Actual start, finish, and work

[Gary]

I am a new user to MS Project and, of course, I'm having a few
difficulties getting Project to do what I want. Maybe I'm not
configuring it right, or maybe I'm not using it correctly. Either way
some advice would be very much appreciated.

Here's what I'm trying to do.

I'm trying to set up a task, with baselined start, finish, and work
values, such that I can enter the actual start, finish, and work
values, once known, and have them be what I want them.

For example, a task starts on Monday, finishes on Friday and takes 10
hours of work, even though the duration is 5 days.

I can set the initial values for this task okay, and I can also
capture the baseline for this task okay - I enter and display this
using the 'start', 'finish', 'work', 'baseline start', 'baseline
finish', and 'baseline work' columns.

My problem arises when I enter the actual values. I display the
actual fields using the 'actual start', 'actual finish', and 'actual
work' columns.

When I enter actual start, finish, and work values that are the same
as for the baseline everything is fine. However, for instance, if the
task in fact started on Tuesday, finished on Friday, and actually only
took 5 hours, I can't get all three values to match. I want to be
able to record that the task did actually start on Tuesday, finish on
Friday and take 5 hours, but when I enter Friday as an actual finish
date the actual work changes automatically to 8 hours, and when I set
the actual work to 5 hours, the actual finish date changes to NA.

I appreciate any help on how to set about doing this, in my mind, very
basic setup and recording.

Thanks,

Gary

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Gary,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Try entering the Actual Start Date and the Actual Work and then set the
Remaining Work to zero.

However, I'm a little concerned that you are entering the planned dates. To
set up a project plan, enter the Task name and its Duration - Project will
then tell you the Finish Date. The Start date is governed by the Start Date
of the project or the Finish Date of its successor - thus you need to enter
the logic link. Entering either or both Start and Finish dates will build
in constraints that, by definition, will restrict the flexibility of your
project. I therefore suggest you rethink your procedure. Maybe it would be
wise to take a course on project management techniques and how Project is
designed to work. Doing so will get you up and running so much faster and
efficiently.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Sarah]

Gary,

First of all, I would recommend doing some reading on how Project
works, or better yet, take a class.

The Start, Finish, and Work fields are to record your planned values.
That being said, you should almost NEVER enter anything manually in
the Start and Finish fields. Project populates these based on the
Project Start Date (set in Project>Project Information), the links
between tasks, and task Durations. Once you have a schedule that is to
your liking, click Tools>Tracking>Save Baseline. Select "Save
baseline" and "Entire project" and click OK. This copies the values
from the Start, Finish, Work, etc. fields to their Baseline
equivalents. Now you are ready to start tracking actuals. If you have
resources assigned to the plan (as you should), you can use either the
Task Usage or Resource Usage views to enter actuals. Again, I would
avoid entering dates. Project defaults the Actual Start and Actual
Finish dates to the first and last dates on which Actual Work appears.
So you have a task that was scheduled to take 8 hours of work. The
resource finished it in 5 hours. You enter the hours on the
appropriate days on the timescale (right side) of one of the
above-mentioned views. Then you enter zero in the Remaining Work field
for that task, and Project changes the Actual Finish date for you and
marks the task complete. The Start and Finish dates will always match
any Actual Start or Actual Finish dates that appear in your plan, by
design. That is why you saved Baseline values before you began
tracking actuals. You can compare your current plan to the baseline
values to determine if and how far you are varying from your original
plan.

Hope this helps!
Sarah Kiko
sarah_kiko@(removethis)cinfin.com

 

[Gary]

Aha ! Thank you both for your reply. After following your advice I
can see exactly what I was doing wrong and can now do exactly what I
want to do. I'm off to the races !

I knew MS Project would be capable of it, I just didn't know how.

I've managed projects for a long time, but have always used other
project management tools. The challenge is always to figure out how a
different application does the same thing. Don't know if you have
ever used CA-SuperProject but even though it does the same as MS
Project it does it in a different way, that is its user interface is
quite different.

Anyway, thanks for your help, it is very mich appreciated.

Gary

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome, Gary

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP