Baseline vs actual schedule and start/finish dates

[lili]

I have establishd a basesline schedule and have been maintaining the schedule
using actual start and actual finish columns. I have many linked tasks.
Project automatically updates (i.e. projects the actual start/finish date)
as I update the actual start and finish columns because the activities are
linked. However, the durations of these projected durations don't match the
baseline durations. Essentially, the projected actual start and finish dates
don't represent how the schedule has changed as a result of the real actual
start and finish dates.

My project runs 7 days/week, 12 hours/day. At first I thought the durations
were "skipping" weekends but I selected all tasks and resources and assigned
them all to the custom calendar with no change to the projected actual
durations.

How can I make the "actual" projected durations match the baseline durations?

 

[davegb]

I have establishd a basesline schedule and have been maintaining the schedule
using actual start and actual finish columns. I have many linked tasks.
Project automatically updates (i.e. projects the actual start/finish date)
as I update the actual start and finish columns because the activities are
linked. However, the durations of these projected durations don't match the
baseline durations. Essentially, the projected actual start and finish dates
don't represent how the schedule has changed as a result of the real actual
start and finish dates.

My project runs 7 days/week, 12 hours/day. At first I thought the durations
were "skipping" weekends but I selected all tasks and resources and assigned
them all to the custom calendar with no change to the projected actual
durations.

How can I make the "actual" projected durations match the baseline durations?

If you edit the Actual Start and Actual Finish dates, the duration will
be recalculated to fit those dates. If you want the durations to match,
you'd have to make sure you're edited dates match the original
durations.

Hope this helps in your world.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Lili,

The purpose of a baseline is to serve as a comparison basis to see by how
much the actual situation deviates from the original one.
There is no point having a baseline if it "must" match the Actuals.
Actuals are dictated by reality, so they should not (always) be a copy of
the original plan!
HTH

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Why should the baseline and actuals match??? The baseline reflects what you
thought was going to be the duration. The actual is what it really did turn
out to require. OF course they may be different, in fact, it's very likely
that they WILL be different in a lot of cases. The baseline is a record of
your initial estimate and estimates always have a certain level of
uncertainlty in them.

 

[lili]

I obviouisly didn't explain my problem very well.
I added a column for actual start and actual finished.
Those tasks that are completed do have different durations than the baseline
schedule, according to when they were actually started and actually completed.

However, MSProject automatically shifts the linked tasks that are not yet
started or complete ('NA' automatically entered in the Actual Start and
Actual Finish columns with a 0% complete). It is these not-yet-started
and/or not-yet-completed tasks that have a different duration than the
baseline duration.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

If the finish of a predecessor changes the start and finish of successor
tasks downline from it should also change but not their durations. In the
sequence of 3 10-day tasks A->B->C, if task A finishes 5 days earlier than
the baseline calls for, B and C should both start and end 5 days earlier as
well, thus causing the total duration of the sequence to shorten compared to
the baseline, but their individual durations should stay at 10days each
until actuals are posted against them too. (Remember the total duration is
from the start of A to the end of C, not necessarily the sum of the
individual durations.) Are you saying something different is happening in
your plan? Which durations are changing exactly and are they getting longer
or shorter? Did you manually enter start and finish dates so you have
constraints on those tasks?


--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs