Mark --
My personal "best practice" method for reporting progress is to ask the team
members to enter their actuals on a daily basis, and to update their actuals
to their project manager on a weekly basis on the last day of the week.
Specifically, each team member is asked to report:
1. Number of hours of Actual Work performed each day on each task (in the
timesheet)
2. Their estimate of the number of hours of Remaining Work on each task
(entered in the task sheet on the last day of the week)
3. If the Remaining Work estimate is adjusted, then the team member should
add a Note to the task to document the reason for doing so
4. Additional notes, documents, or issues relating to tasks in their
projects
If a team member changes the Remaining Work estimate, this will impact the
estimated Finish date for the task. If the Remaining Work is adjusted
higher, the Finish date will be adjusted later. If the Remaining Work
estimate is adjusted lower, the Finish date will be adjusted earlier. If
the Remaining Work is changed to 0 hours, which would indicate that the task
finished early, then Microsoft Project will set the Actual Finish date to
the last day that actuals were entered in the timesheet.
To determine any changes in the project schedule against the original
Baseline schedule, the project manager should use the Tracking Gantt view,
along with the Variance table. The Work and Cost tables will reveal any
variances to the Cost and Work budgets for the project.
If you really don't want those Finish dates being adjusted as a result of
actuals being entered, then you might want to change the Task Type for each
task in your projects to Fixed Duration. However, that may cause you other
grief when it comes to determining the Actual Finish date of each task.
Hope this helps. Feel free to follow up with another question, if you'd
like.
