MS Project Not Moving Remaining Effort To Status Date

[Barry]

When I approve time on my project, I am expecting to see the start of the
remaining work prior to the status date (current date) to be moved to be
moved forward to the status date. I am not seeing that happen in my plan. I
do see the start of the remaining work being moved forward to the last date
that the task was updated, even if it is before the status date.

I have the following collaboration calculations set:
Updating task status updates resource status
Move end of completed parts after status date back to status date
And move start of remaining parts back to status date
Move start of remaining parts before status date forward to status date

Also note: status date in project information is not set.

What am I missing?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Barry --

If you are NOT entering the Status Date in the Project Information diaog,
then how can you expect the software to determine the Status Date and
display the progress information as you wish? If your last statement is a
"typo" about not entering the Status Date, then what is your method of
tracking progress?

% Work Complete?
Actual Work Done and Work Remaining?
Hours of Work Done per Day or Per Week?

If you use either the first two methods and set the Status Date in the
project, then your settings in the Options dialog should work as you would
expect them to do. If you use the latter method, however, the entry of time
on the PWA timesheet will determine how progress displays for the task. Let
us know about the first question.

 

[Barry]

Hi Dale,

In my book "Dynamic Scheduling" by Eric Uyttewaal, it states that if the
status date is not set, it will default to the current date. Assuming that
project may not behave that way, I also have tried setting the status date in
Project Information box as you suggested. This did nothing as well.

I did find a manual work around from another posting which was to to
"Recalulated Remaining Work" from the Tools->Tracking->Update Project option.
This did do what I thought the "Calaboration Calculations" options would do.
I also see your answer as to when this should be done:

It only affects tasks in which some progress was entered. If no progress
was entered for the task, the Remaining Work will not be rescheduled
automatically. Hope this helps.

So now, I have one question left ---> I set the status date, I entered time
but the remaining work was only moved to the date of the last time entry on
that task and not to the status date. Why?

By the way, thanks for your patience. If I can get all the concepts
working, our company can finally take advantage of reporting our project
status in realtime.

Barry

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Barry --

You didn't answer the key question I asked in my previous post, which was
"What is your method of tracking progress?" Please let me know.

 

[Barry]

We are tracking progress two wasys

we are looking at actual work + remaining work and comparing it to the
baseline work.....

and also comparing

Planned Finish date to the Baseline Finish date to see if we are still on
plan.

Like I state earlier, I have set the calculation options to push the
remaining work forward to the status date when I update time entered in PWA,
but the remaining planned work only moves to the date that actual work was
last entered, even if the date was 4 days earlier. I thought that this
should be automatic.

How should the calculation option behave (first post in this thread)?