Completing a task Manually

[Snig]

Hi

This is the scenario: suppose a task has been alloted 10 hours.
However, in Project Server Resources can put more hours than that. But
whenever the actual hours becomes equal to greater than whatever is
alloted (10 hrs in this case), the task automatically gets completed.


How to block this behavior? I want my project managers to manually flag

the tasks as completed when they are notified.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Snig --

You can't stop this behavior, because this is the default behavior of the
software. Nor can your PM's be automatically notified when this happens.
Instead, make this a training and performance issue with your team members
by requiring them to add a note to each task when they complete it and to
send their update immediately to their PM. Hope this helps.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Snig:

This is normal and expected behavior. Perhaps you want to work with
baselines? This preserves the original estimated work. The work value will
always change to be equal to actual work once actual work meets or exceeds
the original estimate.

 

[Snig]

Thanks Dale/Gary.

But what happens if a task is not actually completed even if the
estimated hours has been used up. I am concerned in this case when a
task is still actually incomplete after the estimated hours is
consumed. In case the task is complete before the estimated hours, then
we can handle that.

Project server automatically makes a task complete when the estimated
hours are consumed - thus reflecting a untrue situation.

Any thoughts?

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Snig:

Your users should be adjusting remaining work to handle these situations.

 

[RickD]

This is a situation when your PM has to take responsibility for the project
and associated plan. If team members would adjust Remaining Work, that would
be wonderful but, ultimately, the PM should be validating progress. If a task
isn't really complete the PM should know that a deliverable is incomplete,
therefore the task cannot be complete either and an adjustment to the plan
made.

 

[Snig]

Thanks guys...

What I gather from the comments above is that, there is no way we can
block Project Server to assume that a task is complete when the actual
hours becomes equal to greater than the estimated/alloted hours. We
have to manually do the same by adjusting (read increasing) the
remaining hours!

That really is a very poor design on Microsoft's part. At least they
should have given a feature to disable this behavour. Pitty.

Snig.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Snig:

Please explain what you think the software should do, and I'll pass it on to
the product team. For the life us, none of us has been able to come up with
a better solution. How can the software know that a task is incomplete when
a resource fulfills the planned work effort yet fails to indicate in some
way that the task remains incomplete? The alternative is to never assume
that a task is complete and force a completion status entry as a separate
entry. I'm sure that many would see that as a poor design as well. Finally,
you can track hours in one project and task completion in another project
using the current architecture, or you can be a Project Server 2007 early
adopter as it allows you separate time completion from task completion. I'm
sure there'll be plenty of griping about this as well.<g>

 

[Snig]

Gary:

I understand what you say. There would be no means by which the
software know that a task is complete other than this feature. But
taking this into account, don't you think, there should be some option
to disable this behaviour?

Consider a scenario -
My PM has a number of project plans in hand, some 40-50 tasks are
completed in a single given day. Some of these are properly complete
obeying the estimated hours, but some are not actually complete. Now,
how can he identify which ones are actually over and which ones are
not. The only way out is, he has to knock the doors of developers or
team leaders to filter these out. It becomes somewhat cumbersome as a
day to day practice.

I can see your solution to maintain two different plans - one for
tracking hours and one for task completion. Though it solves this
particular purpose, but seems to be doing very redundant job, rather
than trying to make life easier!

Most likely we have to wait for PS 2007... !


Snig.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Snig:

I think this is a side-effect of effort-based tracking. Whether or not you
tick off te 100%, the inaccuracy you describe is the result of poor end-user
performance which has its roots elsewhere.<g> If your end users are that
unreliable, you're going to have this irritation no matter what. 2007 makes
separating time tracking and task status very easy, but I don't think that's
ultimately what you want.