Tracking a schedule: best practices

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dear Friends,

Can some of you share the best practices that you use to track your
schedule? Are there some 'special' views, filters, custom fields,
forumlae etc that you use for effective tracking? Just want to learn
some best practices from the experts on this forum. Please share.

I also want to use this opportunity to thank every contributor to this
forum - I think this is a great newsgroup and I have learnt a lot just
by reading the posts on this forum! Thank you all!

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[Jim Aksel]

There are about 20 tests that make up "best practices". Here is my "stream
of consciousness" on the matter.

Set the status date
No unfinished work to the left of the status date
No unstarted work to hte left of the status date
No started work to the right of the status date (you did not start tomorrow)
No finished work to the right of the status date (you did not finish tomorrow)
everyone has a baseline
no logic on summary tasks (no predecessors, successors)
detail tasks have predecessors and successors
detail taks have at least one Finish to Start successor
Resources assigned to detail tasks only, not summaries
If you claim 100% on a task, it's predecessors *should be* 100% complete as
well
Miestones do not have resources
Generally a milestone has predecessors OR successor, but not usually both
--- this is pretty soft.
Thou shalt not have negative lag on a task. Most people are pretty soft on
that, but my humble opinion is that negative lag predicts the future with
certainty and that doesn't exist in my book.
GoldyLocks was right - tasks are not too long or too short, they have to be
"just right" in duration. You have to decide what that means.
Too much positive lag on a task probably indicates missing tasks
Negative Total Slack says your schedule is false advertising (in my opinion).
Constratint types: You want them to be As Soon As Possible as much as you
can. Start No Earlier Than, Finis As Late As Possible, and Finish No
Earlier Than are tollerable. Items like Must Finsh On, Must Start On, Finish
No Later Than, Start No Later Than are pretty much not a good thing.

Eliminate constraints other than ASAP as much as practical. A task with a
Start No Earlier Than 12/15/2003 is useless if the schedule logic has it
starting 1/14/2009.

If you are using Earned Value, then CPI and SPI should be in a range of
about 0.90 to 1.10. If they are not, there is probably an adjustement needed
to the predicted finish date and cost.

Great question!!

--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dear Jim,

Thanks for the excellent responses. I did not know even half of what
you have suggested! Now you need to help me further

How do I know of the below?

1. No unfinished work to the left of the status date
2. No unstarted work to hte left of the status date
3. No started work to the right of the status date (you did not start
tomorrow)
4. No finished work to the right of the status date (you did not
finish tomorrow)

What does the below mean? Can I not have a dependency like "2FS - 2
days"?

1. Thou shalt not have negative lag on a task

I have few more questions:

1. What do progress lines indicate? that a task is behind schedule
(backward peaks) or ahead of schedule (forward peaks)?

2. How do I know what tasks need to make progress in a week? I can
obviously find this after the week is done - those tasks that needed
to have made progress but did not will show up as delayed - but I need
to know of these in advance so that I can plan the work for my team
members. When I update my schedule at the end of the week, I want to
ensure that I have looked at all tasks that needed to be have made
progress that week. This is also more important to me because I have
quite a big schedule, and the MPP shows a lot of tasks starting in
parallel. My team members ask me - "So, I have three tasks - A, B and
C all starting on the same date - which one should I really start?"
Please let me know.

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[vanita]

Hi

Some more input on tracking apart from Jim's excellent detailed advice.

If you want to see the works that are to be done in a particular week, you
could look at Calendar view through View > Calendar. In a calendar format it
shows that work scheduled. Its an easier to understand view and very helpful
for team members not very conversant with reading bar charts etc.

While tracking, use '% complete' col. for providing this data only if the
work on an activity goes in same speed. But, e.g if first 50% happens in 5
days and next 50% is scheduled to be completed in 7 days due to any reason,
Give Actual start date, Actual duration (5 days) and remaining duration (7
days). '% complete col.' won't show 50%, but would show (5/12)*100%. So, give
actual 50% complete data in 'Physical percentage complete' col. Its a common
requirement in projects.

I hope it helps.
Vanita

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dear All,

Thanks for the responses.

One question. How do I find out 'lag' on a task? What does 'lag'
indicate?

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dear All,

Another question. When I re-schedule remaining work using the tracking
tool bar, I get a "Start No Earlier Than" constraint on the task. Is
there a way to avoid the constraint?

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Think about it a moment ... today is Friday. We had a task that was
supposed to start last Monday and finish today. Now what really happened is
that it started Monday and ran for Monday and Tuesday as scheduled, but then
our resource called in sick on Wed, Thur and today. So there is work
remaining that SHOULD have been done on those three days but wasn't because
the required resource wasn't there. So when can we resume work and pickup
progress where we left off? Not last Wednesday because we don't have a time
machine that will take us back in time to catch it up. Remember if our
actuals post that work scheduled for Wednesday happened on Wednesday, they
are supposed to be describing true, historical, observable, physical fact.
No, the earliest it could possibly be done is next Monday, the next workday
after today. And in order to lift it up from last Wednesday in the schedule
and get it to move to next Monday, we have to split the task and apply the
SNET constraint on the unworked portion to get it to move - without the
constraint it stays on last Wednesday, an impossibility since we can't jump
in our time machine to go back and really do it then.

HTH

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dear Steve,

What you say is true, I agree with you. Since constraints are to be
avoided, I was thinking if there was a way to get around it. What
about 'lag' on a task? How do I find it, and what does that indicate?

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

What gives you the idea constraints are to be avoided? Constraints are very
useful - the problem with them is that they are often misused, is all.
Using a "Finish No Later Than" constraint to represent a completion deadline
of 01 March is an example of what I mean by misuse - it's a very bad idea
and one should use a Deadline instead! But setting a "Start No Earlier
Than" constraint of 01 March on a task whose parts are on backorder and
won't be available until that date, in order to prevent Project from
scheduling it earlier than the date the parts will arrive, is a perfectly
valid use of a constraint Same thing here - the constraint that moves the
uncompleted work into the future where it can actually be done is a
perfectly valid application. The only problem I have with constraints is
when they're used to fudge the schedule into looking like something the
boss/client wants to see instead of modeling what you're actually going to
be able to obtain as driven by the physical processes and resource
availability.

"Lag" is a delay introduced into a link that causes the successor task to
start later than the unlagged link itself would otherwise cause it to be
scheduled. If there has to be a 2 week delay between mailing out a customer
survey and beginning to analyse the results in order to allow for the
postal-snail delivery times, introducing a lag into the FS link between the
"Mail Survey To Customer" and "Analyse Survey Responses" tasks accomplishes.
That behaves differently than using a constraint on the "Analyse..." task to
move it out by two weeks because if "Mail..." gets delayed a week, the
constrained "Analyse..." task will not be delayed but a "lagged" "Anayse..."
task will - the 2 week gap will be preserved as the "Mail..." task moves
earlier or later.

 

[Vidvans.Amey]

Hello,
I am a planning engineer. I am using MSP for my project. I find
many problems during tracking. I will really appreciate the support if
somebody will help me.
1) My first question is that what is the perfect method of tracking a
schedule.
Is it to enter % completion and remaining duration ( but sometimes %
completion gets changed.) Or entering % completion and letting microsoft
project to rescedule the unfinished work.

Amey....

 

[Rob Schneider]

Probably best to read about tracking projects in the "Project Guide"
which is part of Project. There are also a lot of web resources
available. Lastly, most of the books on Project cover this area well.

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hello Amey,



"Perfect method" is maybe a little too ambitious, but my own method is the
following:

- Never enter a % of progress, because, as in other areas, a % doesn't mean
anything: 2 tasks may have the same % of progress while there statuses are
quite different.



- Progress by the Duration: Enter Actual Duration; then Project decreases
the Remaining Duration. You are able the correct this Remaining Duration.
Use the Update Tasks dialog for that.

- Progress by the Workload: enter Actual Work; then Project decreases the
Remaining Work. You are able to correct this Remaining Work.

For a more precise progress tracking, you can use the Task Usage or Resource
Usage views, and display the Actual Work field (and why not the Baseline
Work) then enter the Actual Work on a day by day basis.

After all, I think that my method is quite perfect, but others guys may have
different point of view ;-)



Gérard Ducouret

 

[Michael.Tarnowski]

Jim,
you gave excellent advices - thank you; you wrote

Do you "allow" in certain cases milestones with both, predecessor and
successor ? - I'am thinking of reaching a kind of status, like
"Product qualified". This has certain tasks as predecessors (testing,
reviews, etc.) and is the predecessor of the task "shipping". This
status would be a candidate for a milestone with predecessors AND
successor.

Have a nice day

 

[Vidvans.Amey]

Hello ,
Does MSP have a facility that a message will pop up on a planned
start date of any activity or a day before the Planned start of the
activity.
We can see that by applying filter also, but message will not pop up in
that case.

 

[Rob Schneider]

Hello ,
Does MSP have a facility that a message will pop up on a planned
start date of any activity or a day before the Planned start of the
activity.
We can see that by applying filter also, but message will not pop up in
that case.

That sort of functionality is not available from a menu (far as I know).
Project is not really a personal information manager like Outlook.

That being said, you could write a small macro which scanned all the
tasks looking for tasks that fit your criteria for a "popup" and then
have the macro create a message box.

 

[Jim Aksel [MVP]]

Sorry, you would have to write code to do that. Just use one of the filters
or a flag with a formula.

 

[Vidvans.Amey]

Thanks rob,
I will certainly do that....

 

[Hemmige S Prashanth]

Dear All,

Jim's suggestions were excellent. Jim mentioned the following 4
points . Is there a way to filter out or find just these tasks? I have
lot of tasks in my MPP and it is very difficult to scroll line by line
to find out if each task belongs to any of the below categories.

No unfinished work to the left of the status date
No unstarted work to hte left of the status date
No started work to the right of the status date (you did not start
tomorrow)
No finished work to the right of the status date (you did not finish
tomorrow)

Thanks,
Prashanth