% Complete Versus Physical % Complete

[Sally]

Hello,

What is general perspective of using the Physical % Complete versus the %
Complete field?

My company uses the % Complete field for our earned value reporting. If the
task is 50% complete, we mark it as 50%, 75% complete...we type in 75%.

Another company, our customer, has instructed us to use the Physical %
Complete field. They want us to use the "Update Project" feature and update
all the tasks through the status date (currently our period end). Then they
are going to use whatever MSProject calculates the % Complete to be for their
reporting metrics.

Has anyone ever used this method to calculate their % Complete? If
so....what value added metrics does this process generate?

We are using MSProject 2007 on a 25,000 line item schedule and we do NOT
resource load it. We use another tool for resources.

Thanks!

Sally

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

The main difference is as follows:

% Complete - every organization and individual PM have their own way of calculating
task duration and remaining duration. Often that calculation has no tie
to the actual work being done. Thus, to me, EVMS based on % Complete is
meaningless because I can't make any assumptions as to how it was calculated.

Physical % Complete - is based off of rigid criteria defined when the deliverable
is. Somewhere in my WBS dictionary, I have a definition of what Physical
% Complete means. If you give it 50% complete, I can look that up and see
what it is. Same goes for the resource, the PM, the Scheduler, and the executive.


Physical % Complete is useful in that it can be tracked against % Complete
to see if I have burned up all of my duration but only got 50% of the work
done.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[vanita]

Hi Sally

Physical % complete is preferred over % complete in projects where speed of
doing the work in activities does not remain same during the activity
duration. It would be used in industries like construction industry where
work is happening in open, uncertain environment and decisions keep flowing
in from different agencies. Thus, if any decision gets delayed, it can delay
a particular activity.

When you use Update project upto a Status date, the project takes % complete
as per the planned data upto that Status date. In Physical % complete column
physically completed quantum of work for each activity would be input
manually. Then the comparison of the two figures would show the difference
between planned and actual completion.

Personally I feel it does not make much difference which % complete data we
look at, because the difference would only be for those ongoing activities
for which speed of doing work in that activity is not uniform.

I hope it helps.
Vanita

 

[Jim Aksel]

See my blog ofr papers on %Complete.
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Jim Aksel, MVP

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