Scheduling Only With Duration Remaining

[JC]

Is it possible to get MS Project to only bother scheduling the remaining
duration of tasks. So if I say a 4 day task is 50% complete, then it will
simply schedule 2 days.

At the moment if I have three tasks, A 4 days, B 4 days and C 4 days, and I
say B is 50% complete it will show on the gant B with a line half way
through it, but it is stil taking up four days on the schedule, when it
should only take up 2.

In other words, I want to be able to use project without bothering to enter
actuals - all I am interested in is out-standing work.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Steve House]

A "plan" is by definition what you intend to do in the future and as
such all the task should already be there before any work is done. The
schedule is the total time the project will take or did take, from the
time the first task began until the time everyone went home and the
lights were turned off at the end of the project. So when you build the
plan, all of the required work is "remaining to be done" and none has
yet been performed. The duration of tasks is a measure of the amount of
work they require to create whatever it is the task creates - if it
takes 3 days to polish 100 widgets time that task will occupy is 3 days,
whether you've done none, some, or all of them. So put in the tasks
ahead of time, estimating the amount of work they will require. Then as
work is done post the actual progress. That way your plan will, in
fact, give you the information you require and it's really far less
trouble and data entry than it is to do it the way you're presently
attempting. Plus, trying to only schedule remaining work costs you
plenty in terms of the historical data on actual task durations you
should be accumulating for budget and schedule estimating on the NEXT
projects you may be working on.

 

[John Beamish]

Steve is absolutely correct in his message.

You might want to think about displaying the remaining duration on the Gantt
chart.

First: click on Format | Bar Styles and in the popup click on Task (in the
left-most column).
In the bottom portion of the popup, click on the "Text" tab.
Choose one of top, bottom, left, right, inside and, to the right of that,
select "Remaining Duration" from the drop down list.

Second: display the Tracking tool bar.

Third: on a daily basis, select tasks and click on the "Update as scheduled
button".

Although the entire task will continue to be displayed, you will see in
figures and in the graphs how much work or duration remains.

JLB, PMP

 

[JC]

Thanks for the reply....

But what if I don't have the actual data?

For example, what if I am working with a third party company, and the only
information they provide is a weekly update to the percentage of each task
done.

Or what if the actual data is to erratic. I work in the games industry and
there is a lot of flitting between tasks within the current milestone.
Milestones tasks just aren't progressed sequencially.

I kind of just want to say, this week, this this and this has been done. And
then just schedule the remaining work.

Thanks again.

 

[Steve House]

Actually you do have the actuals <g>.

In your first case the vendor telling you "Task X is YY% done" is an
actual. Now you will need to touch bases with the vendor to make sure
you're talking about the same thing - Project's % complete is based on
duration, I was scheduled to work 5 days on a task and I've worked 3,
that task is 60% done.

Again, in the second case, you have an actual as well. "Erratic" is not
at all unsual. I was scheduled to work on Tasks X, Y, and Z this week.
I did two days on X, one day on Y and one day on Z.

Let's say you're updating this on Friday afternoon. You put in the
actuals for the previous week using the tracking table in the Gantt
chart and the use the Tools Tracking menu to "Reschedule Uncompleted
Work" to begin the next available workday, usually that would be Monday
if you're posting actuals through Friday. The incomplete portions of
the tasks will move forward to Monday pushing subsequent tasks ahead of
them.

Project is designed for planning the future, not simply recording the
past.

 

[JC]

OK, that sounds perfect.

So I create a test 8 task schedule, each task (a through to h) are set to 3
days each.

I set tasks b,c, & d to 50% complete. And because I only know the week they
were worked on, I set the Actual starts all to Monday 22nd Dec.

I then Reshedule Uncompleted Work to Monday the 29th.

However, I get weird results -

A - Schedule To Start 15/01/04
B - Split in 2. First half (ie the done 50%) is 22/12/03, the second half is
1/1/04 - This is fine.
C - Split in 2. First half (ie the done 50%) is 22/12/03, the second half is
30/12/03 - This is fine.
D - Not split in 2. The whole task (the 50% done and the 50% uncomplete)
start on the 22/12/03 - my staff will have to travel back in time to
complete this!!
E - Schedule as one lump 06/01/04.
F - Schedule as one lump 12/01/04.
G - Split in to three lumps and spread between the bits of other tasks???
H - One lump starting 25/12/03 - in the past again.

BTW I'm using Project 2000 in case that matters.

What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Jonathan

 

[John Beamish]

You have complete control over the data. It's your money that is paying the
third-party company. If you don't like the data, tell them what is
acceptable.

As for actual data being erratic ... if the data is erratic perhaps you
should reexamine your plan to see if it reflects an ideal approach to
development or if it reflects the way work is actually going to move ahead.

JLB, PMP

 

[JC]

You have complete control over the data. It's your money that is paying
the

third-party company. If you don't like the data, tell them what is
acceptable.

OK, but let's say I don't have that luxury. I have a set of tasks, and a
weekly update giving a % complete for each task - is there a way I can
schedule with that information?

 

[John Beamish]

In a word: no.

If all you have is % complete you have to know what the percentage is based
on and you haven't got that. You don't know how many resources or work
hours were scheduled for the duration. Assume (for a deliberately
simplified example) a task with 2 weeks duration. Behind the scenes (and,
based on your messages, you obviously aren't being given the numbers) the
task is assigned to the resource for 1 hour per day.

Case 1: During week 1 0 hours of work is performed on the task. At the end
of week 1, I report to you that the task is 0% complete.

Case 2: During week 1 9 hours of work is performed on the task. At the end
of week 1, I report to you that the task is 90% complete.

In both scenarios the task is on schedule. How can you possibly schedule
backwards or forwards from there? You can't.

Incidentally, this is the easiest scenario. You don't know resource
allocation for a given task so you don't know what overallocations exist.
If you don't know what overallocations there are, you can't possibly
determine if a 75% complete task can complete in the remaining time because
you don't know how much time a resource can allocate to that task between
now and the scheduled completion date.

JLB, PMP

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Allow me to come in here.
Yes you definitely can.
I'll have a look at your "weird" results today but in principle you can
control your project like that - providing the information about % complete
is accurate (which it rarely is).
When you work with subcontractors indeed using resources and work is not
necessary. I never do so and it gives good results.
I'll be back later today.
HTH

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620

 

[Steve House]

It sounds like you are trying to schedule after the fact, actually
placing tasks in the calendar only when their work is being reported to
you. You should develop your schedule - not just the list of tasks but
the planned dates that work on those tasks is expected to take place,
the durations of the work, and the sequencing of the tasks - long before
work on them is even begun. Your plan should already show task X was
supposed to take place this past week, task Y next week, and task Z the
week after that. You may not have done that already but there's no
reason you can't do it now for the whole project anyway, retroactively
entering the work that has been done based on its actual performance.
Then in the future you update the plan based on the reported actual
progress and reschedule if some of the work that was supposed to have
been done during the past reporting period was in fact not completed.

 

[JC]

Can someone give me an email address or something I can send a test project
file (about 10 tasks) for you to scrutinise. The results I have are weird!!

I know what you guys are saying about collecting actuals, but the only
actuals I am interested in is what percentage of a task (and thus what
amount of time) is left to do and what work has been done that week.

I do not need to record on a minute by minute basis what people worked on,
just what they worked on that week, and what percentage of a task is
remaining.

The way we do updates at the moment is to go through tasks with indiciduals
getting...

How much time was spent on the task, and what time is remaining. This info
allows us to work out what that persons performance is, which is then used
to adjust their likely ongoing output - this gets more accurate over time.
We currently feed this in to a complex bespoke Excel set-up.

I would like to move to project, but I am really not interested whether the
task was worked on at 10:30 on Monday. Just that last week Jim spent 2 days
working on Task B and there is 3 days left to do on the task.

However, I am getting seriously weird results from Project and could real do
with some help.....

 

[Steve House]

Glad to take a look at your file - my address is
sjhouse.remove.this@before_you_send_to_hotmail_dot_com after taking out
the obvious spam-thwarter text.

The "actuals" we are referring to are precisely what you are collecting
right now. What seems to missing from your equation is it sounds like
either you're not fully defining the project, including entering an
expected total duration of each task before the work begins, or you're
trying to use the "duration" field to hold the just remaining duration
rather than showing the sum of the work that has been done plus the work
that is remaining to do. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're doing,
and if I've not read between the lines correctly forgive me, but
remember that Project is first and foremost a planning tool and until
you have a plan that shows what you expect to do, when you expect to do
it, and how long you think it's going to take once you start it, you
really don't have anything to track work against.

I've been assuming you are familiar with the View, Tables menu option
that allows you to switch the Gantt chart table on the left side of the
screen between an Entry table that shows Duration, Start, and Finish
fields and a Tracking table that shows Actual Start, Actual Finish, %
Complete, Actual Duration, and Remaining Duration fields and also that
you are aware that those two tables are displaying totally different
series of data, albeit related data, about the tasks. The tracking
table does not contain the duration column that you see in the Gantt
chart entry table but you can add it if you like; personally I do like
to see it plus the scheduled Start and Finish fields as well, in
addition to the Actual Start and Actual Finish fields that are there by
default, so I usually add all 3 columns to the standard Tracking table
for convenience.

With the estimated total time known and the schedule showing the
expected start date, the only actuals you need for tracking are actual
start date and time actually worked expressed either in days or %
complete, and optionally the estimated time remaining if it looks like
the original duration estimate was off. Either enter actual start date
and percent complete or enter the actual start date, days worked and
days remaining in the tracking table. Let's say today is Friday. I've
got a task that was expected to take a total of 5 days and as of today
I'm told it is 60% done, 40% remaining if you prefer, thus it has 2 days
remaining. Was supposed to be done last week so the schedule currently
shows it was to start last Monday and end today. In the Tracking table
enter 60% complete. Project now shows an actual start of last Monday
(it assumes the scheduled start was the actual unless you tell it
otherwise in the Actual Start field) and 3 days of work has been done.
The Gantt chart task bar shows a solid bar inclusion covering Mon, Tues,
Wed while Thur and Fri show the original plain bar. In the menu select
Tools, Tracking, UpdateProject, RescheduleUncompletedWorkAfter and make
it the current date (or your reporting date) if it doesn't already show
it. If today is Fri, "after today" means that the earliest the 2
remaining days worth of work could start is next Monday. Project splits
the task bar, last Thur and Fri show as a dotted line in the bar, the
remaining part of the task bar now lays over next Mon and Tues, the
duration remains the same (5 days - the task took a holiday last Thur
and Fri so they don't count in the duration) but the new finish date is
now next Tue at 5pm instead of today at 5pm. Any tasks dependent on
that one now also move out in the schedule by 2 days, pushed back be the
delay in their predecessor.

Or I've got a task that originally was expected to take 10 days, I've
been told we worked 4 days on it this week and it looks like we'll be
finished in 2 more days, so we are not 50% done (5/10) but rather 83%
(5/6) done. In that case you enter an actual duration to date of 4 days
and a remaining duration of 2 days in the tracking table, Project
calculates the percentage for you and also sets the duration field to 6
days. The rest of the procedure is the same.

You CAN get to the minute by minute (well, hours per day is more
reasonable) level of detail if you like but it sounds like there's
really no need to do that in your case.