Calculation Problem with Actuals?

S

Shawn Everingham

Tried to do a search here, but didn't find anyone expressing the same issue
or concern. Plus, I may not of known exactly what search criteria to use...

What is the least amount of time someone might track on their actual work?
in our organization, .25h seems to be lowest common denominator entered for
actual work. Planned work I understand may read something like 1.899h due to
how we have resources allocated at 87.5%, plus all the other things that MS
Project takes into account for you. I can handle that. But I know people,
err, resources aren't entering in 1.119 hours for actuals, yet reports in
data analysis are showing totals for actual work to the 1/1000ths of an hour.
And further analysis is showing those same discrepencies on certain
individuals timesheets. I may be able to dismiss a few as human error, but
one PM in particular, I know, is not entering her time to the 1/1000ths of an
hour.

Is anyone else seeing these discrepencies in actual work totals? or on their
timesheet actuals? This is very concerning for me and our organization. Why
would MSPS change an actual that was manually entered? HELP?! thanks in
advance!
 
J

James Fraser

Tried to do a search here, but didn't find anyone expressing the same issue
or concern. Plus, I may not of known exactly what search criteria to use...

What is the least amount of time someone might track on their actual work?
in our organization, .25h seems to be lowest common denominator entered for
actual work. Planned work I understand may read something like 1.899h due to
how we have resources allocated at 87.5%, plus all the other things that MS
Project takes into account for you. I can handle that. But I know people,
err, resources aren't entering in 1.119 hours for actuals, yet reports in
data analysis are showing totals for actual work to the 1/1000ths of an hour.
And further analysis is showing those same discrepencies on certain
individuals timesheets. I may be able to dismiss a few as human error, but
one PM in particular, I know, is not entering her time to the 1/1000ths of an
hour.

Is anyone else seeing these discrepencies in actual work totals? or on their
timesheet actuals? This is very concerning for me and our organization. Why
would MSPS change an actual that was manually entered? HELP?! thanks in
advance!
Click to expand...

The timesheets may be pre-populated with actual work from a project
plan. The Actual work in the project plan may be calculated: if the PM
changes percent complete, for example.

There are also a few listed bugs that are fixed in SP1 and in the
recent Hotfix rollup that address task update accuracy. You should
consider installing those.


James Fraser
 
G

Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]

Shawn:

You don't specify exactly where you see the discrepancies, so it is
difficult to give you a meaningful explanation. For instance, in data
analysis there are 14 cubes, each containing data from different sources.
The timesheet cube may contain different actual work representations than
actual work dimensioned from the project plan. There are all sorts of
reasons whey actual work may get altered slightly in the system which
include task types, rounding errors, human error, etc.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
 
J

john

I feel your pain Shawn, I am experiencing this same issue after installing
SP1.

Resources will enter 1.5hrs of Actual Work on a certain Day and then if you
look at the actual work in the project plan you see a wierd number like 1.33
and a value of .12 on another date. This does not look good when trying to
compare data fields from one area to the other.

Working with project server since 2000, it seems like the data is not
consistent. Can some one reason with me?

Thanks
John

Gary L. Chefetz said:
Shawn:

You don't specify exactly where you see the discrepancies, so it is
difficult to give you a meaningful explanation. For instance, in data
analysis there are 14 cubes, each containing data from different sources.
The timesheet cube may contain different actual work representations than
actual work dimensioned from the project plan. There are all sorts of
reasons whey actual work may get altered slightly in the system which
include task types, rounding errors, human error, etc.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com
Click to expand...
 
S

Shawn Everingham

John,

Precisely! I do have SP1 installed. And John has verified this same
behavior. I shouldn't have said anything about Data Analysis, as that does
add another layer of complexity, I just have used it to easily identify folks
experiencing the same difficulties, and I might add, isn't limitted to the
one or two people complaining about it.

We did a little experiment yesterday, and yes, if a PM changes or tracks his
task's completion based upon percentage complete, we are all in big trouble,
because changing the percentage complete, applies work that may not of needed
to be done to my timesheet as an ACTUAL!!! come on!! Why do I need to fill
out a time sheet with actuals if some PM can come in and change a percentage
complete and screw up the entire thing...glad we only have a few PMs who
would even know to do that...errr, in this case, NOT to do that.

Still it's wierd...person enters in 1h... on a task. The next day, the 1h
shows up as .999....crazy....

thanks for verifying my insanity John.

Any help out there? oh..another possibility is that a resouce clicks use
planned as actuals. That will may your actual time look like planned time
1.066h for example. However, this is not the case from the folks complaining
about this wierd anomaly.

thanks in advance for any input or advice in this matter. Shawn


--
Technology, like art, is a soaring stretch of our imagination...Daniel Bell.
1919


john said:
I feel your pain Shawn, I am experiencing this same issue after installing
SP1.

Resources will enter 1.5hrs of Actual Work on a certain Day and then if you
look at the actual work in the project plan you see a wierd number like 1.33
and a value of .12 on another date. This does not look good when trying to
compare data fields from one area to the other.

Working with project server since 2000, it seems like the data is not
consistent. Can some one reason with me?

Thanks
John
Click to expand...
 
J

John Sitka

"Resources will enter 1.5hrs of Actual Work on a certain Day "

WHEN did they enter that Actual work. Actual work is "temporal"
It carries with it an Event Timing, not just a work value. It is multi valued.
But that multi valued nature does not come into play for every calculaion.

Rearrange the notion of day, week, hour, month. Consider all time elements
as tiny discrete slots. The passage of time is these slots placed in a row.
Actual work is the cards that goes into the slots. These cards can be placed
as a run, or a series, or not, sometimes the slots are blocked (by non working time,
or constraints, or lack of availability) and the run is interupted.
Sometimes the series is filled backwards right to left.
Actual Work has a "from" and a "to" or a left boundry and a
right boundry (or multiples of either).

This positional quanta approach to time has helped me lots.

There are all kinds of ways to add Actual work that are nonsensical,
the ability to treat those entries as valid makes for "weird" results.


john said:
I feel your pain Shawn, I am experiencing this same issue after installing
SP1.

Resources will enter 1.5hrs of Actual Work on a certain Day and then if you
look at the actual work in the project plan you see a wierd number like 1.33
and a value of .12 on another date. This does not look good when trying to
compare data fields from one area to the other.

Working with project server since 2000, it seems like the data is not
consistent. Can some one reason with me?

Thanks
John
Click to expand...
 
S

Shawn Everingham

John,

However, no matter how smart the system thinks it is...If I as the resource
say I worked on task a for 4h on Wednesday, the system shouldn't override my
manual entry of time and change it. Forget the dependencies of each 'run'. I
understand that.

What makes the system think it is so smart to trump, my manually entered
actual?
if I worked 4h on something, i worked 4h on something...not 3.998h.

What is project server doing? is it truely a problem/bug? was it really
fixed in SP1? how do we correct it? how do I trust ANYTHING coming for
actuals? help me out please. thanks!
 
J

John Sitka

Project is asked to represent two non compatible models of scheduling
1.)time passing and 2.)progress made. Progress made model needs an additional
value for actuals, a timing, not only a unit.
At some point the two different representation of a schedule which are always available
involve floating point calculation. I suggested the "slots and cards" idea as a
way to come to terms with it.
 
J

john

Shawn,

I guess no one can explain why are timesheets do not carry over to the
projects in a consistent and equal matter.

Hopefully we'll find some calm to this madness.

john
 
J

john

Gary,

And the bad news is the project plan does not reflect the accurate time.
How is management suppose to rely on the inconsistent data? I have ran a SQL
Server Report to show this and it is not looking promising for auditing
purposes.

John
 
J

john

Sorry for the late reply, juggling tasks here.

We have all sorts of task types, but it appears task that are Fixed Units
with no effort driven are causing the issues. Example Actual Work spread to
3.32, 2.58. .93 etc... I know the Resource did not enter that into their
timesheet.

I saw a hot fix KB 941426 - Do you think this would resolve the out of sync
discrepencies from timesheets - tasks in Project Professional?

Thanks in advance,
John
 
E

Elsina Nation

Hi John,

Did you ever find a fix for this awful problem? My organisation is suffering from it too.

Thanks
Elsina
 

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