Wrong estimations Vs. Overtime

[rasivasu]

Hello,

Supposed I estimate the effort for task to be 2 day and the resource
completes the task in 1 days, the schedule reports that the resource
has worked 200 units (Task Information->Resource->Units). Is it the
right way of representing what has happened? If someone new reviews
the schedule, she/he would get the impression that the resource in
question has worked 16 hours on that day (whereas the reason why the
person has completed the two days work in one day may be because the
estimate is not correct). How do I differenciate between overtime and
wrong estimates?

Regards,
Ravi

 

[JulieS]

Hi Ravi,

Once you have created the plan with estimates, you'll want to save a
baseline (Tools > Tracking > Save Baseline) to preserve the original
estimates for work, duration, start, finish, and cost in the baseline
fields. There are several methods you could use to then track actual data
in the project:

1.You can apply the tracking table (View > Table > Tracking). The tracking
table has fields for actual and remaining duration as well as actual work.
On a task where the original duration (baseline) was 2 days, if you set the
actual duration to 1 day, Project will assume you have 1 day remaining
duration. You can set the remaining duration to 0 days and Project will
assume the task is complete in 1 day and will assume the actual work was 8
hours.

2. You can view the Task Usage or Resource Usage view (View > Task Usage or
View > Resource Usage). In either view you will want to add the Actual
Work, and if necessary, the Actual Overtime Work. To add additional fields
to the time-scaled (right side) portion of the view, choose Format > Detail
Styles. In the Detail Styles dialog box, select Actual Work in the Available
fields list, and click the Show button to add the field to the Show these
fields list. [Note: you can also show the Detail Styles dialog box by
clicking your secondary mouse button over the right side of the view and
selecting Detail Styles... from the shortcut menu.] Repeat if needed for the
Actual Overtime Work field. You can then track Actual Work and Actual
Overtime work. For example, if the resource worked a total of 10 hours (8
hours regular and 2 hours OT), fill in 8 hours in Actual Work and 2 hours in
Actual Overtime work. Project will assume the resource still has 6 hour
remaining on the following day. If the resource completed the task in the
10 hours, enter a 0 over the 6 hours scheduled for the next day.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

 

[rasivasu]

Thanks Julie.

 

[JulieS]

You're welcome Ravi and thanks for the feedback.
Julie