% of work not done during a week period

[martin.champoux]

Hello,

My boss is asking me to evaluate the percentage of work not done during
the week for all tasks ?

Because a lot of time, people are not working of the tasks schedule and
she wants to determine the percentage of work that was scheduled but
not performed during a week.

Can I do that with MS-Project or do I have to calculate the numbers
manually with the timesheet ?

The only way that I know is to take all timesheet and compare the time
worked on the project vs. time doing others tasks and then you get the
hours not worked of the project.

Thanks in advance
Marty

 

[Rod Gill]

To do this you need to have all resources assigned realistically to their
tasks. 100% is not realistic in most projects.

The usage view will then tell you the hours for the week to be done on each
task and time sheets need to show actual hours done on the Task. This
comparison can be automated if needed, but to begin with working it out
manually will let you know if the information is worthwhile.

If you don't have realistically assigned resources and time sheets to the
Task level, all you can do is say that Task A should have finished this week
but didn't, or Task B had a duration of 5d and now that looks like 8d and so
on.

 

[John M.]

I would evaluate whether standard earned value metrics, such as schedule
performance index (SPI) meet your needs. All of these metrics are based on
the earned value (what was accomplished), planned value (what you planned on
accomplishing according to your baseline plan), and actual value (how much
it has actually taken).

From a resource participation perspective, then you can look at the variance
between the planned value and the actual value. It can answer the question,
"did people work the amount of hours this week that we planned?"

From a schedule perspective, you look at the earned value relative to the
planned value. You can either look at the schedule variance (earned -
planned) or the SPI (ratio of earned to planned). As an example, if you
planned on accomplishing 200 hours of work this week, but only accomplished
150 hours of the work, the schedule variance would be -50 hours and the SPI
would be 75% for the week.

From a cost perspective, you can look at the earned value relative to the
actual cost. If it took you 200 hours of actual work to accomplish the 150
hours of the plan, then you have a -50 hour cost variance and a cost
performance index (CPI) of 75%.

Note: These metrics assume that you have a baseline and policies/procedures
in place to determine the amount of work accomplished and remaining work.
If you have resources loaded at 1 currency unit ($1) per day or hour, then
the earned value metrics are for days/hours instead of currency units. You
can look at the help in MS Project for some more details on the various
earned value metrics available.

Enjoy.

John M.

 

[martin.champoux]

You can't get the real percentage from CPI and SPI.

If the hours planned during the week is 600 hrs and the hours work is
400 hrs.

The percentage of work done is not necessary 400 / 600 = 66%. The team
could have worked 400hrs but still been able to make 80% of work done
because the estimate were off, because the work was simplier than we
tought.

Just my understanding !!

Thanks

 

[John M.]

You are missing the "earned" component in your sample. The numerator should
be the number of hours earned, not the number of hours worked. The number
of hours worked divided by the number of hours planned just gives you a
participation ratio and is not the SPI. The number of hours earned is based
on the % complete (or physical % complete) and the baseline plan. If your
tracking process does not result in an accurate determination of % complete,
then the EV metrics will be of no use. Your original posting mentioned
timesheets, so I assumed you were capturing the actual hours worked and the
remaining work for each assignment. By applying these updates to the plan,
you should be set (assuming you saved a baseline originally, and that you
update the project status date for the EV calculations to be accurate).

You may find some of Mike Glen's articles of value. He has a couple related
to tracking:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23

John M.