How do I show the % complete (planned) that will change my status.

[GOALIE20]

I would like to see a number for % planned. The threshold for when the
number entered in % complete would change the status from "Late" to "On
schedule"

What Calculation is Project using to change the status?

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Are you asking about % complete? There's no built in "% planned" field and
the definitions of late and/or slipping tasks don't refer to % completion
directly at all. The % complete of task is the duration worked divided by
the total duration planned. If I have a task that is expected to take 10
days and I've done 3 days to date, it is 30% complete. Note that "%
Complete" refers to duration while "% Work Complete" refers to, well, work
and they are not always the same value. I can have a task that is 5 days
duration, running Mon thru Fri, that has 12 hours of total work - 1 hour
each day on Mon, Tue, Wed, & Thu with a big finish of 8 hours solid on Fri.
Thursday at 5pm with everything on schedule the task is 4/5 or 80% complete
but with 4/12 or 33% Work Complete.

A task is considered late when either the currently scheduled finish date is
greater than the baseline finish date or the BCWP is less than BCWS as of
the status date. While the earned value fields BCWP and BCWS are related to
the duration that was planned by a certain date and the duration that was
achieved by that date, they're not quite the same thing as % complete
planned and % complete achieved by the status date as resource costs enter
the picture

 

[GOALIE20]

Thank you, however can I create a custom calculation that will display the
BCWS as of the status date, in a % type value? There is a threshold of %
complete that is the trigger for status to change from "late" to "on
schedule" and I'd like to know what is the threshold number.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

There's no threshold value defining "late" as far as MS Project is
concerned - someone may have created a custom field for your project which
is another matter all together. "Behind Schedule" means BCWP<BCWS without
regard to how far - behind is behind regardless of whether it's an itty
bitty amount or a whopper <grin>. It's up to you to decide how bad it has
to be before you worry about it. You might be able to get the information
you're ultimately looking for by looking at it another way - take a look at
hte discussion in Help on the Earned Value fields and reports, especially
the SPI or Schedule Performance Index. If by our status date we were
scheduled to do 100 man-hours but haev only done 85 (and for simplicty our
resource rate is $1/hr) our BCWS is $100, our BCWP is $85 and SPI is
BCWP/BCWS or .85. Any SPI < 1 indicates we're late. You could take the
BCWS to the status date and divide that by Baseline Cost (BAC, or Budget At
Completion) to determine what % complete we should be at by that date and
the BCWP/BAC will give you the % we are complete on that date but I'm not
sure if that provides a very accurate measure of actual performance on the
project.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[GOALIE20]

Here's how I define the "late" threshold. If I have a task that starts Jan
5, finishes Jan 7, duration 3d, BCWP $0, BCWS $0;
Then % complete = 33% has a Status of "Late"
And % complete = 34% has a Status of "On Schedule"

Can I create a calcuation (I'm willing to use BCWP or whatever) that will
advise the entry of 34% is the "On Schedule" threshold.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

34% as of what date? What if it is 50% complete but the current date is 10
Jan? I would call that late but going strictly according to the definition
you've supplied it is not since 50% > 34%. "On schedule" would mean to me
that the task would be 34% at the end of 05 Jan, 67% at the end of 06 Jan,
and 100% at the end of 07 Jan. Anything less than those numbers at any of
those points in time and it's late. Anything more and it's ahead of
schedule. BUT, being only 35% at the end of 06 Jan is also late even though
it exceeds your threshold. Your task was originally scheduled to start 5
Jan, end 7 Jan, 3 days duration. At the end of the first day of work it
should be 33% complete and in fact, it is. BUT it didn't start 5 Jan, it
was delayed to 10 Jan. I would still call that late even though once
started work is progressing at exactly the rate we'd expected it to. In
other words, the baseline schedule and the originally expected distribution
of work has to be taken into account.

What I'm trying to say is that simply using the plain "% Complete" will
never be enough to tell you if the task is late or not because % complete
ONLY deals with durations and does NOT deal with start and finish dates or
the distribution of work. "% complete" only deals with how much duration
we've used versus how much we have to do without taking into account
anything about when it happens. You must take into account the baseline
schedule recording what work was expected to take place on what dates and
compare that to the actual values that you are obtaining as of the status
date. There is no such data for a time-phased distribution of duration
because such a concept is meaningless - a day of duration on Monday is
identical to a day of duration on Wednesday, it is simply "a day."
(Physicists might say "duration" is a scalar measure while "work" is a
vector.) "Jim is to spend 8 hours on Friday the 7th waxing widgets" is
something concrete that we can observe and see if we've done it according to
plan or not. "Waxing widgets should take 1 day" is not something we really
can see and measure. There is a time-phased record of the scheduled
day-by-day distribution of work and therefore the distribution of costs once
resources are assigned and a baseline saved. That's what earned value works
with. You say your BCWS and BCWP are both zero. That means either you have
not assigned resources or your resource costs are set to $0. Earned Value
uses dollars as a common unit to tie together the various components with a
common metric (to insure you're always comparing apples to apples). If you
don't actually need to track costs you still need something in the rate to
provide that common unit of measure. In that case setting the resource
Standard Rates to $1.00 means that what Project is reporting in dollars are
really man-hours and your Earned Value schedule metrics will be usable to
measure progress even if you're actually ignoring costs. If you then want
to create a notification field that displays "On Schedule" or "Late" beside
your tasks you could use the custom field to set one of the task Text fields
according to the expression

=IIF([SPI]<1, "Late","On Schedule")


HTH

 

[GOALIE20]

I agree with your logic, AND I am greatful for the help; But I am trying to
encourge the users to enter the an appropriate value if they believe they are
on target. In the simplest of uses, if I use the default 'status' column it
dynamically changes based on the % complete entry. If for example I move the
date and "start" the task on the 10th (as you suggest), it changes the value
of the status from "late" to "future task" (assuming the same information as
below with the 33% complete).

According to "Help on Status": How Calculated If the task is 100 percent
complete, then Microsoft Office Project 2003 sets the Status field to
Complete.
If the task start date is greater than the status date, then the Status
field contains Future Task.
If timephased cumulative percent complete is spread to at least the day
before the status date, then the Status field contains On Schedule.
If the timephased cumulative percent complete does not reach midnight on
the day before the status date, then the Status field contains Late.

Therefore what I'm trying to display is the timephases cumulative percent
complete as o midnight the day before the status date.

34% as of what date? What if it is 50% complete but the current date is 10
Jan? I would call that late but going strictly according to the definition
you've supplied it is not since 50% > 34%. "On schedule" would mean to me
that the task would be 34% at the end of 05 Jan, 67% at the end of 06 Jan,
and 100% at the end of 07 Jan. Anything less than those numbers at any of
those points in time and it's late. Anything more and it's ahead of
schedule. BUT, being only 35% at the end of 06 Jan is also late even though
it exceeds your threshold. Your task was originally scheduled to start 5
Jan, end 7 Jan, 3 days duration. At the end of the first day of work it
should be 33% complete and in fact, it is. BUT it didn't start 5 Jan, it
was delayed to 10 Jan. I would still call that late even though once
started work is progressing at exactly the rate we'd expected it to. In
other words, the baseline schedule and the originally expected distribution
of work has to be taken into account.

What I'm trying to say is that simply using the plain "% Complete" will
never be enough to tell you if the task is late or not because % complete
ONLY deals with durations and does NOT deal with start and finish dates or
the distribution of work. "% complete" only deals with how much duration
we've used versus how much we have to do without taking into account
anything about when it happens. You must take into account the baseline
schedule recording what work was expected to take place on what dates and
compare that to the actual values that you are obtaining as of the status
date. There is no such data for a time-phased distribution of duration
because such a concept is meaningless - a day of duration on Monday is
identical to a day of duration on Wednesday, it is simply "a day."
(Physicists might say "duration" is a scalar measure while "work" is a
vector.) "Jim is to spend 8 hours on Friday the 7th waxing widgets" is
something concrete that we can observe and see if we've done it according to
plan or not. "Waxing widgets should take 1 day" is not something we really
can see and measure. There is a time-phased record of the scheduled
day-by-day distribution of work and therefore the distribution of costs once
resources are assigned and a baseline saved. That's what earned value works
with. You say your BCWS and BCWP are both zero. That means either you have
not assigned resources or your resource costs are set to $0. Earned Value
uses dollars as a common unit to tie together the various components with a
common metric (to insure you're always comparing apples to apples). If you
don't actually need to track costs you still need something in the rate to
provide that common unit of measure. In that case setting the resource
Standard Rates to $1.00 means that what Project is reporting in dollars are
really man-hours and your Earned Value schedule metrics will be usable to
measure progress even if you're actually ignoring costs. If you then want
to create a notification field that displays "On Schedule" or "Late" beside
your tasks you could use the custom field to set one of the task Text fields
according to the expression

=IIF([SPI]<1, "Late","On Schedule")


HTH


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Here's how I define the "late" threshold. If I have a task that starts
Jan
5, finishes Jan 7, duration 3d, BCWP $0, BCWS $0;
Then % complete = 33% has a Status of "Late"
And % complete = 34% has a Status of "On Schedule"

Can I create a calcuation (I'm willing to use BCWP or whatever) that will
advise the entry of 34% is the "On Schedule" threshold.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Now I see what you're trying to do - Timephased fields are characteristic
of the Usage views and AFAIK can't be added to the Gantt chart tables so you
might be out of luck.

Even more importantly, I'd suggest you be extremely cautious even allowing
the users to update progress in the planning file in the first place. IMHO,
that's the sole province of the project manager himself. If you ask 5
different resources what percent complete they are on their task you'll
likely get 5 different interpretations of what "60% complete" means. Also,
resources have a strong tendency to overestimate their progress so they'll
look good and a strategy to prompt them with an indicator of where they
should be at some point in time is only going to make that problem worse!
After all, if you're entering your progress - something that your job
evaluation, raises, etc, is going to depend on - and you see that as of
today you were supposed to be 75% complete, wouldn't the temptation to enter
"75%" be almost irresistable?

Many sources suggest detailed "% Complete" estimates shouldn't be entered at
all - you're far more accurate if you enter Actual Duration and an estimate
of Remaining Duration and I think that's especially true if the resources
are reporting their progress.

Another couple of strategies you might want to consider ... In some cases
you are close enough if you say that you only get "progress credit" for
tasks that are complete and so all tasks stay at 0% until signed off, at
which point they're entered as 100%. A bit more precise approach says that
tasks that have not started are obviously at 0%, in-progress tasks are
scored at a fixed 50%, and complete tasks score 100%. In a great many
projects, especially projects that deal with intangibles like IT projects,
advertising campaigns, etc those methods are more than adequtae for
monitoring progress.

I get very uncomfortable with the idea of resources having write access to
the plan at all except as controlled through Project Server and Web Access.
For example, moving the scheduled start date of a task from Jan 5 to Jan 10
should ONLY be done by the project manager, NEVER by the resource. Yes, the
resource might initiate such a schedule change but it should only enter the
plan after passing through a formal evaluation and review process and
approval by the Project Manager and perhaps the Project Sponsor and
Stakeholders as well, depending on the reason for and the impact of the
change. The progress reporting process should be the resources report their
work to the project manager either on a predetermined interval or on demand,
the PM reviews and approves the submissions, and then, and only then, does
the plan get updated. Of course if he was supposed to do it on the 5th but
didn't get started until the 10th, that actual should go into the plan as it
happened but it should also trigger the the question "why?" from managment
and require an explanation from the resource. The plan is the detailed
step-by-step roadmap of the journey laid out by the PM and the resources
should not be allowed to go wandering off into the woods on their own
initiative. If the general on a battlefield tells the lieutentant to take
his platoon up Hill 17 as part of the tactical plan and the shavetail is
allowed to decide on his own to go for Hill 52 instead, what are the odds
that they will win the battle? <grin>
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

I agree with your logic, AND I am greatful for the help; But I am trying to
encourge the users to enter the an appropriate value if they believe they
are
on target. In the simplest of uses, if I use the default 'status' column
it
dynamically changes based on the % complete entry. If for example I move
the
date and "start" the task on the 10th (as you suggest), it changes the
value
of the status from "late" to "future task" (assuming the same information
as
below with the 33% complete).

According to "Help on Status": How Calculated If the task is 100 percent
complete, then Microsoft Office Project 2003 sets the Status field to
Complete.
If the task start date is greater than the status date, then the Status
field contains Future Task.
If timephased cumulative percent complete is spread to at least the day
before the status date, then the Status field contains On Schedule.
If the timephased cumulative percent complete does not reach midnight on
the day before the status date, then the Status field contains Late.

Therefore what I'm trying to display is the timephases cumulative percent
complete as o midnight the day before the status date.

34% as of what date? What if it is 50% complete but the current date is
10
Jan? I would call that late but going strictly according to the
definition
you've supplied it is not since 50% > 34%. "On schedule" would mean to
me
that the task would be 34% at the end of 05 Jan, 67% at the end of 06
Jan,
and 100% at the end of 07 Jan. Anything less than those numbers at any
of
those points in time and it's late. Anything more and it's ahead of
schedule. BUT, being only 35% at the end of 06 Jan is also late even
though
it exceeds your threshold. Your task was originally scheduled to start 5
Jan, end 7 Jan, 3 days duration. At the end of the first day of work it
should be 33% complete and in fact, it is. BUT it didn't start 5 Jan, it
was delayed to 10 Jan. I would still call that late even though once
started work is progressing at exactly the rate we'd expected it to. In
other words, the baseline schedule and the originally expected
distribution
of work has to be taken into account.

What I'm trying to say is that simply using the plain "% Complete" will
never be enough to tell you if the task is late or not because % complete
ONLY deals with durations and does NOT deal with start and finish dates
or
the distribution of work. "% complete" only deals with how much duration
we've used versus how much we have to do without taking into account
anything about when it happens. You must take into account the baseline
schedule recording what work was expected to take place on what dates and
compare that to the actual values that you are obtaining as of the status
date. There is no such data for a time-phased distribution of duration
because such a concept is meaningless - a day of duration on Monday is
identical to a day of duration on Wednesday, it is simply "a day."
(Physicists might say "duration" is a scalar measure while "work" is a
vector.) "Jim is to spend 8 hours on Friday the 7th waxing widgets" is
something concrete that we can observe and see if we've done it according
to
plan or not. "Waxing widgets should take 1 day" is not something we
really
can see and measure. There is a time-phased record of the scheduled
day-by-day distribution of work and therefore the distribution of costs
once
resources are assigned and a baseline saved. That's what earned value
works
with. You say your BCWS and BCWP are both zero. That means either you
have
not assigned resources or your resource costs are set to $0. Earned
Value
uses dollars as a common unit to tie together the various components with
a
common metric (to insure you're always comparing apples to apples). If
you
don't actually need to track costs you still need something in the rate
to
provide that common unit of measure. In that case setting the resource
Standard Rates to $1.00 means that what Project is reporting in dollars
are
really man-hours and your Earned Value schedule metrics will be usable to
measure progress even if you're actually ignoring costs. If you then
want
to create a notification field that displays "On Schedule" or "Late"
beside
your tasks you could use the custom field to set one of the task Text
fields
according to the expression

=IIF([SPI]<1, "Late","On Schedule")


HTH


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Here's how I define the "late" threshold. If I have a task that starts
Jan
5, finishes Jan 7, duration 3d, BCWP $0, BCWS $0;
Then % complete = 33% has a Status of "Late"
And % complete = 34% has a Status of "On Schedule"

Can I create a calcuation (I'm willing to use BCWP or whatever) that
will
advise the entry of 34% is the "On Schedule" threshold.

:

There's no threshold value defining "late" as far as MS Project is
concerned - someone may have created a custom field for your project
which
is another matter all together. "Behind Schedule" means BCWP<BCWS
without
regard to how far - behind is behind regardless of whether it's an
itty
bitty amount or a whopper <grin>. It's up to you to decide how bad it
has
to be before you worry about it. You might be able to get the
information
you're ultimately looking for by looking at it another way - take a
look
at
hte discussion in Help on the Earned Value fields and reports,
especially
the SPI or Schedule Performance Index. If by our status date we were
scheduled to do 100 man-hours but haev only done 85 (and for simplicty
our
resource rate is $1/hr) our BCWS is $100, our BCWP is $85 and SPI is
BCWP/BCWS or .85. Any SPI < 1 indicates we're late. You could take
the
BCWS to the status date and divide that by Baseline Cost (BAC, or
Budget
At
Completion) to determine what % complete we should be at by that date
and
the BCWP/BAC will give you the % we are complete on that date but I'm
not
sure if that provides a very accurate measure of actual performance on
the
project.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



Thank you, however can I create a custom calculation that will
display
the
BCWS as of the status date, in a % type value? There is a threshold
of
%
complete that is the trigger for status to change from "late" to "on
schedule" and I'd like to know what is the threshold number.

:

Are you asking about % complete? There's no built in "% planned"
field
and
the definitions of late and/or slipping tasks don't refer to %
completion
directly at all. The % complete of task is the duration worked
divided
by
the total duration planned. If I have a task that is expected to
take
10
days and I've done 3 days to date, it is 30% complete. Note that
"%
Complete" refers to duration while "% Work Complete" refers to,
well,
work
and they are not always the same value. I can have a task that is
5
days
duration, running Mon thru Fri, that has 12 hours of total work - 1
hour
each day on Mon, Tue, Wed, & Thu with a big finish of 8 hours solid
on
Fri.
Thursday at 5pm with everything on schedule the task is 4/5 or 80%
complete
but with 4/12 or 33% Work Complete.

A task is considered late when either the currently scheduled
finish
date
is
greater than the baseline finish date or the BCWP is less than BCWS
as
of
the status date. While the earned value fields BCWP and BCWS are
related
to
the duration that was planned by a certain date and the duration
that
was
achieved by that date, they're not quite the same thing as %
complete
planned and % complete achieved by the status date as resource
costs
enter
the picture
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
..

I would like to see a number for % planned. The threshold for
when
the
number entered in % complete would change the status from "Late"
to
"On
schedule"

What Calculation is Project using to change the status?