% Complete and % Work Complete

[Nina Ervin]

What's the difference between % Complete, % Work Complete and is difference
between the two?

 

[Joe]

% Complete is based on duration. For example, if you have a 10 day task, and
you are completed through the 5th day, the % complete is 50%. But % Work
Complete is based on effort. For example, if you have 100 hours of work to
complete a task, and you are 20 hours into the task, you are only 20% Work
Complete. These two can differ for a given task. For example, let’s say it
takes 40 hours to paint a room which will take a week (assuming 8 hours a
day). Say I worked only 10 hours after the first 2 days. I am 40% Complete
(only 3 more days left), but I am only 25% Work Complete. I need to make up
the additional 30 hours in the next three days if I plan to finish it on
schedule.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Nina --

Yours is a good question. % Complete actually represents the percentage of
the Duration used up so far on a task. In reality, this means that %
Complete is actually % Duration Complete. For example, on a task with a
10-day Duration, the assigned resource has submitted his/her time for the
first 5 days of the task. We have now "used up" 5 days of the 10 day window
for this task, therefore, % Complete = 50% (5 days/10 days).

% Work Complete represents the percentage of the Work completed on a task.
On the original 10-day Duration task, the team member has completed only 10
of the 40 hours of Work originally assigned to this task, therefore, % Work
Complete = 25% (10h/40h). Hope this helps.

 

[Kevin W Flanagan]

Joe is correct. The two fields together can also be used to "audit" the
project schedule to see how healthy the projects are at a quick glance. The
two values should be within say 5% of each other if the project is on track.
We run a custom asp report to compare the two as one way of reviewing our
portfolio projects.

 

[Not-a-nerd-Naomi]

Kevin,

If my % completed is LESS than my % work completed then I'm ahead,
right? You say,
"The two values should be within say 5% of each other if the project is
on track" which determines the health of the project. Is it
necessarily a bad thing if the work is completed ahead of time?

Naomi

 

[Kevin W Flanagan]

Naomi-

You are correct. However, my PMO experience has been that very few projects
run % Complete lower than % Work Complete.

Kevin