Understanding Percent Complete (Project 2000)

[John]

I am setting up a project which has 3 outline levels. The detail tasks represent stages of development of chapters of a book, so they roll up to a summary task which represents the progress of the chapter as a whole. There are a number of chapters which each roll up to the top level summary of the book as a whole.

At the detail task level, time is a good measure of progress for the way we operate, so when our second level task is 50% complete that is reflected sufficiently by progressing the tasks accordingly. However as each chapter is significantly different in size and complexity to develop, the second level tasks are not represented well by time invested.

We wish to be able to weight the second level tasks according to a criteria independent of effort. i.e. a particular chapter may be 15% of the entire book which is our ultimate measure of progress.

Can anyone help me understand if there is any way to do this in Project?

Thanks

 

[Steve House]

There really isn't any wya to do as you wish that I'm aware of. A summary
task is just that, a summary, rolling up its component subtasks. It
reflects a weighted average of the subtasks for % complete. If the subtasks
are sequential, when you're 50% done with them, you're 50% done with the
summary.
--
Steve House
MS Project MVP
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

I am setting up a project which has 3 outline levels. The detail tasks

represent stages of development of chapters of a book, so they roll up to a
summary task which represents the progress of the chapter as a whole. There
are a number of chapters which each roll up to the top level summary of the
book as a whole.

At the detail task level, time is a good measure of progress for the way

we operate, so when our second level task is 50% complete that is reflected
sufficiently by progressing the tasks accordingly. However as each chapter
is significantly different in size and complexity to develop, the second
level tasks are not represented well by time invested.

We wish to be able to weight the second level tasks according to a

criteria independent of effort. i.e. a particular chapter may be 15% of the
entire book which is our ultimate measure of progress.

 

[Tomm]

You have to create a VBA macro to achieve this. Result should be put in a
custom Number field column. That way you can roll up a calculated percentage
to summary tasks based on any rule you want.


Tomm

 

[Rob Schneider]

I am setting up a project which has 3 outline levels. The detail tasks represent stages of development of chapters of a book, so they roll up to a summary task which represents the progress of the chapter as a whole. There are a number of chapters which each roll up to the top level summary of the book as a whole.

At the detail task level, time is a good measure of progress for the way we operate, so when our second level task is 50% complete that is reflected sufficiently by progressing the tasks accordingly. However as each chapter is significantly different in size and complexity to develop, the second level tasks are not represented well by time invested.

We wish to be able to weight the second level tasks according to a criteria independent of effort. i.e. a particular chapter may be 15% of the entire book which is our ultimate measure of progress.

Can anyone help me understand if there is any way to do this in Project?

Thanks

If I were an author and if I were using Project to model the project and
keep track of it, I'd setup a project hierarchy like:

(S) Means summary Task

(S)Working with Publisher/Editor
Task1
Task2
(S)Introduction
(S)Section1
(S)Chapter 1
Task1
Task2
Task3
(S)Chapter 2
Task1
(S)Section2
(S)Chapter 3
Task1
(S)Chapter 4
Task1
(S)Index
(S)Task1

Inside each chapter are 1 to whatever number of tasks (Taskn defined
above), each defined properly in Project with work, duration,
assignments, etc. The work you define for each task will rollup to the
Summary Tasks (S) and reflect "weight" the project plan and computations
of Percent Complete as you are seeking. Summary tasks are just that:
summaries.

(Remember that there are two % Complete computations ... one related to
duration and the other related to work... read in "help" about the
difference).

 

[Ed Hanna]

John,

The built-in measures of progress in MS Project are work, duration, and
cost.

If duration (i.e elapsed time) is not a meaningful progress measure for your
book, what about work (i.e. effort)? If Chapter 2 of your book requires
twice as much effort as required for Chapter 3, you can easily "weight it"
by assigning twice as much work to the tasks in Chapter 2.

If you do this, you'll want to include Work [Scheduled], Actual Work, and %
Work Complete in your tracking reports.

Ed