How do I handle tasks that finish ahead of schedule?

[Henrik Lauridsen]

When a task is delayed, MSP is able to update the project plan, reflecting
the delay, which is working fine. I find myself faced with the opposite
problem, tasks finishing ahead of schedule. A little background - I am the
manager of a team of developers that does both project and daily support
work on a running system. We have an agreement with our customer that their
time should be split 50/50 between projects and daily support. This I have
handled by setting max allocation to 50% in the resource plan. However more
often than not, the developers are able to put in more hours of work per day
than 50% of their time, either because they are working longer hours, or
because there is not that much daily support to be done. So, some of the
project activities get done ahead of schedule. My question is - how do I get
MSP to handle this situation (reschedule the remaining work to be done
earlier)? I track progress by entering how many percent is completed, so
when task A, B and C are 100% completed, I want project to move the schedule
of D up. Any hints?

Regards
Henrik

 

[JulieS]

Hello Henrik,
When you mark a task as 100% complete, Project assumes
you finished the task as originally scheduled - with no
variation in the finish date/time, nor the amount of work
required.
You may try applying the tracking table to the Gantt
chart and then when the task finishes early, just change
the Actual Finish date to reflect your success. This
will drop the actual work figures however.
Another option would be to track using the resource usage
or task usage view and supplying actual work. If your
resources worked longer hours per day than they were
originally scheduled, the finish date of the task will
move earlier and you will be able to reflect more
accurately the number of hours worked on each task.
Hope this helps.
Julie

 

[Henrik Lauridsen]

OK, that explains it. I will try out your ideas. Thank you for your help.

Henrik