Problem with Work Contour in Actual Work hours

[cohen.zach]

We have Project Server 2003 SP2a . Lately we encountered a problem
with assignments which their work contour is set to "contoured" and
not "flat". We don't know why those assignments are set to
"contoured", but we suspect that this issue is causing differences/
changes in actual work which have been reported in the PWA.
for example: a report in the PWA of 8h, 8h, 8h has been changed to
fractions of hours like 7.9, 8.1... which is different than the
original report. Sometimes even the total hours is not identical to
the original report.
Can anyone explain why this happens and how we can overcome this
problem?
Thanks a lot for your help.
Zach.

 

[Guidho]

"Contoured" is not the cause of your problem, it's a result of it.
Whenever the assignment timephased hours are not 'flat' anymore (every day
the same value) it shows as contoured.

It's not easy to know what exactly is going on in your plan, but here are
some things to check/try
- If you are using managed periods, try to synchronize the actuals (Tools ->
Tracking -> Sync to Protected Actuals)
- Are your calendar settings ok? Tools -> Options -> Calendar and Tools ->
Change working time. In both places, the nb of hours per day and per week
must match, and this for each calendar used in the project plan (project,
task and resource calendars)
- Do you see those strange numbers immediatly after accepting them in PWA
and updating them to MS Project? Or does the project manager some actions
before it shows up like that? Which actions?

I hope this helps.
Guidho

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

It sounds as though you may be using Fixed-Duration tasks. If so, your
actual work as entered in PWA, will likely not be the way Project records
it.

 

[cohen.zach]

Thanks, Guidho.

I'm not using 'Managed periods' so that's not the problem.
I've rechecked my calendar setting and they are okay.
I'm not seeing those strange numbers immediately after accepting them
in PWA but only in some of the cases for some of the project for only
some of the users and for some of the assignments. That's why I
couldn't find any regularity in the occurrences. Those numbers were
received only after Project Manager updates Project and Re-Publish the
data.
As for the Fixed duration issue, Some of the tasks are Fixed Duration
and some are fixed Units, so I guess that's eliminates the 2nd option.
One more thing that is might be worth mentioning is that all contoured
tasks has an icon in the Indicators column saying that: "The
assignment work has been edited".