Scheduling - %Completes and Actuals

[Ivivanti]

Hi -

What's the best way to track the following scenario:

Let's say I have a list of tasks, each effort-driven, and each with an
estimated amount of Work. I'll use one task as an example:

Write test document 40 hours

When my team gives me hours and status updates I want them to give me the
times worked on each task AND the remaining hours for that task. So, let's
say the developer with the above task says they spent 32 hours on the task
this week and they have 16 hours left.

I don't want project to automatically take the 32 hours and say the task is
80% done. So, should I enter the 32 hours in the Actual Work column and 48
in the Work (planned) column?

Are there any global settings I should set to make this easier?

Thanks!
Ivi

 

[Ed Hanna]

Go to pulldown menu "View/Table/Tracking"

Enter 32h for "Act. Dur." and 16h for "Rem. Dur." and you'll see that the task is now 67% complete--not 80% complete as you feared it might be.

You can inspect Work to confirm that work for the task has been increased to 48 hours.

Ed

P.S. If you do not specifically enter Act. Start, Project will assume that the task started on the scheduled start date (i.e. Start). This may not always be the case. Inaccuracies caused by this effect can accumulate and significantly impact your downstream scheduled activities.

 

[Ivivanti]

Thank you! Actually the best thing would be if I could just get the hours
worked that week and the hours remaining for a person's tasks (basically
their time sheet). I see how to put the Rem. Dur. in (and that makes
sense). I guess I could create my own column to record the hours worked on
a task each week and then add that number to the total hours worked so far
(Act. Dur.) and store that in the Act. Dur. field. In other words, if I
started the week with:

Work Act Dur. Worked this week Rem Dur.
48 32 0 16

and I worked 8 hours on the task and reported that I had 12 more to go I
would report:

Worked this week Rem. Dur.
8 12

so I would enter this into my tracking view:

Work Act Dur. Worked this week Rem Dur.
48 32 **8 **12

hit my button to run the macro and get the following:

Work Act Dur. Worked this week Rem Dur.
52 40 0 12

My macro would add the "Worked this week" value to the Actual Duration and
clear out the "Worked this week" field. Project would calculate the Work
column for me based on adding the Actual Duration to the Remaining
Duration -- seems easy.

What's the better task type in this situation: Fixed Units or Fixed Work?
Everyone will always be 100% dedicated to the tasks they are on. I know the
default is Fixed Units, but I think that if I use Fixed Work, that might be
better. Thoughts?

Thanks again!


Go to pulldown menu "View/Table/Tracking"

Enter 32h for "Act. Dur." and 16h for "Rem. Dur." and you'll see that the
task is now 67% complete--not 80% complete as you feared it might be.

You can inspect Work to confirm that work for the task has been increased to
48 hours.

Ed

P.S. If you do not specifically enter Act. Start, Project will assume that
the task started on the scheduled start date (i.e. Start). This may not
always be the case. Inaccuracies caused by this effect can accumulate and
significantly impact your downstream scheduled activities.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

What you do is THE VERY BEST way to track tasks
You better us ethe Task Usage view, Timescale it by week, insert the
Remaining Work column in the left part and the Actual Work line on the
right.

HTH