David;

No hurry here, so take your time. I was just surprised that it is not more obvious - a report entitled "early/late curves with actuals by resource", or ’export to excel’ as an option on the Resources Usage Profile.

Glad to hear that it is fairly simple. Holding my breath, but no hurry.

PS; Just finished developing a chart making macro that works with the Early/Late/Actual resource report. Requires a module for each discipline, so not all that elegant, but serviceable. Probably over-kill since constant updates, other than actuals, is not really necessary.

Still surprised that someone smarter (David) has not put this together.

Dear Ronald Winter,

How to place the Planned dates equal to late dates ? As global chages drop down parameter doesn’t have Planned dates , in fact the drop down have the Planned start and Planned Finish.

Are you mean Planned start = late start
and Planned finish = late finish.?

Thanks in advance.

Armando,


No worries. You will find that even so-called experts like Paul Harris and myself are "sorry" about Planned dates.

The Planned dates that are used by any Baseline facility in Primavera are sort-of the early dates.

I would copy/paste the definition of "planned dates" from the help text in Primavera here. But every time I start Primavera I get the blue screen of death. Sigh.

Importantly you CAN change the planned dates - so a Baseline can be restored, the planned dates changed, and the project turned into a Baseline again.

Armando,

1) baseline - its our old friend the "planned" dates

2) If the project is unlevelled, its the early dates - if the project is levelled its the levelled dates. From the current project.

David

Thank you for that information, I had not discovered that problem, I will add that to my ever increasing issue list and include it in my next book update.

It took me a long time to work out how the “Planned Dates” calculated and I have pages of emails back and forwards from Primavera Systems about them. I still have no idea why they even have them in the system at all.

I find that they have introduced more date fields than one would want making the product very hard to use.

For people reading this posting and do not know what we are talking about; in summary the “Planned Dates” represent “Last Periods” status for complete or in progress activities and the “Early Dates” for unstarted activities. But their algorithms are very complicated and the dates are affected by duration changes and “Planned Dates” are used in the most surprising places.

They are used with “Progress Spotlight” therefore this software does not calculate the same way as P3, SureTrak or MSP when auto statusing a schedule. In my book I recommend that people run a Global Change to set the “Planned Dates” to equal Start and Finish change before running Progress Spotlight.

Planned Dates are also use as a baseline bar for the Project Baseline and Primary User Baseline when no baseline has been set. Therefore the “Planned Dates” are used in the baseline. So in effect one sees a “Claytons” baseline when no baseline has been set. This function is very risky and two users using the same layout but one user has set a User Baseline and one has not they will see different Baselines. Also there is the terminology confusion where now the current schedule is no longer the current schedule in the Assign Baseline form as it now refers to planned dates.

Are there any other places where you find these “Planned Dates” being used?

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

Hi Armand,

I just checked the Resource Usage Profile.
It does have Early, Late, Actual and Budget curves.

You may want to try it out on a test project loaded with some activities and cost.

Best regards,

Jorge

David

I agree the “Planned Dates” are a monster.

Most people do not even know that even exist net alone how they are calculated or how they are used!

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

P6 plots the curves using the dates shown in the Planned Start and Planned Finish columns. Ordinarily, the early dates are automatically placed in the planned dates columns. Use a Global Change to place your late dates into the planned columns and then re-plot. This is awfully clunky, but at least it works! Good luck.

You might be able to do something with a Resource Usage Profile, select the resources you require, or an Activity Usage Profile, select the Profile Options and select the required Cumulative options.

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

Hey Dennis!

Lots of fun here. The showstopper might be that Primavera does not store earned value by resource. Clearly it has to calculate it that way, but the earned is only stored at the activity level. So if your activities have more than one resource......

So the first thing we need to know is EXACTLY what you mean by "actuals" if its timesheet hours then there is a solution. If its the work you have actually done you are in a bit of bother

Dennis,

Actually yes, it is quite simple. I am under the cosh here with a bid to get out today (Planning Planet is a nice coffee break!)but Actual, late and early curves are fine.

The forecast hours to go CANNOT have current productivity applied because of the earned value restrictions at the resource level.

I can dash off a script later for you - unless Dieter is online - he will probably beat me to it!!!!