MSP 2007 updating

Member for

19 years 11 months

Stuart,

I don’t know what you mean by "as-built date" since this is not the name of any field in MSP. I guess you mean Actual Finish, maybe.

Try this.

You have a 10 day task, planned to start (ie has an early start date) on Monday 23rd August. Lets say that it is Sunday 22nd August when you plan it so you also save a baseline.

At the end of the following Monday (30/8)you decide to measure the progress and update the task. So 30/8 is the Status Date and this is set in Project, Project Information.

You wil want to see your baseline bars so you should switch to the Tacking Gantt view.

You can show the Status Date as a vertical line on the chart with Format, Gridlines.

The first thing to do is to establish the Actual Start date of the task. Was it 23/8 or some later date between 23/8 and 30/8? Whatever it was, it goes into the Actual Start field which is available in the Tracking Table.

The next thing is to establish the Actual Duration.

If the task started on 23/8 and every day up to 30/8 was a day of actual duration, then the answer is 6 and this goes in the Actual Duration field, also in the Tracking Table.

If the task was under way or in progress continuously every day from the Actual Start, then you can use the "update as scheduled" button on the tracking toolbar to count the days for you. If the task started later than 23/8 and/or the task was interupted then Actual Duration is something less than 6.

After you fill in the Actual Start and Actual Duration, you may have unused or planned duration to the left of the Status Date. For example, if the task started on 23/8 and had 2 days of Actual Duration, there will be 8 days of Remaining Duration, but 4 of them will be in the past relative to the Status Date. To move them into the future, because you cannot plan to do something in the past, click on the 3rd button on the Tracking Toolbar, "Reschedule Work". I have always thought that this button should be called "Reschedule Duration" because that is what it does, but, hey, so what. The last step is to decide whether you still estimate that the task has 8 days of Remaining Duration. You might want to re-estimate it up or down.

Remember:

Do not type in % Complete - MSP works this out for you.

You cannot plan to do something in the past.

You cannot make progress in the future.



Hope this helps.