Actual Work

[Steve]

I have my project set up to track actual work on a daily
basis. I have a task set up that requires 4 hours of work
and 2 resources assigned to it at 100% each. If one of
those resources enters actual hours against the task that
totals 4 hours and then I set the percent completion to
100, the project shows more than 4 actual hours. If I
look at the individual resource information for the task,
it shows that both of the resources have actuals against
it even though only the 1 entered actuals. Am I doing
something fundamentally wrong here in the configuration?
Why would the actuals ever show more than what was really
entered?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

Because entering 100% complete turns all work planned at that moment to
actual work.
What you need is setting remaining work for the assignments that didn't need
to be done to 0.

OBTW, if you put 2 resoruces on a task, for Project it is never "either one"
doing the work but BOTH.
HTH

 

[JulieS]

Hello Steve,
A couple of questions. When you say the task requires 4
hours of work - is that a 4 hour duration task? If so,
and you assign two resources with one command
(maintaining 4 hour duration and by-passing effort driven
scheduling) each at 100%, then MS Project will assume
*each* resource is working 4 hours (4 hour duration x
200% total units = 8 hours of work) for a total of 8
hours of work on a 4 hour duration task.
If you then say that one resource has worked 4 hours -
the task is really only 50% complete -- the other
resource still has 4 hours of their work to complete. If
you then say the task is 100% complete, MS Project
assumes the other resource did their 4 hours of work as
well. If the task truly was complete after only 4 hours
of work for one resource, set the remaining work for the
other resource to zero.
You may wish to look at the task in either the task usage
or resource usage view and see if that clears things up
for you any. To see the remaining work for each
resource, split the screen from the task usage view and
format the task form at the bottom to show resource work.
Hope this helps,
Julie