Work schedule progress question

[Tomcat]

I have a question about how I should display the following data in project.
I will do this in picture form as it is much easier to understand this way.

Week | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
4h 4h
Task1 ------------
5h 5h 5h
Task2 -----------------
4h 4h 4h 4h 4h 4h
Task3 ----------------------------------
2h 2h 2h 2h 2h
Task4 ------------------------------
1h 1h 1h
Task5 -----------------

Cum 4h 13h 22h 31h 35h 41h 47h 53h 57h 60h
hrs

All these task are subtasks to a summary grouping. For example Task 4 is
scheduled from the beginning of week 6 to the end of week 10 and has 5 hrs
scheduled for each week. Thus the hours are scheduled linearly over each of
the tasks but not over all the tasks combined. If I have completed 30 out of
the 60 hrs I want to show a summary progress bar which runs from the
beginning of week 1 to almost to the end of week 4. If I have completed 53
of the 60 hrs I want the bar to run from the beginning of week 1 to the end
of week 8. I have no idea how to do this. Is this % complete, % work
complete, physical % complete, BCWS, BCWP? Please help. Also, this is an
example case. The real data is 10,000 rows of historical data grouped into
many different outline levels. Also, I know project can do lots of things
like change durations, hours, and all that, but I don't want to do that. I
just want to show what I indicated above for all my summary progress bars.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Tomcat,

Your first question is an easy one, you have just defined the Task Usage
view which shows all the way you see it (except that summary tasks are
displayed on top of tasks, not below).

As for the second, be aware that what you ask is not clearly defined. When
you say there has been 30 hrs of work on your summary task, that is
something Project will calculate for you, it is something you CANNOT enter
as such in Project. Progress in entered on task level, and it not only
involves the nbr of hrs worked but also WHEN.

So the bar yioy are looking for will by all means depend on teh detail
tasks.
I think Summary Progress will be close to what you are looking for.

HTH

 

[Tomcat]

Thanks for your reply. I am not suggesting that hours are done at the
summary level. I know these are done at the task level. My point is this if
30 hrs is half of 60 hrs for the summary task and no matter how I get this 30
hrs whether its from task 1, task 2, and task 3, or from task 1, task 4, and
task 5. I still want my progress bar to show 40% through the entire summary
since 30 hrs were scheduled for the first four weeks. Are you sure "summary
progress" shows this.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

When in IT you want something absolutely unique (5 years of reading this NG,
nobody ever asked for this) you may expect the answer that you will have to
program it yourself.
It is definitely possible in VBA but it is not that easy.

One thing I'm sure of, Project does not provide out-of-the-box for exactly
what you want.

Hope this helps.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

The length of both the progress bars and the Gantt chart bars themselves
represent Duration values, never Work values, and it is crucial to always
keep the difference between work and duration foremost in your mind. The
length of a summary bar goes from the start of the earliest starting subtask
to the end of the latest ending subtask and its duration is not dependent on
the total durations of the subtasks. Duration is not additive but work is.
Progress on a summary represents a weighted effective duration, not a true
duration. With those points in mind ...

In your example, there are 60 hours of total work.

After the 1st 30 hours of work is done, tasks 1 and 2 are 100% complete,
task 3 is 29% complete, and the rest are at zero. The summary shows 36%
Complete (3.55/10 duration) and 50% (30/60) Work Complete. The progress bar
is at 36%, shortly before the end of week 4.

At the end of week 8 tasks 1, 2, and 3 are 100% complete, task 4 is 60%
complete, and task 5 is 33% complete. The summary task is 80% Complete
(8/10 duration) and 90% (54/60) Work Complete. In the tracking Gannt the
summary progress bar shows 80%, the end of week 8.

Now consider the case of working the tasks in reverse order and doing 30
hours of work, tasks 4 and 5 are 100% complete, task 3 is 71% complete. But
if you've done work on task 5 before doing work on task 1, that implies that
your schedule in terms of the task start dates has changed and the work no
longer falls in the same time periods as before. If task 5 is the first
thing done and 1 hour per week has been done for 3 weeks (or 3 hours all in
one day, for that matter) by definition the summary task Start needs to
change to reflect the point where work was first performed, the start of
task 5, so that task now falls in Week 1 (and perhaps 2 and 3 depending on
how fasat work was done on it), not weeks 8, 9, and 10. The only way it
*could* have been worked on before tasks 1, 2, 3, or 4 is if it started
before any of the others. The start of the summary must become the actual
start of task 5 and that date now defines the new start of "week 1" in other
words, regardless of what the original plan called for. When you enter in
actual work, you MUST enter also the dates it was actually done. Simply
saying that task 5 requires 3 hours total work and 2 hours have been done or
just marking it as xx% Complete is never enough unless the dates on which
the work was actually done are exactly the same as the dates on which the
work was scheduled to be done.

So if you work the tasks backwards until 30 hours have been worked task 5
has to get transposed into the first position, followed by task 4, followed
by task 3, then 1 & 2 (5/4 might overlap as might 4/3 of course). At any
rate, the start of task 5 now marks the start of week 1 and the calculations
will work exactly like in the examples above - only the task names have
changed.

If you enter actual dates on which the work is performed on each task as
well as the gross hours and hours completed, the summary progress
calculations will be accurate. If you pretend you have a time machine and
somehow work scheduled for week 8 gets done in week 8 before work scheduled
in week 1 is done and later you're going to go back in time and catch up the
work for week 1 somehow doing it IN week 1 then the summary calculations
won't work right.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Tomcat]

Thank you for your response. I do understand that what I am asking for is
not fundamentally "right" but its not my job to convince my superiors of
this. Thanks for you help though

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Why would they object to your posting accurate information into the file?
If Joe Resource was scheduled to wax the widgets on July 1st but actually
got some of it done last week, shouldn't your file reflect that? Save a
baseline before posting the progress and it will show what you'd planned so
you can monitor actual versus planned if anybody asks. But progress by
definition is what actually takes place and after it's done what you
originally thought would take place is irrelevant. Seems like if you base
your progress inputs on what actually happens, the calculations in the
summary bars will be exactly what your bosses are asking you for.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs