Having MPP calculate units based on actual finish dates

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dear MPP users,

I need one help. I use MPP 2003.

1. Let us say, I have a task A that has a planned work of 40 hours,
spanning Monday through Friday. This task has a resource 'R'
allocated. 'R' is supposed to spend 8 hours every day.
2. Now, on the 'next' Monday, when I want to take status from 'R', I
find from his timesheet, that he has over stayed and completed the
task in 4 days.
3. I now go to the 'Actual Work' column, enter 40, and then go to the
'Actual Finish' and say that the task finished on Thursday as against
a planned finish of Friday.
4. At this point I would expect MPP to change the units on 'R' to
indicate that, in reality, 'R' was overloaded and spent effort
equivalent to 125% units (as against planned 100% units planned).

Issue: (4) above does not work. When I enter the actual finish as
Thursday, then the MPP will go and change the 'Actual Work' to what is
thinks is possible in 4 days. Since I want the actual work to be
accurate, I'm forced to live with a situation where the actual finish
is incorrect. How do I resolve this situation?

Thanks in advance.

Prashanth
Bangalore, India

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

Simplest is to select the Resource Usage View

Right click the yellow timephased area and select Actual Work. Now enter
actual hours as entered into the timesheet. If you have 10h per day, then
there will be no work left for Friday and an actual finish date of Thursday
evening.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Hemmige S Prashanth]

Hello Rod,

Superb! It worked! Thanks so much! I did what you said and found that the
actual went to 125%.

However, is there still a way for MPP to automatically do it? The resource
usage view takes lot of time to update. I have 30 people on my team and it is
quite difficult to keep changing data on a 'day' basis.

Thanks again!

Prashanth

 

[Robin Roe]

Prashanth

I am having the exact same problem which I haven't fully resolved.
As Rod previously mentioned, all it seems you can do is enter the actual
work in the time phased sheet, which I agree with. But like you I don't want
to enter time on a daily basis for all resources. I would rather just enter
the total actual work for each resource. One way I have reduced the number of
inputs is to actually change the timescale on the right to say months or
years. So rather than entering actual hours per day, you enter it per year,
this will spread the single input evenly over the duration of the task. (I
enter the actual Start and actual Finish dates first and then the actual
time). Of course if the task spans two calendar years, you need two inputs.

I have also played around with the "Updating task status updates resource
status" (under Tools/Options/Calculations), but this only seems to work as
long as the task is not 100% complete.

Would be very interested to know if you find a proper solution.

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

Firstly you have to decide how accurately you need to report progress. If
this is by month, then you don't need to worry about a day here or there.
Make sure you update the actual start date for tasks and then updating
actual work and remaining work will be fine.

If you do need complete accuracy, then you need some automation. Provided
your timesheet has the unique ID of each task, then a VBA macro to update
your schedules automatically is relatively easy for a good VBA programmer.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Hemmige S Prashanth]

Hello Rod,

You are right. I only need accuracy on a 'week' basis (i.e. I only need to
understand that a task was completed / started in a particular week - the
exact day may not be needed), so that should help a little.

However, I think I should explore the automation. We do have unique IDs in
the timesheets so we should be able to plug that into the MPP in the
Timephased view.

Thanks so much Rod!

Robin, thanks for your inputs too! I did not know about the "Updating task
status updates resource status" option.

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[Rod Gill]

Good luck and let me know if you need help with a macro to update your
projects.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com