Tasks are currently happening (or should be happening) rather than just when any given Task is due.

Ahhh! That’s the thing then -- I haven’t dabbled in Objective CTA types myself yet. So...would you say that we’re “wasting time” with figuring out & setting Task Start Dates for non-Objective CTA types of Playbooks?

“Wasting time” is such a strong phrase. 

I wouldn’t get hyped up about Task Start Dates unless you have sequential Tasks which are dependent upon one another. If your CTA Tasks are more checklist-like, where you’re guiding your Gainsight users into best-practice steps that should happen by a certain date, I wouldn’t invest heavily.

If you have Tasks where something absolutely cannot start until something else completes, then Start Dates are more interesting. For example, in a new customer scenario, if Task A is “Create the customer’s instance” and Task B is “Send Champion login credentials”, and you can’t do Task B and you don’t expect any efforts into Task B until Task A is complete, Start Dates become slightly more interesting.

Personally, i found the Start Dates a bit more cumbersome than valuable when I used them inside Success Plans. I see their place, but I feel like I stubbed my toe on them more often than I would have liked.

I usually tell people not to worry about these at all outside of SP’s, but I supposed you COULD in theory make use of them in reporting even in standard CTA’s.