Confusion with work vs. actual vs. 100% complete

[J. Belcher]

Say that I estimate a task to take 3.5 hours to complete. The resource
assigned that task finishes the task, but it only took him/her 0.5 hours to
complete. How can you record this under actual time and still have 100%
completion?

In other words, if I mark 3.5 hours of work and 0.5 hours of actual work, %
complete will reflect 14% complete. If I try to manually set that as 100%
complete, it will change the values for work/actual work.

How do you handle these cases?

 

[John]

Say that I estimate a task to take 3.5 hours to complete. The resource
assigned that task finishes the task, but it only took him/her 0.5 hours to
complete. How can you record this under actual time and still have 100%
completion?

In other words, if I mark 3.5 hours of work and 0.5 hours of actual work, %
complete will reflect 14% complete. If I try to manually set that as 100%
complete, it will change the values for work/actual work.

How do you handle these cases?

J,
First of all give that resource a raise or he's gonna bolt! Someone who
can finish a 3.5 hour task in 0.5 hours is going to be in great demand.

Yes, it can be confusing but it can be clarified by remembering a few
simple "rules" of Project. First, the values in the Duration field and
Work field are schedule estimates and those can and will change when
reality hits. If you want to preserve these values you need to set a
baseline.

OK now for your specific case. The two things you want to look at are
Actual Work and Remaining Work. Indeed manually entering a value for %
Work Complete and/or Actual Work will result in a frustrating game of
cat and mouse. Here's what you need to do. In your view display the %
Work Complete, Work, Actual Work, and Remaining Work fields. When you
status the task first set the Actual Work field to 0.5 hours. Then set
the Remaining Work field to 0 hours. You will see that the % Work
Complete field is now at 100% and the Work field has been adjusted to
reflect what really happened - remember it was only the original
estimate and that estimate has now been updated by Project. So what
happened to the original estimate? Well, that's captured in the Baseline
Work field.

Hope this helps to clarify things.

John
Project MVP

 

[Jim Aksel]

Actual Work = 0.5hours.
Change Remaining Work and Remaining Duration to 0. This forces %Complete to
100%.

God bless you for not trying to jam the %Complete to 100. You can read more
about the intracies of Percent Complete on my blog, I have a few papers on it
--- apparently this is a matter close to my heart.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[J. Belcher]

Great--thank you both for the clarification, that's a much more logical way
of handling these cases. And yes we'll do well to hang onto that resource =)

 

[John]

Great--thank you both for the clarification, that's a much more logical way
of handling these cases. And yes we'll do well to hang onto that resource =)

J,
You're welcome.

John

 

[vanita]

Hi

You may also try using physical % complete field.

I hope it helps.
Vanita