Progress lines don't work with milestone summary tasks

[FleurH]

I have a question about progress lines. In my project plan, I have a number
of external dependencies (deliveries into the project in fact). I have
entered these as milestones to make it easy to track them, and grouped them
under a summary taskline. Each dependency is tied to at least one task as
'finish-to-start', as these are tasks that cannot start without the
dependency being delivered. Note that these linked tasks are under other
summary tasks.

When I try to use progress lines to show the status of my plan, for some
reason the progress line fails to properly calculate the progress for the
milestone summary taskline. The reason seems to be that although each
milestone is marked as 0 days duration, the summary task duration is
calculated as the period from the first milestone to the last one - so for
example if my first milestone is 5/Dec/05 and the last is 1/May/06, the
summary milestone taskline has a duration of 105 days - and although I may
mark a milestone under the summary taskline as 100% complete, this does not
reduce the number of days on the summary taskline. Hence the progress line
always shows that there are 105 days left to complete the 'tasks'. The
progress line does correctly recognise that an individual milestone has been
delivered, and draws through the milestone itself.

Is there a way of correcting for this?

Fleur Howles

 

[John]

I have a question about progress lines. In my project plan, I have a number
of external dependencies (deliveries into the project in fact). I have
entered these as milestones to make it easy to track them, and grouped them
under a summary taskline. Each dependency is tied to at least one task as
'finish-to-start', as these are tasks that cannot start without the
dependency being delivered. Note that these linked tasks are under other
summary tasks.

When I try to use progress lines to show the status of my plan, for some
reason the progress line fails to properly calculate the progress for the
milestone summary taskline. The reason seems to be that although each
milestone is marked as 0 days duration, the summary task duration is
calculated as the period from the first milestone to the last one - so for
example if my first milestone is 5/Dec/05 and the last is 1/May/06, the
summary milestone taskline has a duration of 105 days - and although I may
mark a milestone under the summary taskline as 100% complete, this does not
reduce the number of days on the summary taskline. Hence the progress line
always shows that there are 105 days left to complete the 'tasks'. The
progress line does correctly recognise that an individual milestone has been
delivered, and draws through the milestone itself.

Is there a way of correcting for this?

Fleur Howles

Fleur,
Project calculates summary line progress based on the following formula:
summary line progress = (sum of Actual Durations of subtasks)/(sum of
Duration of subtasks) x 100%
For normal tasks this calculate produces a progress value at the summary
level that generally represents total progress of the subtasks. However,
if one or more milestones is included under the summary, there is no
Duration or Actual Duration for them so they are essentially left out of
the equation. In your case, all of the subtasks are milestones so they
will not "register" at the summary level until they are all 100%
complete.

My suggestion, don't try to summarize the progress of milestones.
Instead monitor them individually. If you really must summarize the
progress of multiple milestones, you will need to create a custom field
with your own formula for progress. Base it on % Complete.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[FleurH]

Fleur,
Project calculates summary line progress based on the following formula:
summary line progress = (sum of Actual Durations of subtasks)/(sum of
Duration of subtasks) x 100%
For normal tasks this calculate produces a progress value at the summary
level that generally represents total progress of the subtasks. However,
if one or more milestones is included under the summary, there is no
Duration or Actual Duration for them so they are essentially left out of
the equation. In your case, all of the subtasks are milestones so they
will not "register" at the summary level until they are all 100%
complete.

My suggestion, don't try to summarize the progress of milestones.
Instead monitor them individually. If you really must summarize the
progress of multiple milestones, you will need to create a custom field
with your own formula for progress. Base it on % Complete.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

Hi John

Thanks for the info - what I didn't have was the formula MS Project uses to
calculate progress, and as you say, it does not work for milestones as they
essentially have no duration. What I was hoping for was that MS would have
realised this possible use of the progress line feature, and would have
enabled a clever mechanism to 'switch off' progress tracking for non-duration
based tasks (i.e. milestones), which basically are passed when the date they
are due is passed, or else they move out.

Progress lines are the favoured way of reporting status in our company, and
milestones and dependencies regarded as important to indicate on a plan, so
progress lines in Project looked they would solve the status reporting issues
in an automated way - I guess I'll go back to using a super-imposed progress
line to indicate status.

Many thanks for the explanation,

Fleur

 

[John]

Hi John

Thanks for the info - what I didn't have was the formula MS Project uses to
calculate progress, and as you say, it does not work for milestones as they
essentially have no duration. What I was hoping for was that MS would have
realised this possible use of the progress line feature, and would have
enabled a clever mechanism to 'switch off' progress tracking for non-duration
based tasks (i.e. milestones), which basically are passed when the date they
are due is passed, or else they move out.

Progress lines are the favoured way of reporting status in our company, and
milestones and dependencies regarded as important to indicate on a plan, so
progress lines in Project looked they would solve the status reporting issues
in an automated way - I guess I'll go back to using a super-imposed progress
line to indicate status.

Many thanks for the explanation,

Fleur

Fleur,
You're welcome.

John
Project MVP

 

[Mike Glen]

Could you give the milestone a duration of, say, 1 minute? This might
overcome your problem.


Mike Glen
Project MVP