How do I mark a task so that it is not a part of my evm calculatio

[Doug]

I am responsible for tracking projects that require deliverable reviews by
the customer. I have to have that task in the project schedule with the
associated time but do not want the task to count towards the EVM
calculations for my company. Is there a way to mark the task so that the
time is excluded? I am assuming that the resource for the task is set to $0
so that it won't show up in the financials, but am not 100% sure. I am using
MSP 2003, but have access to MSP2007.

Is there a resource for using EVM with MSP that anyone recommends?

Thanks for your help.

Doug

 

[Jim Aksel]

MSProject allows you to baseline all tasks or selected tasks. It works the
same way for removing a baseline. To set or change a baseline,
Tools/Settings (or it may be Tracking) then select Set Baseline. It should
be pretty intuitive from there. If you select only certain tasks to set into
your baseline (or remove from your baseline), make sure to select both the
rollup boxes.

I recommend not using $0 resources on "excluded tasks." If the task is not
in the baseline, it does not create BCWS or BCWP which are what drive your EV.

I recently found a book on EV with MS Project. Try here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1932159983/ref=pe_606_13620670_pe_ar_d1

The book ISBN is 978-1-932159-98-1

Although I have not read it, the reviews say it is pretty good. The only
complaint about it was the book is pretty new yet does not include any
information about visual reporting available in Project 2007. That
information is third hand, so you may want to try to see if you can find a
copy locally and look through it prior to purchase.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Doug]

Thanks for the help. If I don't know the cost associated with the customer,
what should I enter, $1?

 

[Jim Aksel]

Interesting question... If you are sending something off to a customer for
review, that is no cost to you, so $0. I perhaps misunderstood your orignal
post. Reviewing it again, I see you have essentially a review period in your
schedule for documents submitted to your customer.

I would suggest that you do want to include this time frame in your baseline
at $0 cost. We routinely run into situations where our contract says the
customer will review our document and return comments within 45 business
days. We always include this in our baseline becuase our customer approves
our baselines. Now, if they miss their intended delivery date you have a
root cause readily available to help you defend a degrading SPI.

Even if you do not baseline the task (and I sugget that you do baseline line
it), the time is already implied. If you have tasks:
Author-CustomerReview-Publish. Then Publish will be pushed by CustomerReview
anyway. Since Publish would have a baseline, you would see an immediate SPI
hit as soon as CustomerReview was late ... regardless of the existence of Mr.
Baseline for the CustomerReview task.

HTH
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Steve House]

Since it's not actually work being done by a resource in your project, why
inlude it as a task at all? I find that having "Submit for Customer Review"
as a task, linked FS to a milestone "Approval Received," with a 45 day lag
time in the link to account for the time allowed for the customer review
period to be a much more accureate representation of what's really doing on
than does interoducing "pseudo-tasks" that represent the passage of time but
do not represent actual schedulable physical work done by project resources
under the PMs control. Tasks are phyusical work that create deliverables -
this is just waiting for some event outside of the project's universe to
take place.

 

[Michael.Tarnowski]

MSProject allows you to baseline all tasks or selected tasks.  It worksthe
same way for removing a baseline.  To set or change a baseline,
Tools/Settings (or it may be Tracking) then select Set Baseline.  It should
be pretty intuitive from there.  If you select only certain tasks to set into
your baseline (or remove from your baseline), make sure to select both the
rollup boxes.

I recommend not using $0 resources on "excluded tasks."  If the task isnot
in the baseline, it does not create BCWS or BCWP which are what drive your EV.

I recently found a book on EV with MS Project.  Try here:http://www.amazon.com/dp/1932159983/ref=pe_606_13620670_pe_ar_d1

The book ISBN is 978-1-932159-98-1

Although I have not read it, the reviews say it is pretty good.  The only
complaint about it was the book is pretty new yet does not include any
information about visual reporting available in Project 2007.  That
information is third hand, so you may want to try to see if you can find a
copy locally and look through it prior to purchase.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:http://www.msprojectblog.com

Hi Doug, Jim,

I do not recommend the book Jim mentioned since it is a very expensive
marketing for an excel solution. Instead I recommend:

Ruth M. Mullany, Esther J. Burgess :
http://www.amazon.com/EVM-Demystified-Practical-Earned-Management/dp/0971021228/ref=pd_sim_b_5
Quentin W. Fleming, Joel M. Koppelman:
http://www.amazon.com/Earned-Value-Project-Management-3rd/dp/1930699891/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Cheers Michael

 

[Jim Aksel]

Steve - I have to say I agree in principle. If it is not a task costed that
I have control over then I have no business putting it in my schedule. So,
the 45 day lag seems perfectly reasonable and I've done it that way.

Now to enjoy a "Senior Moment"... I've done it exactly the way you said and
then run into some things. (1) Someone else is looking at the schedule and
their gray matter does not get the concept of the lag representing a customer
review since it is not specifically delineated. (2) The auditors come in and
say the "rules" don't allow for lag greater than 10 days (2 weeks) so my
schedule is not compliant and I get a corrective action (aren't auditors
delightful?). (3) My own Senior Moments allow me to forget the purpose of the
lag.

So, I like to use the concept of a no cost activity (or a Zero cost activity
assigned to customer in my resrouce pool at $0/hr). This way I can baseline
the activity and point to a line item in the contract that says what the
customer will do. Now if the customer misses his deadline I have amunition
to support my SPI hit if it is truly a cause of my problem. As an aside, I
sometime link around the customer review activities so it doesn't slow us
down as much.

It appears either approach works and is viable. I like to think my approach
is a little more clear as it specifically identifies what goes on during
those 45 days. That said, I certainly support you that this review is not
part of something under PM control so it can be a lag.... changing task lag
is just as easy as increasing the duration of a task so either way works.

That said, have a great weekend, see you online.

Jim
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Jim Aksel]

Thanks! I will check it out. I personally own the Flemming book and like
it. Quentin lives out here by me and we've worked on some of the same
projects. He's a treasure in this business.

That said, his book is not specifcally related to project so I didn't
recommend that one. I will look at Ruth's book since you also support the
position that the other book is an Excel solution.

Posters like you are the reason this news group thrives and such posts are
always appreciated.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Michael.Tarnowski]

Jim,
thanks for the "flowers" - (a german parlance)
;-)
Cheers Michael

 

[Steve House]

While it may not show up in the budget if the resource costs are set to
zero, it still will artificially inflate the total man-hours being expended
by project resources if you represent the waiting time by a pseudotask with
the customer assigned to it. In the case of a 45 day lag, that's a whopping
lot of man-hours that ought not to be there.

I agree with you about auditors but it's not just them. How many time have
you seen posts here that say, in effect, "our management policy requires all
tasks to be fixer units/work/duration?" What kind of cockamamie "rule" says
all tasks will be a certain type all the time or you can't have lags greater
than some X days determined by executive fiat? Projects plans are supposed
to be predictive models of real world behavior, not some document that obeys
arbitrarily obeys "executve policies." If it's going to take a month for
the government planning commission approval to be received on your proposed
new building, it's going to take 30 days, your internal policy be damned.
What are you going to do, scrap the whole project because an external agency
completely outside of your control or influence won't bow down to the
auditors' whims?

I'm often tempted to change my signature to add a tagline that says
something to the effect that "the greatest fallacy of management is the
notion that all things are possible if you merely want it bad enough."

 

[Doug]

Thanks to all for the help. I appreciate it.

Doug

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

For what it's worth, I skimmed that book. It's got some good tips on reporting
into Excel, but I wasn't terribly excited by it. Some of it seemed to rehash
the Dynamic Scheduling book if I recall correctly.

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