Actual Work, Percent complete, and BCWP

[DavidR]

As suggested by a response to a question I asked yesterday I am trying to
enter actual work instead of a percentage. I have a resource that was
assigned 176 hours of work for a month but only completed 80 hours. So I go
into the resource planning view and change the bottom tier of my timescale to
months go to the assignment and enter 80 hours of actual work for that month.
MSP changes the “work†for that month to equal the actual work and spreads
(adds) the remaining hours over the remaining months. At the assignment
level (row) I see the BCWP is equal to the amount I expected. But at the
task level the BCWP is equal to BCWS and the percent complete is 9%. This is
the only assignment for this task. I assume the reason for this is that the
9% represents 1/12 of the duration completed (1 month out of 12 scheduled).
I would of expected the percent complete and BCWP to roll up to the task
level from the assignment row (if that is what it is called), and represent
the actual work accomplished. What am I missing? Thanks in advance!

 

[Andrew]

I think you're mixing terms w/ % Complete and Actual Work. Actual Work just
documents how much effort there is. % Complete is how much of the duration
you burned up. Those are two totally different things.

If your task is Fixed Duration, and you are running behind schedule, but
have "burned through" 1 month of duration (in a year long task), then %
Complete will show as 1/12th - which it sounds like it does in your case.

You can't really roll up duration per se as it's not cumulative. If the
duration of the individual assignment changes, it might change the duration
of the task. Basically the task length is the length of the longest
assignment (in most cases, and yes there are other scenarios).