Duration not working correctly

[tshad]

Tom,
Estimated dates become fixed when a task starts and finishes. The Start
and Finish fields in Project are dynamic - up to a point. That point
being reality. Once a task has actually started, the start date is no
longer an estimate. This emulates the real world so if that process does
play with what you want to do, then Project isn't the application you
want. Maybe what you really want are the baseline dates. Baseline dates
preserve the original plan so progress to the original plan can be
measured.

I agree with you as long as you enter the Actual Start Date or use the
Resource Usage sheet, neither of which I use. Actually, SP2 fixed (I
believe) my problem where the only task that didn't change Start Date if you
add a task or change a duration was a task that had anything in the
%Completed column (if you have the task set to "as soon as possible").
Project splits the task now instead of depending on the previous task (if
that is how Precedence is set) which if set would also set that task. Now
all my tasks that are not set will get re-calculated. And any task that is
not 100% completed have their end date readjusted. This wasn't happening
before so I assume I am not the only one with this question.

As far as what date applies to the Gantt bar, well that depends on how
the bar styles are formatted (Format/Bar Styles). The default Gantt bar
format is for bars to start on the date in the Start field, which is the
estimated start date. However, as I said before, once the task actually
starts, Project adjusts the Start field to equal the Actual Start field.

Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Project 2003 was released to resolve several
glitches with the application. If you happen to like the way Project
2003 worked before SP2, then you are definitely not using Project as it
was designed so don't expect it to act the way you want.

I didn't. That was what was causing my problem. I actually like what
Project is doing now. I was confused by when dates were fixed. Now %Work
Completed doesn't seem to do anything which was driving my crazy (as that
was what I was using before). But once I figured out that %Completed seemed
to do what %Work Completed used to do it is fine.

Thanks,

Tom

 

[John]

I agree with you as long as you enter the Actual Start Date or use the
Resource Usage sheet, neither of which I use. Actually, SP2 fixed (I
believe) my problem where the only task that didn't change Start Date if you
add a task or change a duration was a task that had anything in the
%Completed column (if you have the task set to "as soon as possible").
Project splits the task now instead of depending on the previous task (if
that is how Precedence is set) which if set would also set that task. Now
all my tasks that are not set will get re-calculated. And any task that is
not 100% completed have their end date readjusted. This wasn't happening
before so I assume I am not the only one with this question.

I didn't. That was what was causing my problem. I actually like what
Project is doing now. I was confused by when dates were fixed. Now %Work
Completed doesn't seem to do anything which was driving my crazy (as that
was what I was using before). But once I figured out that %Completed seemed
to do what %Work Completed used to do it is fine.

Thanks,

Tom

Tom,
Just for reference, there are two ways to get a date into the Actual
Start field - enter it directly or enter a non-zero value in the %
Complete field. The first method allows you to designate an actual start
date that is different from the scheduled start date. However, once an
actual start date is entered, Project aligns the schedule start date to
agree with it. If you simply enter a non-zero value in the % Complete
field, Project assumes that the task actually started on the scheduled
start date so it enters the schedule start date into the Actual Start
field. And by the way, once a task is started, all predecessors for that
task become null and void.

If you don't have any resources assigned, then % Work Complete is
meaningless and entering a value in that field will have no impact on
the schedule. Remember, % Complete is duration (time) based while % Work
Complete is work (effort) based, so % Complete NEVER did what % Work
Complete does. However if the resource assigned to the task has the same
calendar as the task, (and this could be the default Project calendar),
and the resource's work has not been contoured (i.e. tweaked), then %
Complete and % Work Complete will track because the work is linearly
spread across the full task duration.

John
Project MVP

 

[Steve House]

Before any work has been done, I think of the Gantt bars and the Start and
Finish fields as meaning 'Planned Start & Finish." As soon as the Project
actually begins and any of its work has been done, the Gantt bars and the
task's Start/Finish fields reflect 'Actual Start' (and Finish if it's
completed) for the portion of work that has been done and 'Estimated'
('Projected' or 'Forecast' if you prefer) Start/Finish for work remaining,
adjusted to take into account the ripple-down effect of any variance in
Actual versus Planned for the work that's been done. (Preserving the
original Planned for comparison purposes is the function of the Baseline.)
Note manually entering a date into the Start field does not constitute
entering an Actual and will not update the Actual Start field - instead it
is setting a constraint as a revision to the plan - and the Actual Start
field will remian NA. On the other hand, entering an Actual Start also
causes the same date to carry over into the Start field in order to force
the Gantt bar to adjust to display what is now historical reality and to
trigger recalculation of any downline impacts it has on the plan. The link
between the Start and Actual Start is a one-way street where an entry to
Actual Start is always copied over to update Start but not the other way
around.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



....> Just out of curiosity, does the Graph in the Gnatt display show
Estimated

Start Date or Actual Start Date?

....

 

[Steve House]

I know you've said dates don't matter but I don't see how that can possibly
be true and still discuss duration and progress meaningfully. Duration is a
measure of the passage of time where the only time that counts is the hours
out of the day during which it is possible to work. It's a clock that goes
into a 'hold' like NASA's launch countdown clock during non-working hours.
And any measurement of time references the point in time where the interval
starts and another point where it stops. While you can certainly state an
interval without reference to an outside clock, as soon as you start
comparing work performed to work scheduled, the 'at this point' time, ie,
the point in time on which the evaluation is made, enters the picture and
thus the dates on which work was supposed to be performed compared to the
dates on which it actually was performed simply has to be taken into account
for the discussion of planned versus actual to actually mean anything.
That's not to say the scheduled dates have to be engraved in granite but
when measuring progress as of such-and-such a date, you simply have to look
at when things took place and compare it to when they were supposed to take
place.

Remember a project plan is a schedule in a timeline, not simply a structured
to-do list, and 'schedule' by definition implies *when* things take place as
well as *what* takes place and how long it lasts.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

But there is an overlap. Design isn't expected to end until the 13th
while Development shows it's already started on the 6th. That's 7
calendar days, typically 5 duration (ie, working) days overlap.

I agree there is an overlap - but that occurred because the date got
fixed, which I didn't understand was happening and don't want to happen.
But apparantly don't have a choice here.

I understand that in most cases that would be expected and wanted. But in
my case it isn't. The Start Date and End Dates are not important - just
the amount of work on the task completed (not when they were done).

I know how to fix the problem, now that I know what is happening, even if
a little more work.

Thanks,

Tom

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

"Rod Gill" <rod AT project-systems DOT co DOT nz> wrote in message
Design is a sub-project of Project so it cannot be linked to it.

Durations are not meant to add up. A duration is a period of time
within which all work for the task(s) get done. If you view the work
table then the total work does add up (assuming calculation is
automatic). Two tasks that overlap produce a duration that spans from
the earlier start to later finish. This is by design and the preferred
way of doing things.

Durations do add up on all the other Summarys. And the "Project"
Summary task is adding up - just not correctly. I assume this has to do
with the Date problem between "Design" and "Development" in my project.
The Duration on Project is a calculated amount (which was a problem in
one of my older posts where it was showing a ?).

There is no overlap - that I can tell. I have all the tasks linked to
the task before it so there is no overlap.

Tom


So, your next learning goal is to read help on work and assigning
resources. Good luck!

--

Rod Gill
Project MVP

NEW!! Project VBA Book, for details visit:
http://www.projectvbabook.com


I have the following project with only Summary Tasks showing. Project
is the Summary task for all the other Summaries. The Summaries, as you
can see, are linked to the Summary above them.

Each task in each summary is linked to the task before it. The 1st
task in each summary is never linked to any task. I assume this is
because the Summary record is linked to the previous summary (except
the 1st one). I can't link the Summary Task "Design" to "Project
because it gets an error message "You can't link a summary task to one
of it's summary tasks".

The problem is that the Summary Task "Project"s Duration isn't being
updated when I change any of the tasks' duration in "Design" - which
it should. If you add all the durations up they don't equal 40.5.

Also, if you notice the start date of Development is 2/6/07 but the
ending date of Design is 2/13/07. The other summaries work fine.

1 Project 40.5 days 50% Thu 2/1/07 Thu 3/29/07
2 Design 8.1 days 28% Thu 2/1/07 Tue 2/13/07
10 Development 22.5 days 100% Tue 2/6/07 Thu 3/8/07 2
26 Testing 10 days 0% Fri 3/9/07 Thu 3/22/07
10
37 Deployment 4.5 days 0% Fri 3/23/07 Thu 3/29/07 26

Here are the tasks in "Design" (I took out most of the name for
display purposes). Notice that there is predecessor for task #3.
This is the same for all the Summarys but the others work fine.

3 Decide 0.9 days 100% Thu 2/1/07 Thu 2/1/07
4 Decide 0.1 days 100% Thu 2/1/07 Thu 2/1/07 3
5 Decide 1 day 100% Fri 2/2/07 Fri 2/2/07 4
6 Decide 0.1 days 0% Mon 2/5/07 Mon 2/5/07 5
7 Decide 3 days 0% Mon 2/5/07 Thu 2/8/07 6
8 Decide 2 days 0% Thu 2/8/07 Mon 2/12/07 7
9 Decide 1 day 0% Mon 2/12/07 Tue 2/13/07 8

What would cause this problem?

Thanks,

Tom