The projected completion date is already displayed as the regular plain old
Finish field and you shouldn't need to reinvent it. Remember that "%
Complete" always refers to duration - it may or may not equate to the % Work
Complete or the % Physical Complete.
Let's up a scenario to illustrate. Create a new Project file set the
Project Start date to 26 July and create a 20 day duration task. It will
show starting 26 Jul and finishing 20 Aug. Today is Fri 6 Aug and by the
end of today we should be 50% complete. We are scheduled to work 20 days
and we should have worked 10 of them by the end of the day today.
We ask the resource how things are going and she says "We're about 40%
complete" so we post that. What does that mean? Up to now including today
we *should* have worked 10 days but in fact we've only worked 8. Perhaps a
resource was ill or there was a fire or something that caused two of the
scheduled days to be missed and so only the work scheduled through last
Wednesday has actually been done. In that case we can use the "reschedule
work" tool found in the Tools, Tracking, UpdateProject menu to reschedule
any work not yet done to start the earliest it could, which is after today
at 5pm. The duration is still 20 days - we still have to work 20 days to
get the task down - but we'll now show it started the 26th, was worked
through the 4th, then the task splits with dotted lines on the 5th and 6th
indcating we've lost two days worth of progress, the work resumes on Monday
and is now schduled for 12 days from that point, and the finish date field
indicates Tues 24 Aug.
Now here's the rub - does that resource's report of "40% Complete" really
mean we've only work 8 days out of the 10 we were supposed to work up to
today? Perhaps, but perhaps not. It might mean "We've worked 10 days as we
were supposed to but we under-estimated how long it will take. We should be
at 50% but we're only at 40%" That should be your tipoff that she's not
really using the same meaning of % Complete that Project uses. Probably she
really means there's more work than we thought so instead of 20 days the
task really should be 22 days duration. You'll need to ask her to get more
information. If this is the case, don't enter the % complete report at all.
Instead, put the Actual Duration at 10 days, Remaining Duration at the newly
estimated 12 days, Project will set the duration to 22 days, calculate the %
of that 10 days represents and update the Finish to show a new projected
finish date.
You follow the same procedure if she says "We're 75% done" Now today's date
is only 50% into the task so we simply can't have worked 75% of the planned
work days unless we started earlier than planned. Assuming we started as
scheduled, again don't just post the 75% because that is a physical
impossiblity - you can't work 15 days out of 10 days on the calendar.
Instead, ask her how much she estimates is remaining and enter the Actual
Duration at 10 days, remaining duration at her estimate, let's say 5 days,
and again Project will update the total duration, calculate the % Complete,
and show a revised estimated finish date.
In all cases, Project will assume the Actual Start date was the same as the
Scheduled Start - it is wasn't, manually enter what really happened as the
Actual Start and that too, coupled with the above guidelines for entering
progress, will further give you the revised projected finish date you're
looking for.
Hope all this helps ...
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
Deluth said:
I am currently using MSP2003. I would like to know how to calculate a
possible complete date when the predecessor tasks are partially complete.
Currently, if the tasks are at 0% complete, the calculation is easy and
automatic. However, if the tasks are partially complete (20%, 60%, etc..),
is there a way to calculate the projected complete date by the remaining
durations base on the % complete? Thanks!
