Hello,

I am facing a problem updating my schedule. my Project is behind schedule and finish date is sliped ahead than baseline finish date. Now I update my schedule after 1 week, so the finish date must slip by 7 days. But it slip more than 7 days and kept on increasing each week. last week it slipped by 8 days this week it did by 10 weeks. I dont understand why this is happening. I checked activities with lag, and there is no lag. I cannot understand what seems to be the issue here. Kindly help me out.

Thank you

Hi Moutaz,

MSP is perfectly correct in its logic and calculations. However, it must be remembered that MSP works in very specific ways – which are very different to P3. In MSP, you either have DURATION or WORK (man-hours). The Status Date is generally used only for EV calculations. Attempting to use it to automatically calculate any form of physical progress and re-scheduling will get you into a lot of trouble.

In MSP, the “% Complete” applies ONLY to the DURATION of the activity. It does NOT apply to the Physical % complete or the % WORK COMPLETE. In general, the MSP equivalent of Physical % Complete is the WORK (man-hours). Had the man-hours been input, and you inserted Actual Hours to the value of 75% of the total hours (within the first 2 days), then MSP would have re-calculated the end-date. However, this re-calculation would have depended upon the choice of TASK TYPE eg. Fixed Duration, Fixed Work or Fixed Units.

In your particular instance, you have specified a duration of 4 days. You will notice that, when you input the 75% complete, the progress-bar showed 3 days out of 4. What you actually did was indicate that 75% of the DURATION had been completed [Actual Duration = 3 days]. It assumes, therefore, that you will complete the remaining 25% over the remaining duration of 1 day. If you input 75% complete (duration) and attempt to bring-forward the end-date to 12/09/05(because you believe that you are ahead of schedule) then MSP will immediately change your % Complete to 100%. This is a normal error that most people make. In fact, people who have used MSP for years still fail to apply the correct interpretation and the correct methodology to update the schedules. Using man-hours works extremely well and, as long as it is done properly, it will do an adequate job.

There are ways to be able to manipulate it so that you can assume that % COMPLETE is equal to Physical % complete – but that is a different story.

Although I don’t think that this solves your problem, it might help to understand why you have encountered it.

James.

Hi Vinod,

If you have saved the programme with a baseline, then your original sequence will be preserved. If you have no baseline, then you may wish to save the programme separately - just to act as a record.

From a personal point of view: If all the work has been completed, then I wouldn’t bother changing the Actual schedule sequence unless it is essential for some other reason. You could, however, make a note of the change in each of the NOTES area.

If the work is ongoing, then you have no choice but to amend the logic sequence in the programme. For instance, the successor to Shell 3 will now be the successor to Shell 1.

If you are facing such a problem on a daily basis, I would ask whether you are trying to programme too much detail. In this case, it might be better to just have a single task saying: "Fabricate and Assemble Shells 1, 2 and 3". Your activity end-date will then be based on the completion date of the last Shell, regardless of the acutal sequence of joining. It can save huge amounts of time and will give you exactly the same result.

HTH.

James.

Hi ,

Can someone tell me , how to update when there is a major change in sequence itself.

For eg If I tell client my first step is to join shell 1 & shell 2 and then i will join shell 3.

But due to some reason , my actal sequence on field becomes joining shell 3 & shell 2 first and then joining shell 1.

How to record & reflect such changes in MSP.

This is major problem i face every day in fabrication , and would be glad to receive advice on this. The ideal expected solution would be to preserve the original sequence and on same chart reflect the actual sequence.

Moutaz,

I did exactly the same as you (although I didn’t save a baseline). My project correctly calculated the actual duration and remaining duration. I’m using MSP 2000. Which version of MSP are you using?

If you input a % Complete against an unstarted activity, it will automatically calculate the % of the duration, and show the progress-bar accordingly. As soon as you input the %, there is no need to input the Actual Start because it will use the Start date as the Actual Start.

At the moment, I can see no reason why your task value should incorrectly calculate the Remaining Duration. However, it might have something to do with the Tools>Options set-up. Please could you write again with every step, and I’ll perform some experiments for you.

James.