backfill actual work for earned value calculations

[DJ Huff]

I am recasting the way we manage our mega-project using MSP 2003 (there
previously ws no project plan, used Excel) and we want to display EV metrics.
We recasted the plans mid-project, which means that many tasks began well
before the "go live" date for using the MSP. We are capturing actuals, but
not for previous dates. EV metrics show negative values when they may not be
if we had actuals filled in for previous days' work. I cannot copy/paste
Work into Actual Work.

How do I backfill the Actual Work for previous tasks? We do not want to
change the Project Begin Date.

Also...I have the plans set up as Fixed Duration. I know the three elements
that can change based upon what you do with one or more of the other
elements, but it is real confusing and hard to keep up with. Managers
complain that resource % change and Work is distributed throughout the plan
tasks without input from the managers except by changing duration or Finish
dates. Should I change to Fixed Unit/Effort Driven so that resource % don't
change? If so, then how do I also control the distribution of hours over the
Work element of tasks?

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

For your first question: Marking the previous tasks as 100% complete will set
the actual work = planned work.


For the second one, the answer is "It depends" Sorry I don't have time to
elaborate on that one..

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[DJ Huff]

Yeah, I know about the 100%. We have not set up the tasks in 40-hour
increments, so many tasks started before we started to collect actuals and
still run into the future. E.g.

Task Start Finish Duration %
Complete

Task A 2/10/09 8/31/09 125 days 2%

It should be more complete than that. We collected time and entered into
actuals for a couple of weeks in March. We need to backfill the actual work
for the month of February. Changing % Complete to 100 does not solve the
problem. I also know we can cutoff the tasks up to when we input time and
restart them from the date we started to enter actual work. Rather than go
through 4 plans with up to 5000 tasks each and make the manual changes, which
could take quite some time, I would like to know if there is a better way to
place Work into Actual Work prior to the date we started taking actual time.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

"Work" becomes "Actual Work" when you post a percent complete. For tasks
that are simply marked off as 100% Complete, the Actual Work field is
updated to reflect the planned Work. So you don't need to cut and paste.
Project doesn't REALLY know or care what the current date actually is. So
pretend it's some date before the project kick-off date and enter the WBS
into Project as if the project had not yet begun. Use the Actual Duration
(known from your history of work performed so far, one hopes) as the task
durations for work actually done. By using the known Actual Durations for
the Planned duration, when you mark the task complete the Work and Actual
Work will automatically be equal. Set up the links and assign the resources
to past-date tasks who actually worked on them. Save a baseline. Set the
Current date to today in the Project Information dialog and switch to the
Tracking Gantt view with the Tracking table. For work completed, enter
either the Actual Start date and Actual Finish dates from your historical
data or at least the Actual Start and mark it 100% complete. Task that have
begun but are incomplete enter the actual progress so far and estimate the
remaining duration. After updating all the work performed to date, use the
Reschedule Uncompleted Work tool to bring forward things that should have
been done in the past but weren't to start ASAP in the future.