Actual Dates vs. Scheduled Dates

[liz217]

We are just starting to use Project to track our schedules. What we'd really
like to be able to do is use Project to develop some history, so that we can
get better and better at scheduling. Right now we are more or less guessing
on the durations for each task. I'd like to be able to show what we
scheduled (duration, start, finish) and what actually happened (actual
duration, actual start, actual finish). Is there a way to do this in Project?

In the tracking view, I added the columns actual start & actual finish, but
whenever I input the actual start and finish dates it changes the original
start and finish. It also sometimes will split tasks that are in progress.

I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how the program works. In
the future, we plan to use the resources feature of the program, but right
now, we are using it more for just tracking projects and making sure we are
on schedule.

Thanks!

 

[Geordie [TMG]]

Hi Liz

When the schedule moves from planning to implmenting it is always a good
idea to save a baseline for the schedule. This will take a 'copy' of the
scheduled dates and as you start entering in actual start and finish dates
any difference between planned and actual will be shown. You can view the
Baseline in Tracking Gantt (also a good idea to view the Tracking Table under
tracking Gantt view). You can also use the Gantt Chart Wizard to format the
Gantt chart to include the Baseline.

The schedule can be rebaselined at any stage (eg a change to scope), I would
recommend saving a new version (ver2), before rebaselining to keep a history
of before change and after etc.

Cheers, hope this helps. Geordie