Actual duration versus planned duration

Hi Rod,

A few of questions first and then I’ll throw my two penneth in.

Did the task start when it was planned to have started?
How do you ’reschedule’ a programme?
What is the remaining duration?
Do you use actual and remaining work? (Effort)
Is work on your project the same as duration?
Do you split in-progress tasks?
When MS Project calculates %Complete does it also update actual/remaining work?

Regards,

Darren

Did the task start when it was planned to have started? Yes
How do you ’reschedule’ a programme? Tools, Tracking, update project
What is the remaining duration? 4 days
Do you use actual and remaining work? (Effort? Please expand on this???
Is work on your project the same as duration? For most activities yes
Do you split in-progress tasks? I do not, but MSP does on reschedule
When MS Project calculates %Complete does it also update actual/remaining work? The formula is mathmatical rather than let’s call it physical!

e.g. 8 days (1st Jun to 8 Jun) planned 10 days actual (1 Jun to 10 Jun) 50% complete
MSP schedules 4 days remaining, but the actual duration does not state 10 days, but 4 days!!!

Rod,

This is going to feel like Project Planning 101, but I asked the questions so I could first get an understanding of how you update your project schedule with progress.

Personally speaking I don’t update MS Project using Tools > Tracking > Update Tasks/Project, because it doesn’t allow me to have total control over actual and remaining duration/work (effort) and I haven’t got the ’Split in-progress tasks’ option selected for similar reasons.

I find it important to differentiate between the duration and work/effort, because apart from cost, I always try and track project progress from two points of reference.

Duration - The period of time required to complete the task
and
Work or Effort - The total labour required to complete the task

To this end I tend to create a MS Project View to update progress and customise a copy of the Tracking table so it shows the following fields:

Name
Actual Start
Actual Duration
Remaining Duration
Physical % Complete

This way the actual start, the actual duration and remaining duration will always be correct. (I also use the same theory for updating actual remaining work, but in a slightly different manner) Have you thought about using a view like this?

I don’t pay much attention to % Complete either because as it uses duration as the basis for determining how far through a task you are, in my mind the only true % Completes are:

0% - The task hasn’t started
or
100% - The task is complete

Many of my current and previous project managers want to display progress as a %, so I use the Physical % Complete field for this purpose as it doesn’t change actual or remaining duration/work.

I’m not saying this is the only way to do a progress update, but MS Project can throw so many spanners in the works that I find if I keep it simple, I usually get the required results.

Regards,

Darren

Rod,

When you use Tools, Tracking, update project MSP assumes, because you have not told it otherwise, that all Tasks started as planned (on the Earliest Start Date) and continued up to the Status Date.
It is the wrong approach for what you are trying to do.
Use the Tracking Gantt and the Tracking Table so you can see what you are doing.
Use the Tracking Toolbar (the word Tracking for Gantt, Table and Toolbar is a giveaway).
Assuming your task started as planned and 10 days later, ie now or the status date, there is 10 Days of Actual Duration and 10 Days of Remaining Duration. Just type these into the Act Dur and Rem Dur fields. MSP will calculate 50% Complete for you.

If instead you just type in 50% Complete (recommendation: never do this), MSP assumes, because, as far as it knows, this is a 8 Day Task, you have done 4 Days so 4 days remain. Obvious?

Hope the helps

Thanks lads for your help