EVMS Question?

[Kevin Slane]

I'm trying to decipher a macro that was written by someone else. They're
doing a calculation to create a field called BQWS. I'm familiar with BCWS
from the EVMS training I've received, but I'm not familiar with BQWS.
I can tell you how they derived this value. They call task.TimeScaleData()
and pass in the BaselineStart as the start date and StatusDate as the end
date and pjTaskTimescaledBaselineWork as the type. Can someone please tell
me what this does? I can't quite figure out what StatusDate is supposed to
be. I saw some reference to it online in regard to previous versions of
Project, but nothing for 2007.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
From what I can see, it kinda looks like the end result mirrors Physical %
Complete * Baseline Work, but that may just be coincidence.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

It's basically telling you how much baseline work was scheduled between the
Start Date and the Status Date. The Status Date, which is set in the Project

Project Information dialog box, is the last date on which you have "complete"

information about the schedule.

So if I received data this week for last week's work, I would set the Status
Date to last Friday.

It may/may not mirror Physical % Complete X Baseline Work, depending on what
value you plug in to Physical % Complete. How are you determining which
value to plug into Physical % Complete?


- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Kevin Slane]

Thanks Andrew. You're first line answered my question perfectly. It makes
sense now!

Physical % Complete is being determined by the resource managers. Our
scheduler wants to use Physical % Complete rather than % Complete to task
statusing in Project Server.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Forget if you were the gentleman asking a similar question on the MOPS newsgroup,
but just watch out if you're asking your resources to enter Physical % Complete
in My Tasks. If % Complete = 0, the Actual Start field will not get passed
into MPP from PWA.

I've worked through that in the past in construction management environments
by creating a custom Actual_Start field and then marrying that to a custom
rollup macro. They enter that data and the Physical% Complete and then progress
the schedule from the Actual_Start to the Status Date. This then calculates
% Complete and allows comparison between % Complete and Physcial % Complete.
It also negates the Preview functionality in the Update Approval screen.

Some folks might argue that's a more intuitive usage model then requiring
users to input % Complete. I am not sure which side I fall on that argument,
but I can see the logic of both sides.

Another option, which I see more commonly in the IT industry, is to have
resources track actual hours - which drives the % Complete calculation.
Then the PM goes in and enters Physical % Complete which functions as an
assessment by the PM of how much work they've actually done and can be compared
to % Complete.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Kevin Slane]

Thanks Andrew. Yes, I was the same person asking about that. We've gotten a
new scheduler here within the past couple of months. She's really bright,
but she also brings with her some new techniques we haven't had to deal with
in the past. So, one of the things I'm trying to do is accomodate her wishes
by making our MOPS compatible with the way she's used to working. I haven't
had to account for Physical % Complete before, so it's taking some getting
used to.

There was also a project template that was brought in that had a rather
hefty macro. Once I was able to dig into it, it was easy to re-work that
macro into simple custom fields, so that's a step in the right direction.
The only thing that was causing me problems was the TimeScaleData() method.
I'm still not sure how I'm going to incorporate that on the MOPS side.

Thanks again for all your help!

Kevin

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Your scenario sounds remarkably familiar. Are you sure you're not sitting
up the hall up from me?


- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Kevin Slane]

HAHA. If you're down the hall, my job just got a lot easier!

Yeah, it has been a chore. The project template that was brought in had so
many things that were native to MS Project reproduced in macros. Some of the
comments in the code were about 7 years old.

I really appreciate the suggestion about Physical % Comp by the way. I knew
I was going to have to cross that bridge soon and would almost certainly be
looking for advice. The only alternative I knew of was to require the RMs to
status both %Comp and Physical %Comp on the same "My Tasks" page. There's no
way these guys would go for that (nor should they.) I guarantee we'd get the
same value for both fields every time.