Status Reporting via % Complete

[Guest]

Does anybody know if there is a way to show "Planned %
Complete"? In other words, if all tasks planned to be
done through "today" were complete, they would be x%
complete. By comparing this to "% Complete", I could see
if my project is ahead of schedule, behind, or dead on. I
know you can get similar information via Earned Value, but
that's not useful to most people looking for a status
update.

 

[John]

Sure, I can think of two ways to do it. One method is a little messy but
it will work. The second method uses a VBA macro.

For the first method, set up two spare text fields. One as a temporary
place to store the current %Complete data and a second to store the
"should be" %Complete data. First copy the current %Complete field data
into the first text field. Then go to Tools/Tracking/Updata Project and
hit "ok". The defaults will update the entire project through the
current date. Note: make sure calculation is set for automatic. Now copy
the %Complete field to the "should be" text field. Finally, copy the
stored current %Complete back to the %Complete field. With the %Complete
field and "should be" fields adjacent to each other, you can readily
see the difference. If desired, a third custom field could be set up to
show the delta between the two fields either in % or in time (e.g. days).

For the VBA method, the same basic process used in method one could be
automated either by recording a macro for the process or, for a more
efficient macro, perform the operations entirely in code (no copy and
paste are involved).

Hope this helps.
John

 

[DonC]

If you are updating the project using your new actual %complete before running the status report, then your new planned finish date compared to the baseline finish shows the variance at this moment in time from your baseline. So if Joey is only half done on a 40-hr task which is supposed to be 3/4 done, then his finish has slipped 10 hrs, and the finish variance gives you the slippage. If you wanted to actually show variance in the % complete, you'd have to do the math (10/40=.25) but the calendar slippage is a valid status parameter. This will not work if the task runs into conflicts where Joey gets pulled off to a higher priority task leaving this one dangling, but you would probably want to deal with that issue before running a status report anyway...

 

[Steve House]

What you are saying is that you want to be able to compare where our
completion status stands on a certain date with where it's supposed to
stand. Thats exactly what the SPI, or Schedule Performance Index, gives
you, expressed as the ratio of the amount of work we actually have got
completed by the status date versus the amount we were supposed to do. An
SPI of 1 means we're right on schedule, <1 means we're running behind, and

1 means we're ahead of schedule. That seems much more understandable than

"we should be 50% complete but we're 45% complete," especially since %
complete refers to duration while SPI refers to work.