Errors in the earned value view in project web access

[Ralph]

I'm having problems getting the values for earned value analysis to agree
between MS Project Pro and Project Web Access. The values for BCWS, BCWP and
ACWP agree in the project center view but when I click on the individual
project in PWA to view the individual tasks, some of the earned value numbers
are different for certain tasks between Project Pro and PWA. It's almost as
if the status date in PWA is not moving even though in Pro the status date is
set to NA and I have republished the project and its activities a number of
times.

Anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this?

Thanks,

Ralph

 

[Reid McTaggart]

This could happen if someone manually statused some tasks in PPro but did not
republish those tasks and check the box to overwrite actuals.

-Reid

 

[Ralph]

Thanks Reid, this may very well be the case. In order to resolve this
situation, should I republish the tasks and check the overwrite actuals box?

Ralph

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Yep.

-Reid

Thanks Reid, this may very well be the case. In order to resolve this
situation, should I republish the tasks and check the overwrite actuals box?

Ralph

 

[Ralph]

OK so if that doesn't solve the problem (which it unfortunately didn't), is
there anything else you could suggest. It's strange that the majority of the
tasks are in agreement between Pro and PWA except the more recent ones.

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Hmmm.

So, are you saying that if you look at the project detail in PWA, and you
add up all the task-level values of, say, BCWP, the total does not match the
BCWP shown at the project level?

Or, does the total add up, but some tasks are higher and some lower in PWA
than in PPro, but the differences balance out so the total BCWP for the
project is the same in PWA and PPro?

-Reid

 

[Reid McTaggart]

You might also read the thread of 21 April titled "Custom resource fields get
clobbered." It describes an effect similar to your problem, as well as an
interesting cause. Maybe it's relevant to your situation.

-Reid

 

[Ralph]

The situation is as follows:

Project Pro shows BCWS of 127,012.25, BCWP 119,265.62 and ACWP 111,265.62
with project status date set to NA.

In PWA Project Center Earned Value View (just the project overview) I have
the same values as Project Pro BCWS of 127,012.25, BCWP of 119,265.62 and
ACWP of 111,288.8. However, when I select the project and look at the details
of the tasks in the Tasks Earned Value I get different values for the project
summary line at the top. Now the project BCWS is 119,459.75, BCWP 73,273.37
and ACWP is 84,118.40. If you examine individual task values for these
parameters and compare them between Pro and PWA you find that only the most
recent tasks are wrong. It's as if the status date for calculating these
values in PWA is locked to some point in time and the status values for the
more recent tasks is being ignored. We entered updates yesterday using PWA
for some of these tasks and the Earned Value of theses tasks changed in Pro
but not in PWA!

Does PWA use the same project status date as Pro?

Thanks,

Ralph

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Wow, that sounds messed up.

All I can think of now -- and it's probably not the case -- is that the
project is open or checked out. Some changes to a project on't show up in
PWA until the project file is closed.

Anybody else have ideas?

-Reid

 

[Earl Lewis]

Ralph,

A hunch, and something you might want to check. Are you using managed time periods? If so, perhaps the "uncommitted" time from the current time period isn't being taken into account in PWA? Not sure if this is the way this works or not but thought about it and figured I might mention it.

Earl
Wow, that sounds messed up.

All I can think of now -- and it's probably not the case -- is that the
project is open or checked out. Some changes to a project on't show up in
PWA until the project file is closed.

Anybody else have ideas?

-Reid

 

[Ralph]

Earl,

Thanks for that but unfortunately we are not using managed time periods.
Although we did have this turned on for a period of time while we were
trouble shooting another problem, we eventually turned it back off. I did go
in and try to reset the managed periods and repbulish the project but nothing
has changed.

It could be that in the process of trying to trouble shoot other problems we
have created this abnormal situation. This phase of the project is coming to
a close in the next few weeks after which, I'll have a new project to work
with. Hopefully, this won't happen again. I was just wondering if we were
doing something obviously wrong that would cause this but it appears not.

Thanks for all your help!

Ralph

 

[James T. Heires, PMP]

Have you tried closing out of PPro after making your edits and publishing
back to server? I have found that changes don't appear on PWA until I close
the thick client altogether...
--
James T. Heires, PMP
President
James Heires Consulting, Inc.
Home of EZ-Metrix code counting utility
http://www.ez-metrix.com