Reporting progress on a task

You sound a bit confused about how to track progress and how MSP works.

% Complete in MSP is always just Actual Duration/Total Duration.
If you log a 3 day task as 50% Complete, then you are saying that there has been 1.5 days if Actual Duration and that there is 1.5 days of Remaining Duration.

If you don’t say otherwise, and just type in the 50% Complete, MSP will assume (because it must) that the task started on the scheduled start date.

If the task started 3 days ago (ie, the status date is now) and you say that there has been 1.5 days of Actual Duration, which is what you are saying, that will leave 1.5 days of remaining duration in the past, ie to the left of the status date. Since it is impossible to plan to do something in the past, the Remaining Duration must be moved into the future (to the right of the status date).
The third button on the Tracking Toolbar will do this.

In the example you mention, there is no way to say that the task is 50% Complete and keep the finish date the same because it would not make sense.

Let’s put some days and dates to it. Say the task was planned to start on Monday and it is now the end of Wednesday. The planned finish date is now. The task is either finished or there is still some Remaining Duration which has to be in the future, now + 1.5 days = midday Friday.

Shayam,

If you want to enter a % complete figure, but don’t want it to affect the finish date, try using the ’physical % complete’ field.

This field has no link with finish date and is just used for calculating earned value, I believe.

Hi Shyam,

Further to the answers already posted by Trevor and Gary, I thought I’d delve a little deeper and try and find out why you seem to be having this problem in the first place.

First of all, as Trevor rightly pointed out, there is no way that at the end of the third day you can be anything less that 100% complete otherwise the finish date of that task will move. With this in mind and by using the scenario you presented, you can always differentiate between duration and work.

If your resource has completed half the work by the start of the third day, and taken two days of the three day period to get to that point, MS Project can show the work to be 50% complete as-well-as the showing the task duration to be 66% complete.

Of course this is simplistic and there may be other variables, but the challenge you have as a planner in this situation is obviously finding out whether your resource will be able to complete the work in time. If they can’t, can you allocate more resources to ensure that the work does get completed. If net result of either option is that you still won’t be able to complete in the planned timescale, then the finish date of the task will probably be delayed and you would have to further investigate the impact.

So Shyam, when you talk about reporting progress how do update the schedule to show progress, what is the process you follow?

What is your definition of progress? Is it by duration, work, or a combination of both?

Do you just type in progress to the % complete column, or do you use actual and remaining duration/work?

When you talk about finish dates are you talking about task finish dates or project finish dates?

What are your task types set to? When you update your schedule do you fix the duration, work or units?

Are your task types always effort driven?

Do you use status dates?

What are your calculation options set to? When you update task status do you also update resource status?

Do you have any lags in the schedule?

Updating a schedule should be relatively painless so if you can provide answers to any of the above, we can gauge your understanding of how the scheduling engine works and it may be easier for someone on the forum to identify why you have this problem.

As far as I’m aware, if you have your schedule set up correctly and you follow a conventional update process, there should be no reason for durations or work to change automatically when you update progress. However the precedence network will drive completion dates downstream if durations change.

If there’s anything else you want to discuss then please feel free to post it on this forum. Let us know how you get on and if you are able to resolve this issue.

Regards,

Darren