General Percentage Complete Question

[Robin Roe]

Hi,

I have come across a number of schedules where the % complete (default black
progress line on the bar) does not end exactly at the status line. Is this
possible considering the default % complete is % duration complete? I would
agree that the % work complete or the physical % complete may not match the
status line, but can this be true of the % duration complete?

Example

A task of 5 days duration started on Monday 1st , the status date is set to
Tuesday 2nd, the task has to be 40% complete and will match the status line.
It physically can’t be anything else, can it? If it’s decided the task will
now take 10 days instead, the task has to be 20% complete. (2 days out of 10
is 20%).

Do people agree/disagree with this? The way I look at it is that everything
to the left of the status line is complete and everything to the right is yet
to be done. Am I correct in my assumption?

Thanks

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Robin,

Try Tools/Tracking/Update Project... and select to Reschedule uncompleted
work to start after the Status Date.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials

 

[Robin Roe]

Trevor

Thanks you for your detailed answer which I am in total agreement with. This
is what I have been advising people here in our company to do. I think most
people, here anyway, feel this is how to represent if a task is behind or
ahead of schedule, until I explain what a baseline is.

The point you raise about the progress lines is also very valid, there
shouldn't be Zig Zags. So really they have no great use, unless you show them
in relation to the baseline.

Thanks again for confirming my own beliefs

 

[Kurt]

Robin et al,

I have experienced a similar issue to what Robin described i.e. the progress
bars do not appear to display correctly after I "update as scheduled"
through the status date. They don't match the status date exactly. This is
only noticable on very long duration tasks (say >300 days).

My theory is that the "update as scheduled" process updates the actual
duration through the status date, then subsequently calculates the % complete
variable from this information - but this variable appears to be rounded to
two decimal places, like it or not. Then Project applies this rounded %
complete to the task at hand in order to display the progress bar ... which
is then necessarily not exactly correct, due to the rounding.

Does anyone concur?