Project 2003 Projects - Trying to report on Progress, not working

[Mike S.]

I have a very graphical orientated set of executives that want to see status
of our projects.
I have a roll-up project (totallying about 45 projects), each on its' own
line within the file.

The ideal gantt chart would show each project on its own line and how far
along they are. This is the tricky part. The progress bar should show on a
calendar only up to the oldest task that has not been completed, nothing to
do with the percentages of completion or duration or work.
Is there such a way to do this in project or even within project web server
2003?
I am looking for something that won't require programming.
Thanks.
Mike

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Mike S --

Is you use Project Server, the Project Center page in Project Web Access
will show your executives the information they wish to see. To address your
concern about the progress line, you would need to use the "Hours of work
done per day or per week" method of tracking with actuals entered on a daily
basis. Hope this helps.

 

[John]

I have a very graphical orientated set of executives that want to see status
of our projects.
I have a roll-up project (totallying about 45 projects), each on its' own
line within the file.

The ideal gantt chart would show each project on its own line and how far
along they are. This is the tricky part. The progress bar should show on a
calendar only up to the oldest task that has not been completed, nothing to
do with the percentages of completion or duration or work.
Is there such a way to do this in project or even within project web server
2003?
I am looking for something that won't require programming.
Thanks.
Mike

Mike,
I'm not sure that what you are asking for will be of any true value. For
example, let's say a particular project has 100 tasks. One task is to
document something and it is set to start early in the process but
extends nearly to the end. Assume 90 of the 100 tasks are all complete
and basically everything is looking grand except the documentation task
and a few others are not done. According to your request the single line
in the master file representing that file will show skewed "progress"
because the bar will be driven by the one early task (documentation)
that isn't done. This is just one example. We could probably come up
with several scenarios that would also skew the data and make it
essentially useless.

What's wrong with tracking progress based on either % Work Complete, %
Complete, or even % physical complete? There is a reason Project uses
these built-in progress tracking metrics. They are not prefect for all
cases but generally they give a good valid representation of overall
progress.

Nonetheless to answer your question, a spare flag field can be used
perhaps with a formula to identify the oldest incomplete task in each
subproject. A special bar style can then be used based on the flag to
display the Summary line progress. We'd have to know more about what you
mean when you say, "... up to the oldest task that has not been
completed..." (i.e. Start date of that task, Finish date, etc.) before
the details could be worked out.

Just for reference, a simple VBA macro would, in my opinion, be a lot
easier than trying to use formulas.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Haris Rashid]

hi Mike,

I would suggest use the Group By box to separate the completed and
incomplete tasks. In the incomplete tasks section, scroll up to the date to
which work is complete and use the rest of the Gantt Chart for the
presentation.

Regards,
Haris

 

[Mike S.]

Just a little more details to explain the issue:

If using the Project Center page, in PWA, it lists projects with a timeline
partially filled, indicating progress (using summary view as an example).
We are tracking all time on a daily basis with actuals on the projects.
So, in this view, project #1 is shown to be complete up to April 20th.
Although if you drill down into the project, you will see 1 or more tasks
that are prior to April 20th that are not complete. I believe the progress
bar is a weighted representation of the project, vs. actual completion of
all tasks.

Simply, management wants to look at a graph of a calendar and say that
projects 1,2 and x are behind schedule - in their mind that means that there
are tasks that we estimated to be completed by today and they are not, so
the completion bar on the graph would be only as far as the completed actual
work.
I hope that explains a little more.
Thanks!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Mike S --

Although I sympathize with your management, I don't believe that either
Microsoft Project or Project Server will display a progress line the way
they wish. If you use the Actual work done per day or per week method of
tracking in Project Server, then the progress line for each task will show
whether actuals were submitted during the previous reporting period. If
multiple resources are assigned to a task, then the progress line will show
the average progress between all of the assigned resources on the task. It
will not show a progress line as your managers wish, however..

Therefore, I think you have at least a couple of choices:

1. Help your managers to understand how Microsoft Project and Project
Server display the progress line
2. Use the technique that John described in his post to your original
problem

Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the books on Project Server"