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Actual Work Shown After Update Date

11 replies [Last post]
Tue, 2004-11-02 09:17
Erik Jonker
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If you have an Activity which you gave a long duration and you completed a majority of the work, why does it show the actual work i the Resource Usage view?

Is there a way to get it shown before the status date, without changing the original duration?

I’m using MS-Project 2000

Regards,

Erik Jonker
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Replies

Mon, 2006-08-21 14:47
#1
Philip Jonker
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Tom,
What you say is perfectly true, MSP has it’s problems, but in general still works, just don’t try resourcing it.

Zhang,

Sometimes we get the durations wrong, that is what Erik was referring to, i.e. we create a little float this way.

Regards

Philip
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Sun, 2006-08-20 21:09
#2
Zhang Haixiang
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Hi,
if you are ahead of schedule, and you want to show acutal before/on data date, and without changing the duration, it seems impossible. you must shorten the remaining duration.

another way is like Raj mentioned use resource contour, but that means you are just on schedule, not ahead of schedule.



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Sat, 2006-08-19 20:10
#3
Tom Hadley
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I have noticed many questions on this site about how to do certain things in MSP.

The main problem I believe is that the product has "evolved" over the years from a DOS based bar chart program with no real fundamental change to its critcal path engine.

I have been using it for more than 20 years (mainly because my clients insist)

As a result people are believing the marketing propaganda and using this tool for important work and expecting it to give them accurate answers. Beware , there are no work arounds for some of the issues with MSP except to use another product.!

PS I am not associated with any software company, I am just a planner (long in the tooth) who has seen these problems for many years and Microsoft is not really interested in making their product into a professional planning package. It is not competing (so I have been told by it’s marketing people ) in that market !

Good luck

Tom

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Sun, 2005-04-10 04:34
#4
Raj Maurya
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Erik,
See my post on the topic Remaining duration & % complete. I think that will be helpful of your this post.
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Sat, 2005-04-09 04:59
#5
Erik Jonker
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Philip,

May I allow a long period for an activity and do it in a fraction of the time?
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Fri, 2005-04-08 14:29
#6
Philip Jonker
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Erik,

You may progress instead of retrogressing.
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Fri, 2005-04-08 07:54
#7
Brent Hursey
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Before I started here, they use to status there schedules by simply changing % complete or % work complete. This does not allow you to ever show improvement on a schedule if your performance is actually greater than your planned, since it assigns the actual work into the "actual work" field of future dates (i.e. after the status date) and therefore your finish date does not change until you enter the actual finish date. The only way I can find around this is to calculate the actual work or actual cost for the reporting time period and enter it as an actual in the task usage block for the time period reporting. This allows the finish date to shrink and show schedule performance improvement. This is a pain but we can not determine another way to do this.
Any thoughts?
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Sat, 2005-03-26 00:22
#8
Raj Maurya
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Brent,
As per rule if your actual is more than planned then progress will show beyond status date unless otherwise it will reduce the remaining period of that task. So you just update the actual % work and update the full shedule or just selected activity specifying your status date then your progress will not go beyond status date but certainly it will reduce the remaining duration, if you don’t want to change the duration also so keep your task as fixed duration then it will adjust unit.
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Wed, 2005-03-23 14:34
#9
Brent Hursey
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We are having a problem with the same issue. I have just started at a company where they update work by changing the % Work Complete. They do not want actual work to be allowed to be after the status date. They ask me to research a way to prevent this. I know of none. It requires manual manipulation of the data after entering the % Work Complete. I suggest use % Work Complete to calculate actual hours for the reporting period. Still working on this one.
I can’t believe there is no option in Project to prevent this from occurring. It is not logical.
Any other input would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Brent
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Wed, 2004-11-03 03:46
#10
Raj Maurya
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Erik,
If I understood correctly you mean, in your long duration activity, most of the work done early and you want to show it upto data date. Make resource contour and enter the most of the work early stage. Then while updating work put the actual work accordingly.
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Tue, 2004-11-02 18:29
#11
Paul Harris
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You are now facing one of the many challenges of using Microsoft Project to update a resourced schedule. Microsoft Project does not by default calculate the end date of an in-progress task from the Status Date using the Remaining Duration (as one would expect), but from the Actual Start Date and the Duration. Therefore your assumption is correct.

It has been my experience that it takes four time longer to update a resourced schedule in Microsoft Project than other products.

There are some functions designed to assist the scheduler in statusing a schedule but often these lead to more confusion, have a look at:

1. Tools, Tracking, Update Project, Reschedule uncompleted work to start after option, ensure that the option split in progress tasks is turned on and if you do not want to see the splits then select Format Layout to hide the splits.

2. You may wish to try the Tools, Options, “Updating task status updates resource status” which unlinks Percent Complete and Percent Work Complete.

3. If you had MSP 2002 or 2003 you may wish to try the four options listed directly under Tools, Options, “Updating task status updates resource status”, the first one described as “Move end of…….”

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Book Publishers, Training & Consulting
www.eh.com.au
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