MS Project Actual vs Planned duration and effort

[Muks]

I have a situation which I would like to capture in my schedule.

Planned Start Date : 02/16/2005
Planned Finish Date : 02/18/2005
Planned Work : 24 hrs

Actual Start Date : 02/16/2005
Actual Finish Date : 02/21/2005 (resource has not worked on the task in
between)
Actual Work : 24 hrs

When I am trying feed in data, system is changing effort to 32 hrs. I would
like system to change "Unit" not "Duration/Effort". I tried with "Fixed
Duration" as well as "Fixed Work" Type.

Appreciate suggestions.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

First of all, be sure you're entering the data into the proper fields.
There's a difference between the Start, Finish, and Work fields and the
Actual Start, Actual Finish, and Actual Work fields. Before entering any
actuals, the Start, Finish, Duration, and Work contained the planned values.
To preserve those original values, save a baseline before doing anything
else. That preserves your plan for future comparison. Now display the
Tracking table using the View, Tables menu. Enter your actual start, actual
finish, and actual work data in the appropriate fields. DO NOT enter the 24
hours in the Actual Duration field - work and duration are two totally
different measures. Entering into the Actual fields drives values into the
matching "un-actual" (ie, planned) fields but not the other way around.
Your result should be Start 02/16/05, Finish 02/21/05, Duration 32 hours (I
assume Sat and Sun are non-working days), Work 24 hours, Units 75%. The
baseline preserves the original estimates.

It occurs to me ... how do you KNOW actual finish will be 02/21/2005????
Are you clairvoyant? If you can know today, 02/16, that the work really
will finish on 02/21 - next Monday - we need to talk about some horse races
and lotteries coming up - you're wasting your time in project management!
Actuals should be exactly that - documented fact, not speculation or hopeful
thinking.

 

[Muks]

Thanks for your response. The date given in my query was for example (I
should have taken care of future date). Now also I did give a try to work the
way you suggested. I am not able to move forward. Appreciate your help. I
reiterate the question here again :

A Task is scheduled for 2 calendar days with effort/work=16hrs. This task is
completed in 3 calendar days but effort/work remained 16hrs. Please let me
know your response on how to capture this detail. At the end, I should have
no effort deviation but some schedule deviation.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

The is a bit of a problem here in that I'm not sure if you're clear on the
distinction between work/effort hours and duration hours but assuming you
are, here's how you would go about it. Enter the Actual Start and Actual
Finish dates for what they are and Actual Work as 16 hours. The actual
duration is the amount of time when work *could* have taken place between
the start and finish, whether it did or not, and will be calculated when you
enter actual start and actual finish. The result would be: Actual start=
whatever; Actual Finish = 3 workdays later; Actual Duration = 24 hours;
Remaining duration = 0 hours; Actual Work = 16 hours; Remaining Work = 0
hours.