Baseline Roll-up to resource summary

[Shane]

Hi -

Does anyone know what causes the baseline summary value to reset to 0 when
there are positive values in the assignment rows. This is causing problems in
some instances. We are using MOPS 2007 + SP2 & Aug CU and the client s/w is
the same.

We have brought this to Microsoft but they are unable to reproduce the
problem and hence unable to help :-/

If this is a process issue where users are mis-interpreting how to use
baselines so be it but right now, I can't reproduce and so do not know the
problem and how to remedy.

Any help or suggestions are welcome

 

[Gary Chefetz]

Shane:

Not enough information. There are a lot of baseline fields in the system,
which one in particular are you talking about. Where do you see the roll-up
failure? If Microsoft is having trouble diagnosing your issue, imagine how
difficult it will be for anyone here to help you without some very specific
information.

 

[Shane]

Hi Gary,

You're right..

The rollup failure occurs in the Resource Usage view where the sumamry row
for the resource = 0 when you can clearly see the tasks underneath have
positive values for the same resource. We are using the "baseline work" field.

I hope this helps

PS - Would it be great if we could show screen captures in here

regards,
Shane

 

[Gary Chefetz]

Shane:

The rollup values you see in the Resource Usage view, are the values that
were saved at the moment that the baseline was saved. Many people expect
these to be dynamic rollups, but they're not. For instance, if you were to
assign Bob to a task, take a baseline, then reassign Bob's task to Sheila,
the Bob's baseline rollup in Resource Usage would continue to carry the work
value from that task. Let's say that you had only assigned Bob to one task
before switching to Sheila, when you apply the Resource Usage view, the Bob
will have a baseline work value rollup and absolutely no work assigned in
the project. Conversely, if I were to assign an additional task to Bob, and
then Baseline the new task only, without selecting specific baseline rollup
options, I could easily show a total of rollup hours that was vastly
different from the sum of all baseline values in the assignments. I can
easily construct a scenario of steps where a new resource is added to a
project after an initial baseline, where PMs baseline individual tasks and
the resource roll-up value remains zero.

So, the key is to understand that these are *Snapshot* values, and how you
use the baseline tool in Project will determine how the values roll-up to
summary baselines. On the other hand, if you can list a set of actions that
results in an unexpected behavior, then we have the makings of a bug.
Unfortunately, no one can explain why you are seeing the data you see now,
without having recaptured every step in the scheduling process.

 

[GetOffMyPatch]

Thanks Gary

is there any documentation out there which outlines best practices for
using baselines?

Regards,
Shane

 

[Gary Chefetz]

Shane:

We cover this quite thoroughly in our book Ultimate Learning Guide to
Microsoft Office Project 2007.

http://projectserverbooks.com/books/ultimatelearningproject2007.aspx

Essentially, this is basic Project client tool knowledge.

 

[ST]

Hi Gary,

I have a rollup problem too and think it is a bug... Although I posted this
in a seperate I think it would be worthwhile listing it here for reference
sake. Here goes...

ST wrote:

Baseline - Entered or Calcuated rollups
20-Nov-09

I'm having a problem/ question with the baseline rollup option because we
have come across a situation where the Baseline Work on the summary task did
not rollup as expected.

1) I decided to "enter" baseline data instead of using the calculated values because
the latter values were not working consistently. However, when manually entering
e.g., Baseline Work (task field),
the rollup to the summary does sum up when we have the summary task selected
and the option "From subtasks into selected summary task(s)" checked?
...

3) I was doing some troubleshooting on this issue, and we found that in one
particular instance, MS Project failed to rollup the baseline even though I
did not manually change any of the baseline values. In this case it was the
Baseline Cost field (summary task) that did not sum up. Could be that this
is a bug? We are using MS Pro 2007 SP2.

Gary, your thoughts are always welcomed.

/Spiro

 

[Gary Chefetz]

ST:

If you read this thread, then you must understand that I can't tell you what
you're seeing without a complete step-by-step repeatable scenario. I do not
believe that there are any bugs in the system as this is an area of the
program that has not changed in years. So, come up with steps to reproduce a
behavior and we can determine the why or it, or approach Microsoft with a
bug if we can, indeed, demonstrate one.

 

[ST]

These were my my steps when I was trying to reproduce the problem, I was
sucessful in recreating it at least one time.

1) baselined plan (including this one task).
2) Then, I created some detail tasks with resources assigned under this one
task which I promoted to a summary task.
3) selected these new detail tasks and baselined them using selected tasks
(with no options selected).
4) Then selected the task that's been promoted to a summary task and
baseline it using the option: "From subtasks into selected summary task(s)".
The selected summary task did not rollup!!!


What is repeatable is...If you use manually entered baseline data in the
tasks, then the rollup option described in step 4 will not take those into
consideration.

 

[Gary Chefetz]

First of all, promoting a task that has values and baselines to a summary
task is not a good practice. You should always use a new inserted task for
this purpose as a best practice. The act of changing from regular task to
summary task essentially tells the system to ignore all previous values
associated with the task prior to its becoming a summary task. The system
uses field values in different ways when a task is in "summary mode" versus
"detail task mode."

 

[ST]

ok. thanks for that.

How about the manually entered baseline values? Why doesn't MS Project
consider them in a rollup?