Bring Past Planned Work Current

[Jason]

Does anyone have a simple/quick resolution to bring past work current? There
has to be a way. I consider myself an Experience MS Project user, however,
this is one but I have yet to crack.

Presently, every time we rebaseline, we have to bring past work current by
reviewing every line of every resource, and applying a zero actual (while in
fixed duration) to move the planned work current.

We can't get clean planned values without this step being done, however,
with 24 work plans averaging 1500 lines, this process gets crazy. Let along
I am training novice users.

Please advise.

Thank you

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Jason --

Refer to the following FAQ:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/RescheduleUncompletedWork.htm

Hope this helps.

 

[Jason]

I know this is exactly what I need, but I cannot seem to get it to do what I
need. In a perfect world, I need this to pull the work forward, which I know
it does, but leave my finish date alone. Everytime I run this, even on a
single task, it moves my finish date out. Any thoughts?

Thank you BTW for looking into this, especially your first post. I know I
will be able to use this somehow going forward.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Jason --

When you rescheduled uncompleted work from the past into the current
reporting period, Microsoft Project is telling you that your Finish date for
the project will change, based on the uncompleted work for this point
forward. Why would you expect it to do something else? Based on what it
tells you about the Finish date slippage, you need to replan the project so
that you can finish on time. Hope this helps.

 

[Jason]

We were hoping to show the resources as over allocated, instead of moving the
dates out.

Thank you for your assistance Dale, it is greatly appreciated.

 

[Steve House]

How could it ever be possible to pull work that's behind schedule forward
and NOT have the finish date change??? I was supposed to start on something
last Monday that would take me 2 weeks and so it would have finished this
coming Friday. Something came up and it didn't get started on time, in fact
it still hasn't started even a week after it was supposed to. So I
reschedule the work that should have been done but hasn't been to start at
the earliest time it can get underway - tomorrow (Monday) a week later than
originally scheduled. There's still two week's work required to produce
whatever that task does so how could it possibly finish in only one week,
the originally planned finish date unless??? The finish date will HAVE to
extend out by a week after we reschedule the uncompleted work unless we
reduce the amount of output we need to achieve - settle for a 1-story
building instead of the 2-story structure the project contract calls for
LOL. We either get someone else to work on it with me so we can get the
work done twice as fast or we accept that the week delay in its start means
inevitably there will also be a week's delay in its finish.

I think one of your problems is that you're rebaselining. The baseline is a
record of the original plan you thought you'd be able to do. Unless the
scope of the project changes so it essentially becomes a different project,
the original baseline should be engraved in granite and never changed. The
baseline is a fixed reference point for monitoring progress of actual
against plan and is the sole source of information you have as to whether
your plan as it is evolving once work is underway is on-time or
within-budget. If work has been delayed so the current schedule shows you
finishing 1 October, that unchanging baseline is your only record that your
original plan called for you to finish 1 September and now you're a month
late. If you rebaseline, you throw all that information away.

HTH
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Steve House]

Project never increases the resource assignment in such a situation. If you
have assigned someone 100% that's the maximum he can physically work. If
he's assigned less than 100% Project figures you had a reason that it
doesn't know about for assigning him that way and it won't presume to
override your decision. Project will always move the finish date rather
than increase the assignment arbitrarily because it tries to maintain the
plan as a valid model of physical reality.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hello,

Sorry Steve, not complete.
Fixed Work, you decrease duration, Units increase.
That's what our poster expected on project level: delay first task, and AS
FINISH DATES NEVER MOVE (so they say), that means decreasing duration and "I
expect Project to increase units"
Not that weird, since Fixed Work does it for him.
OBTW, that is the reason why I can't live with fixed work - No software
should ever decide that Bob has to work 188% next Thursday f.i.

Greetings,
--
Jan De Messemaeker, Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
For FAQs: http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm

Project never increases the resource assignment in such a situation. If you
have assigned someone 100% that's the maximum he can physically work. If
he's assigned less than 100% Project figures you had a reason that it
doesn't know about for assigning him that way and it won't presume to
override your decision. Project will always move the finish date rather
than increase the assignment arbitrarily because it tries to maintain the
plan as a valid model of physical reality.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

We were hoping to show the resources as over allocated, instead of moving
the
dates out.

Thank you for your assistance Dale, it is greatly appreciated.

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/RescheduleUncompleted
Work.htm

 

[Steve House]

Right - but "reschedule uncompleted work" doesn't change the durations of
tasks and so the task type is irrelevant. Even with a "FNLT" or "MFO"
constraint preventing the movement of future tasks, the "reschedule" tool
doesn't alter their duration or change assignment levels.

I don't have a problem with fixed work as that is a valid model of the
physical nature of most work. A task produces an exactly quantifiable
deliverable. To make my famous chicken-liver omlette, you have to break a
half-dozen eggs - not 4, not 8, but 6 exactly. It takes X units of work to
break a single egg, a measurable quantity of work that is a physical
attribute of the mechanism of egg-breaking. Apply any more and the egg fly
all over the kitchen and be unusable, any less and the egg doesn't break.
Thus it takes 6X units of work to make my omlette, no more and no less.
There is also a specific maximum amount of work a resource can produce in a
unit of time and a manager can't do anything to get work out of him any
faster because he's simply not physically capable of doing more. That's
fixed work in a nut-, err egg-, shell <grin>. I couldn't agree more with
you that the software shouldn't decide that Bob has to work 188% next
Thursday but as a planning tool used for "what-if" decision making it should
inform you that that IF you need to get this task done by the
Friday deadline you'll need to find 1.88 units of Bob's skills to apply to
the job. The manager's job is to decide whether to spend extra money to
bring in the overtime required to finish by Friday or to decide that money
is more important than time and so we'll live with the fact it won't finish
until Tuesday. Project's job is to keep him grounded in reality and not let
him maintain the illusion that he can have both.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hello,

Sorry Steve, not complete.
Fixed Work, you decrease duration, Units increase.
That's what our poster expected on project level: delay first task, and AS
FINISH DATES NEVER MOVE (so they say), that means decreasing duration and
"I
expect Project to increase units"
Not that weird, since Fixed Work does it for him.
OBTW, that is the reason why I can't live with fixed work - No software
should ever decide that Bob has to work 188% next Thursday f.i.

Greetings,
--
Jan De Messemaeker, Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
For FAQs: http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm

Project never increases the resource assignment in such a situation. If you
have assigned someone 100% that's the maximum he can physically work. If
he's assigned less than 100% Project figures you had a reason that it
doesn't know about for assigning him that way and it won't presume to
override your decision. Project will always move the finish date rather
than increase the assignment arbitrarily because it tries to maintain the
plan as a valid model of physical reality.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

We were hoping to show the resources as over allocated, instead of moving
the
dates out.

Thank you for your assistance Dale, it is greatly appreciated.

:

Jason --

When you rescheduled uncompleted work from the past into the current
reporting period, Microsoft Project is telling you that your Finish date
for
the project will change, based on the uncompleted work for this point
forward. Why would you expect it to do something else? Based on what it
tells you about the Finish date slippage, you need to replan the project
so
that you can finish on time. Hope this helps.




I know this is exactly what I need, but I cannot seem to get it to do
what
I
need. In a perfect world, I need this to pull the work forward, which
I
know
it does, but leave my finish date alone. Everytime I run this, even on
a
single task, it moves my finish date out. Any thoughts?

Thank you BTW for looking into this, especially your first post. I
know I
will be able to use this somehow going forward.

:

Jason --

Refer to the following FAQ:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Shared Documents/RescheduleUncompleted
Work.htm

Hope this helps.




Does anyone have a simple/quick resolution to bring past work
current?
There
has to be a way. I consider myself an Experience MS Project
user,
however,
this is one but I have yet to crack.

Presently, every time we rebaseline, we have to bring past work
current
by
reviewing every line of every resource, and applying a zero
actual
(while
in
fixed duration) to move the planned work current.

We can't get clean planned values without this step being done,
however,
with 24 work plans averaging 1500 lines, this process gets crazy.
Let
along
I am training novice users.

Please advise.

Thank you