Duration increase after actual work entered

P

Peter Williams

I have a simple test project. ASAP, Fixed Unit Effort Driven tasks. I
assigned a resource and then updated the Actual work for that resources via
PWA. I put in 4 hours work on the same day the work was scheduled.

After accepting updates..I expected to see 50% complete on the Gantt.
Instead I see 67% complete, the duration has increased to 1.5 days from a
day. And therefore the following dependent tasks have been pushed a bit.

Is this the expected behavior ?
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Peter --

Yes, this is expected behavior. When you entered 4 hours of Actual Work on
the task, Microsoft Project automatically rescheduled the 4 hours of
Remaining Work to the next available time period, which was the next day,
obviously. Since 4 hours of work is scheduled for the next day, the
Duration is now calculated as 1.5 days (the first full day in which only 4
hours of work was performed, plus the half day during which 4 hours of work
will be performed).

The % Complete value you see actually represents the % Duration Complete (1
day out of 1.5 days = 67%). From the Gantt Chart view, click View - Table -
More Tables and select the Work table. Pull the split bar to the far right
side of the available columns and you will see that the % Work Complete is
50%, which is the value you were expecting, since 50% of the original 8
hours of work has been completed. Hope this helps.
 
P

Peter Williams

Thank you so much. So..

- Project reschedules because the actual hours for that day were submitted
so it needed to schedule the remaining 4 hours accordingly
- Which is a more pertinent number for me to use in Tracking..% Duration
Complete for % Work Complete
- I have PS set up to use "Hours of work done per day or per week: Resources
report the hours worked on each task during each time period". So..if a
resource is assigned 8 of work for a task and he completes the task in 4
hours..do i have him/her make the remaining work 0 so the task is marked
complete ?

Thanks in advance. You are really helping me out.
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

Peter --

Thank you for your follow-up questions. To answer them:

1. Yes, Microsoft Project rescheduled the uncompleted work from the past
time period into the next available time period.

2. More relevant in your situation would probably be the % Work Complete
field. On the other hand, if you used Fixed Duration tasks, you will want
to study both the % Complete and % Work Complete fields. You will want to
look for tasks whose % Work Complete is less than the % Complete, which
would mean that the work is falling behind schedule.

3. When a task finishes early, team members should be taught how to adjust
the Remaining Work value to 0 hours in PWA.

Hope this helps.
 

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