Showing activities that have slipped since last update

Natasha,

Thats very easy stuff. Nothing much to worry about. Just follow me with the steps:-

Step 1. First for clarity add the following columns to your view

• Variance BL Project start date
• Variance BL Project finish date

Step 2. Next goto Filter -> New -> write filter Name as "Activities slipped from baseline"

Step 3. For filtering the activities that slipped from the baseline start date:-

Under the filter Parameter column -> Select Any of the following from the drop down -> Next adjacent to the Where row under Parameter column select Variance BL Project start date from the drop down -> under is column select is less than from the drop down - > in value column put 0d for filtering all the activites that slipped from baseline start date or in your case -5d for filtering all the activities that slipped more than 5days

Step 4. Now we are going to add one more condition for filtering the activities that have slipped from the Baseline finish date

Click Add -> Next adjacent to the newly created Or row under Parameter column select Variance BL Project Finish date from the drop down -> under is column select is less than from the drop down - > in value column put 0d for filtering all the activites that slipped from baseline finish date or in your case -5d for filtering all the activities that slipped more than 5days

Click OK -> Click OK again in Filter menu

Voila!!! You have all the activities that slipped from the Baseline start date and Baseline Finish date

You can refer to the Variance columns to check if the data filtered is correct or not and then you can remove the Variance columns

Also, to compare the schedule with the last baseline simply goto Project menu -> select Assign Baselines -> under Project Baseline -> select from the dropdown the last baseline that you want your schedule to be copmared with -> click OK -> apply the filter again -> Thats It done !

Regards,

Ranga

Did I understand right that with each update it is necessary to create new baseline?

No no, once you have a baseline you do not change it, unless there is a major change or revision in strategy. Consider baseline as the original plan and you always compare your current schedule to Original plan (i.e baseline plan)

Vladimir: Yes. If you want to compare current schedule vs schedule at the previous update, then you have to create a new baseline at each update.

I tend to take a copy of the whole project at each update anyway for archiving purposes, so this is no issue.

Gary, for projects with several years duration and updates each week there is a need to create hundreds baselines.

If there are many such projects in the company it means that database size will soon become huge, isn't it?

Can it create problems?

The problem with the leaking roof is only when it rains. 

If you are using one of the cheap database versions very soon the cheap database will run out of capacity and you will find out all is lost unless you saved a backup. I suggest backing up your database every 10 minutes so not much data is lost. I hope you can make incremental P6 database backups while users are still connected to P6, otherwise a full backup every 10 minutes can be a pain.

LOL

I've never had any problems, to be honest.

As a consultant, I've worked for many different companies with different (or indeed no) policies on archiving & DB management with P6. Never personally come across a situation where the DB became to big, though I have seen the odd post here on PP suggesting it can happen.

My approach is to save a copy of each project at each update. Once a project is contractually closed, I remove nearly all the versions from the DB to stop it getting too cluttered. -Typically just keep the as-built programme, initial baseline and perhaps any revised baseline programmes for future reference.

Gary,

On every update, calendars, activity codes, resource availability, calendar exceptions, holidays/rain days etc are dynamic and can be different from update to update. The same goes to shared/global calendars, activity codes, resource availability, calendar exceptions, holidays/rain days etc, therefore in order to make valid comparisons the different schedule versions shall take into account the differences in shared/global data available at the time of every update. Keep in mind, can even be maliciously changed though most of the time changes are real.

The obvious question for those of us who do not use P6 is how this basic comparison is done within P6? Especially when analysis require for the analyst to make some adjustments to prior updates and make schedule runs to mimic contemporaneous results to compare different versions with different data date, with different global data.

From: www.arcadis-us-pmcm.com/blog/fog-and-smoke-and-mirrors/  

• An example of P6’s problems is that it cannot be downloaded to another file and then reloaded without unpredictable and random data changes.

Best Regards,

Rafael