✕

Microsoft Project 2010 Series: Session 8 : Track project actual against project baseline information

Read Transcriptions

✕

Introduction: Microsoft Project 2010 Series: Session 8 : Track project actual against project baseline information

Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Techgig webinar series, our endeavor to empower techies. We believe that sharing of the knowledge is the key to enhance our skills and grow us as professionals. With this principle in mind we have initiated a series of webinars conducted by industry experts to give you all a crisp insight of various domains. The topic of today’s session is Track project actual against project baseline information.This is the 8th session in the Microsoft project 2010 series, this series is been conducted by our guest speaker Mr. B Sai Prasad, who is a senior manager learning and development in Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. So without further delay I introduce you all to our guest speaker.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all participants as we all know this is the 8th session of the project 2010 series where we are going to look at how do we record actuals so that we can compare against a base line to know the track, progress of the project.

So just a quick recap in the first 7 sessions we talk about how to set up the project and we talked about how to change the working time and in 3rd session we talked about how to create the work breakdown structure and how to set dependencies.

The fourth session was about adding resource information in terms of people material and cost. In the fifth session we talked about different options in terms of how to append the resources over people and material and configure activities. In the sixth session we talked about how to convert your daft schedule to an optimize schedule by making use of the resource optimization techniques. In the last session we were talking about how do we do base lining with respect to project 2010.

So today we will be talking about how do you track project actuals so that they can compare it within your project baseline. So the key take away of this 1 hour webinar would be to understand what is the right strategy for updating your actual, you will also talk about how do you update your task level actual in terms of actual start, actual finish and the remaining duration at the assignment level you will also look at how do you record your actual work, remaining work and the actual start and the actual finish date.

So before we get into the strategies and the option I am just going back to my project 2010. So this is a plan which we are going to use of a demo for this webinar. So as you can see we have a set of activities and these activities have been sequenced by making use of the predecessor column.

We also have a set of resources assign to these activities so just a quick recap in order to baseline this complete project so I am just going to go to the view ribbon where I will change my table from entry to baseline.

You can see my current project plan is not yet baseline so let me baseline it first before we move on to recording actual. So the first step is to do a baseline go to the project tab and just use this set baseline option and make sure that you have selected the current baseline as baseline and it for the entire project.

So the moment you do a baseline you can see that baseline data is automatically set in terms duration start, finish and work. Remember base lining is very critical before you start according your actual. 

Now let me go back to my entry table so one of the common ways by which people start recording actual so I will give you small demo for it so I have seen people inserting a column called as a percent complete column which are able to see as the first (( )).

So what happens is when you try to record your percentage complete project might behave in a totally different way, so let’s take the example of an activity like develop the preliminary budget activity row number 10. So when I say this activity is 100% complete you are able to see this activity has been marked as completed but you can see that this activity is happening on a future date.

So let’s assume that the current or the status date of your project is 27th which means as on that date you are trying to record your actuals so when you are try to provide a percentage complete for an activity irrespective of whether this happening is happening before this status date or after the status date Microsoft project just assumes that I just need to record as percentage complete.

Another opposite is if I go to the row number 8 conduct needs analysis and if say activity is only 20% complete which means the remaining 80% of the need analysis can ideally be pushed on or after the status date.

So naturally updating your percentage completes will not give you a clear progress. Secondly when you are trying to record your percentage complete you can see none of this activities are moved the reason is it assumes that the activity are plan to be completed in the original estimate. So it might happen that the remaining duration of these activities might be more than the estimates.

Updating Strategies

So I am going to undo the changes what I have done first so let’s go back to the slide and talk about the strategies first. Remember there are two different ways by which you can record your or update your actuals. The first option is you can update at a task level, the second option is you can update at an assignment level.When we talk about task we are more focusing on recording your actual start date, your actual duration, your remaining duration and your actual finish. Remember based on this information the percentage complete will get automatically calculated.So when you try to record these data at a top level Microsoft project automatically updates the assignments of these activities. So for example, if I say an activity has started on January 1st and let’s duration is 5 days so project assumes that on those 5 days you have done 8 hours of work per day.So naturally the actual hours on a daily basis will be 8 hours. On the opposite side you can also look at recording the actuals more at an assignment level. So for instance if you are recording your actual work or the remaining work by resources or by day or by assignment naturally that task which gets affected by this assignment will get automatically updated.

Updating Tasks

So let’s look at the few steps which we need to do before we start updating your actuals. The first step is I recommend you change your view to what we call as a tracking Gantt view because this will help you to understand better your project is baselined or not and you will also be able to compare your current plan with your baseline.So let me first change my table on my view to tracking Gantt so I will go to the task ribbon you can see there is a views group I am going to change my view to tracking Gantt. Now you are able to see that for all these activities you can see there is a black color bar that is drawn below all these activities.The black color just represents these activities having baseline whereas the top bar ideally represents these activities are your current plan. You might also observe that all these activities are falling on your critical path and that’s a reason it has been marked in red color.So the first step is I am making sure my view is in tracking Gantt which you can see on your file bar. The next step is I am going to change my table which is within this view to tracking so go to the view ribbon and just change the table to tracking so when you change it to tracking you can see there a few set of fields that are displayed here we start with you have the actual start, actual finish, the percentage complete, the physical percentage complete, the actual duration, the remaining duration and other columns.What I recommend is not all the columns would be useful for us. The reason being if you are prepared a schedule that is more duration oriented naturally you might not want record your actual work or your remaining work but your schedule is more effort oriented where you are done on effort based estimation naturally you might want to have your actual work in this case.So I am just going to hide my actual work because let’s assume we have done a duration based scheduling. The second column is you can see this percentage complete column is an editable field or the challenge what we have this percentage completed it always it does not consider your status date of a reference date.So if I say an activity is 50% complete whether it happens before the status date or after the status date the successor activities will not get rescheduled. So the first step is I don’t want you to use the percentage complete column as an input filed rather use it more as an output filed in this case.The second step is before we start recording the actual I ensure that the status data has been set. The status date is the date on which you are collecting the actual from your team and your stake holders so in this example we are assuming that the status date of this project is to be 27th of December 2012.The second step is we would like to have that status date as a reference date on my screen so that you will be able to know which activity should be before status date and which activity happens after the status date.So I will go to the format ribbon where you can see there is an option called grid line let me select the grid lines option and I am just going to select the status date as the lines to change so by default the status date line will not be shown on your Gantt charts so let me change the line and let me give a color to it.You can now observe that there is a small red color line which stands out of status date of your current projects. As for your current project plan activities that are before the status date should be updated activities that are happening after the status date are something it is yet to start.Now I am just going to give you a few scenarios which you need to remember.So just a quick recap what we did was we just looked at changing the view to tracking Gantt and we also change the table to tacking table. So the second set is we need to have the status date at set using their project tab and the third point which I wanted to mention is remember on the 3rd or the 4th session of the series I was mentioning about what we call as a task file.Just to give you a quick recap when you double click any activity on your advance tab you can see for any task you can have one of these 3 types a task can be fixed duration or it can be fixed units or fixed work.What I mean by fixed duration (( )) does not change whereas when I say the work is fixed which means the total effort of that particular task is fixed. For example if you have done a duration based estimation naturally I recommend that you don’t have it as a fixed duration because as u start recording your actuals you might want to revise the duration of those activities. So the recommended task type as have it as fixed unit and not have it as fixed work or fixed duration.So by default for all your activities the task site will be fixed unit. Now let me go back to the slides we are going to talk about different scenarios so that we can look at on a case by case basis which option is the best effective way for recording your actuals. The first scenario here let’s assume that there is a task in a schedule that ran as per scheduled so which means that activity is 100% complete so there are two ways of doing it you can go to the tracking table and say the percent complete is 100 or you can use the task ribbon and say that activity is 100% complete.Let me go back to my project so let me say that my prepare or my determine the project scope this activity is 100% complete. One option is you can say this activity is 100% complete by making use of this column percentage complete column. The second one is you can go to the task ribbon where you can see there are a few percentage complete options available so you just need to choose that this activity is 100% complete. So the moment you say that 100% complete you can see that the activity is remaining duration is zero and you can see that the project as automatically calculated the start date and the finish date of that particular task.You can see there is column called physical percentage complete. Remember this column indicates the output completion. For example you might say that the this duration of this activity is only two hours ok which means it is only 50% complete.But in terms of output or the deliverables it might be 75% complete. So depending on what the output you are trying to measure you may try to enter the physical percentage complete column here. So I am just going to undo it and have it has 100% complete.The second way by you which you can update your actuals there are certain activities in your project that is running as per schedule remember these activities are in progress or these activities may have been completed. So but it is been running as per your schedule. So for using this we are going to use an option called mark on track which is there on your task ribbon.So let me select a couple of activities let’s say that I am selecting my secure project sponsorship activity.So rather than using this percentage column I can make use of this mark on track option so when I use this mark on track option if this activity is happening before the status dates automatically the percentage complete column will get updated to 100. But if this activity for after the status date naturally this activity is percentage complete will be zero.So let’s have a short demo of it I have selected row number 3 and let me save mark on track you can see that this activities actual start actual finish is getting automatically updated and even it’s actual duration is also getting updated.So one of the points I would like you to remember is whenever you are trying to record your actual ask your team members more than the actual duration ask them what would be the remaining duration of this activity.So here in both the cases we are assuming that you have consumed the same amount of time what you have estimated but let’s assume that this secure project sponsorship you have taken more time to complete you can go to the actual duration column and just revise it to 2 days. So the moment you say it 2 days the actual finish date updated to a later date and you can see the successors of all these activities for getting automatically pushed to a later date.So now let me take another example I am going to take a task which is falling on the status date I hope you guys can see that there is an activity that falls before and after the status date. So if I say this task is mark on track you can see it is only 17% complete because it is only 17% of the task is happening before the status date. So the remaining percentage is falling after the status date.If I select an activity that falls after the status date and I say it is mark on track naturally that activities percentage complete will not get updated. So in this demonstration I was talking about those activities that are running as per schedule which means that you don’t need to revise your plan duration in this case.The 3rd scenario here there are certain activities that are running behind which means you are having an activity which are started in the past but it got interrupted in between which means when you have an interruption the remaining portion of that work can be done only on or after the status date.So let me go back to my example and let’s say that we have an activity called ah define the preliminary resources and saying that this activity is I have started on time and let me say this activity is started on 17th of December ok and I am just going to say that it’s only 25% of the work is completed. Which means the remaining 75% of the work should be moved on or after the status date.So I am just going to select all the activity and I go to the task ribbon where you have an option called move you can select the option called move the incomplete part to this status date. So any activity that is scheduled before the status date will get automatically moved on or after the status date.Now you will be able to observe that activity got split into two pieces one happening in the past and other happening on or after the status date. So first two scenarios here there are certain activities that is running as per plan but it took longer or shorter to complete. So for example we have an activity let’s say conduct need analysis this activity is progressing as for your current plan ok so we are just taking the same example. So let’s say this activity got completed as per the original plan and we say this task is 100% complete but is this activity took more than 1 day to complete you just need to revise the actual duration to let’s say 3 days and if you have more work to be done just revise the remaining duration to 2 days more.You can see based on your actual and your remaining which means this 3 days of work is completed out of 5 days the percentage complete has been calculated as 60%. The last option we are going to look at is there are certain activities that would have started early or that would have started late. So it is again the same option you just need to use this mark on track option but one small change.For example let’s assume we have this task secure the core resources and we say that this activity as completed as per your status date.So though it might look it started on time you might want to revise this actual start date to later date so let me say it started only on 26th which means it’s total duration has not change but the date when it started and finished is ideally getting affected. These are strategies which you ideally need to use in terms of updating your task.

Updating Assignments

Now let’s move on to the next strategy of updating your assignments we all know assignment is all about who is doing which activity and this will allow you control over how many hours is spent by the individual resource on the base of a week. So for which you just need to change your view to the resource usage. So let me first change my view to resource usage.So by default you can see the resource usage list in the level 1 you will able to see the list of resources and in level 2 you will have the list of activities assigned to that particular resources. So let me first hide all the assignments I will go to the format ribbon and I will say I will go to the view ribbon and I will say I will hide all the sub tasks. So now you are able to see just the resource names here some of you might wonder why some of these resources are in red color because they are over allocated and it is an unoptimized schedule.So let’s talk about this activity which we are focusing now which is the you are determining the project scope we are trying to secure the sponsorship and reviewing the functional specifications.    So if you want to record your actual at their assignment level I recommend that you just need to change the table to the work table so just go to the view and just change the table to what we call as work. Remember the work table will give you more information about the activities that are assigned to the resources. For example, if you look at the determine project scope which has been assign to the team called management this activity is 100% complete and you can see that this activity is total effort you are spend this 4 hours and what has been approved by the customer is also 4 hours.So the variance is automatically zero so if you want to record it at an assignment level you can go here and say naturally you would not spend 4 hours let’s see I have spent 8 hours of time so you can go ahead and revise it here also.Let’s take another activity for example let’s talk about the obtained approvals to proceed this activity if you look at it I have not recorded the actual. So for example I say that this activity took 8 hours to complete which means the remaining hours should zero ok and this activity is assume to be completed because I took more than what I originally estimated and let’s say for this activity I want to record a remaining effort for it so you have taken 8 hours and you need another 2 more hours to complete it.So the total effort required for completing this task is 10 hours so since 8 hours of work is completed in 10 hours the work complete is 80%. So now let me scroll to that particular task so you can see that the work has been divided across 2 days on the 1st day it is 4 hours and the 2nd day it is 6 hours. So though it is not very clear what work is we are going to add a few more rows on the assignment.So let me go to the format ribbon and I am just going to check the actual work when I check the actual work you are able to see for this specific activity I have recorded my actual work here as 4 hours and 4 hours which is here and you also have a remaining may be let me scroll to the other fact type ok year yeah I think it’s right.So since out of 6 hours of work that has been plan only 4 hours is completed on Tuesday ok so you can also go at the day level and say may be I want to say that on Tuesday he has taken only 4 hours of work but the remaining 2 hours of work that I schedule on Tuesday its move to Wednesday here which means that remaining effort is still not altered but you can see the start date and the finish date of that particular activity would have been affected.So the option what we have seen is you just need to change the view to the resource usage and change    your tables to the work table. Then next step is as I have already mentioned you need to have your task type to fixed unit so that whether you are doing an effort based update or a duration base update it does not have any conflicts    .Then make sure you are adding your work and your actual work so that those are displayed as two different rows on your screen. So the actual work represents the total effort you are spent on that date whereas work generally represents the actual work plus the remaining work on that particular date.So let’s look at some questions what participants have participants if you have any questions please go to your Q and A and just share your questions please.

Video length - 00:49:16

502 attendees

Conducted on - 13 Dec,2012

5688 views

About Speaker
B Sai PrasadSenior Manager Learning & Development, Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt. Ltd
B Sai Prasad, Senior Manager – Learning & Development, has been with service provider Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt. Ltd since 2001 where he was named winner of the company's Global Trainer of t...
In session 8 of Project 2010 series, we will learn the different techniques to track project actuals to help understand the progress of the project. The techniques range from simple task level updates to sophisticated time-phased level updates.

Tags
Project ManagementMicrosoft Project 2010

More Webinars from this speaker
This page might use cookies if your analytics vendor requires them. Accept