The Gantt chart is showing % complete, not % work complete and they can be
wildly different. % complete is a measure of time, % work complete is a
measure of work. If we have a task that is 5 days long and someone is on it
full time, the task will have a duration of 40 hours and also work of 40
man-hours. At noon on Wednesday, if everything is going according to plan,
we'll have done 20 man-hours of work over 20 hours of duration and we'll be
50% complete by both measures. But imagine a task that is work contoured
and requires 1 hour Mon morning, 1hr Tue, 1hr Wed, 1hr Thur, and then a big
finish of 8 hours on Friday. Duration is the time between start and finish
regardless of whether the work goes on constantly or not so the duration is
still 40 hours but in this case the total work required is 12 man-hours.
It's 5pm Thurs and at this point we have passed over 32 hours of the
duration. Our % Complete is 32/40 or 80%. But work accomplished is
4hr/12hr or 33% Work Complete.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
JeremyE said:
I am tracking progress of my project and I can't figure out where Project
is getting these percentage complete numbers from. If I am in the Tracking
Gantt, in the Work View it shows "% W. Comp" at 33%. This makes sense since
..5 hours of a 1.5 hour task is complete, so 33% of the WORK is completed.
But then I look over at the Gantt chart on the right and the percentage next
to the bar graph says 83%!? Why is THAT saying 83% while the % W. Comp. is
saying 33%? I know work is calculated by actual work/total work, but where
is this 83% coming from? I'm totally confused. Any help would be great!
Thanks!
