Calculation of Variance Dates...

[Birmangirl]

....sadly I can't be too detailed: I've been sent a PDF of a Gantt chart. One
task has a start & finish date of 31 July/11 September. Assuming a 5-day
working week, the duration is 30 days. The plan has been baselined and this
task shows a BL Early Start of 19 June and a BL Early Finish of 7 July.
Question 1: Why is the BL duration so much shorter, and
Question 2: I have a Baseline Variance of -45 days. Presumably, this
indicates that the scheduled work is less than originally planned. Why is it
as much as 45 days?

Apologies for my ignorance, but I'm not convinced that the person sending me
the PDF fully understands what they are doing (and neither am I).

TIA
Amanda

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

1. There is no such thing as Baseline Early Start, only Baseline Start and -
Finish
2. Baseline data reflect the plans a it was when it was baselined. Only the
project manager can answer the why question.
3. There is no such thing as baseline variance: all variances
(StartVariance, FinishVariance, Duration Variance, Work Variance... ) are
current value compared to baseline.
So not knowing which variance you refer to, I cannot comment on what it
means; again, any WHY question can only be answered by the owner of the
plan.

Hope this helps,

 

[Birmangirl]

Thanks for your response Jan. I believe that part of the problem occurs
because the external company uses Primavera and is adamant that their plans
cannot be converted to Project 2003. We're trying to translate what their
PDFs are telling us and compare apples and oranges...

Do you know if it possible to save Primavera as Project 2003? I was under
the impression that it is possible, but fields may not map directly.

TIA
Amanda

 

[Rob Schneider]

Amanda,

I don't know anything about Primavera other than having heard of it (and
sort of used it in the mid 1980's from "afar").

I don't know what your role is with working with this external company,
but I do feel the urge to recommend that you get them to write a
document which defines the terms and explains the numbers they provide
you. Even if you could import the file into Project,not clear to me
what this achieves. I am presuming that control of the project still
resides with the external company and therefore they should be the ones
who do the full explanation to you full satisfaction.