Actual, Planned Dates Confusion

[Sameer]

Dear All

I have small confusion here and was hoping that you guys can solve it.

When a PM creates a project plan he decides on the start and the finish
dates. Once the plna has been basedline and publish, the team members starts
to enter the timesheets information.

Lets say that the start date o the task was 12/30/2005 and i as a team
member inserted my actuals on the 12/31/2005. Once the project manager
approves the task, the task start date now becomes 12/31/2005.

So that means that MPP is simply copying actual start to actual finish. I do
not want this to happen. I want actual start as a different entity, start as
a different entity and baseline start as a different one.

How can this be done.

Any sort of help will be appreciated.

Kind Regards
Sameer Khan

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Sameer:

This is the way the tool functions. The purpose of the baseline is to
preserve the original dates. Think about it this way, if you planned to
start a task on the 30th and you don't start it until the 31st, after the
31st has come and gone, you can't still be planning on starting it the day
before it actually started. So, use the baseline field in your views, and
understand that planned dates, work values and durations will always equal
actual dates and durations once you cross these thresholds. Baseline values
never change unless you change them.

Planned dates, work values and durations always = current plan dates, work
values and durations once these dates or values have been met, or exceeded,
or the task is marked complete.

 

[mark.everett]

Sameer -

As Gary said, Project is performing as designed. To get what you want,
I think you only need define a view in the Project Center, in Project
Pro or in OLAP (or in all three if you want) that shows, for each task
the plan, baseline and actual dates that you are concerned about.

That will provide you and your project managers with the analysis you
want. I would caution against putting that kind of detail in the
timesheet view. That view is already busy and crowded and I am not
sure that most resources need (and certainly don't want) that level of
detail.

Best Regards,
Mark S. Everett | PMP
www.quantumpm.com