Progress Reporting

Karen,



It helps a lot to show the Status Date as a vertical solid red line on the Gantt Chart with Format, Gridlines.



Using your example, which is about the current schedule rather than the Baseline although the approach is the same in both cases, let’s suppose that the first day was Monday and the 5 days duration runs from Monday to Friday.

The Status Date, the day up to which you are reporting progress, is the end of Tuesday.

The difference between the Status Date and the start date of the Task is 2 days.

So for "Planned Percentage" you need a formula in a spare duration field to calculate this difference and then divide it by the task duration, ie:

((status date - start date)/duration)*100 = (2/5)*100=40.

Then a formula in a spare text field to add a space and the "%" sign, ie:

[planned percent]&" %".



But the important piece of factual information that is missing from your example is which of the 2 days was worked, Monday or Tuesday. You have the Actual Duration but not the Actual Start.



If Monday, then the task started as planned, was worked on for one day and then interrupted. So nothing was done on Tuesday and that 1 day of unused duration has to be re-scheduled into the future. The 3rd button on the Tracking Toolbar will do this. The remaining duration is now 4 days and the finish date is now not Friday but the following Monday. At this point you should do the last step and decide whether to re-estimate the Remaining Duration, or leave it at 4 days.



If Tuesday, then the Actual Start was Tuesday and the Task was worked on continuously up to the Status Date.

First you put the Actual Start Date into the Actual Start field in the Tracking Table, which shoves the task 1 day to the right, then use the 2nd button on the Tracking Toolbar to "Update as scheduled" which will show the Actual Duration occurring on the correct day.



What you must not do is leave 1 day of unused duration on the left of the Status Date, because it can only be done in the future.

If you don’t re-schedule Tuesday (if the start was Monday) or set the actual start to Tuesday (if the start was Tuesday) then you don’t get to see the effect of losing 1 day, ie that the finish date is now the Monday following Friday.



Doing the calculation to see that "Planned Percent" = 40% is easy to do and nice to know, but what part does it play in anything? Sure, you can say "Planned Percent" = 40% and % Complete = 20%, but how do you use this information?

Kare,



A % of anything requires a numerator and a denominator.

It would be easier to understand exactly what you mean by "% Planned Complete" if you can tell us what numerator and denominator you have in mind.



However, meanwhile, I can guess.

Two possilities can be considered, the task baseline and the task as it is in the current plan, which might very likely be different from the baseline in all respects.



Baseline first. The question is, roughly, if the task had started on the baseline start date, and been worked on continuously up to the status date, what fraction of the total baseline duration would be used? The denominator is the total baseline duration, or TBD. The numerator is what we can call the "planned baseline duration up to status date", or PBDUTSD.

To find this, you just need to subtract the baseline start date from the status date.

Then:



% Planned Complete = (status date - baseline start date)/baseline duration)



Before you do this, you need to test for whether the baseline start date is to the right of the status date (task wasn’t planned to start yet so % Planned Complete = 0) or if the status date is to the right of the baseline finish date (task was planned to be finished already so % Planned Complete = 100).



This is fairly easily done using one of the datediff functions and the IIF function in a couple of formulae in a couple of spare duration and text fields.



Similarly for the current task but with the current start date and current finish date.



So they are easy enough to calculate but what use are they?

Karen



Yes you can, but I use a macro to work it out - too bulky for this answer - send me your e-mail & I will forward what I use.

Karen,



Try looking at this discussion.



http://www.planningplanet.com/forum/forum_post.asp?fid=1&Cat=4&Top=38398



Reply #2 from Niek Zonneveld might be what you’re after.



Regards,



Darren

Hi Karen,



Sorry to hear of your troubles with MS Project, I had a similar experience when I went from MS Project to SAP PS.



When you become more familiar with a tool you then understand its limitations and learn to work with what you’ve got now, not what you had before.



In the end most tools have their plus points and their minus points and there is not that much to choose between them.



As to your query, I’ve got a couple of questions for you to see if I can understand the problem a little better.



When you talk about Planned % Complete I’m making the assumption that you mean how far through the task you have progressed (Duration) and not the percentage of effort you have burned (Actuals), is this correct?



Simply put a task that has a 10 day duration with 80h work can have different % Completes in MS Project. This means you can have a task that is 50% Complete, meaning it has 5 days remaining and at the same time 25% Work Complete, meaning you have 60h work remaining.



The second question is what MS Project version are you using? 2003 or 2007?



Regards,



Darren