In favor of separating work and duration in tracking

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Yes, yes, yes! ;-)... thanks for the passionate reply!

I think we do agree on :"You use the baseline and the current schedule
together to compare the plan as it was expected to unfold THEN to what
has actually happened until NOW so
you can accurately predict and control what is going to happen in the
FUTURE."

But I will not agree with: "To do that successfully you simply must let
the calculating engine
do its job."

Here's an example of what I get in a weekly update: task "A" planned
40h work, planned duration tuesday of last week (we call that the
"reporting week") until monday current week. Friday afternoon the
tracking data is collected and processed on monday. Sample data for
Task "A". 32h actual work, first hours on Monday of reporting week
already, so actual start one day early - great. Still there is no entry
in "re estimate work remaining" and the task isn't set to "complete" so
there is still 8h of work to be done - no trouble so far: MSP will
stick to the finish date of monday current week after entering work.
But wait: there is an entry in "re estimate finish": thursday current
week. So the guy working on task A tells me he can't finish those 8h
work today (sickness, availability of peer review, whatever...). "Now
if I would just "let the calculation engine do its job" I am exactly
NOT comparing real performance to plan - I'm losing valuable
information. After entering the new finish date for task A I'm happy
that MSP will calculate the duration effects in the network downstream
of task A for me. But it just doesn't make sense to stick to the
planning estimate when updating a single task: how would you enter that
a task is on budget but late otherwise? Overwrite the actual cost,
manually change the units? I just find entering actual work and then
updating remaining work or finish (i.e. planned finish, not baseline)
if necessary 1:1 with the values I get from my update sheets the most
straight forward. But I need to tell MSP to keep duration and work
separate to be successful here.

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Track Estimated vs Actual work
    ... You can view variance values in many different tables - variances compare the values shown in the current schedule to the values saved in those same field in the baseline. ... The Budgeted Cost of Work Performed compared to Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled tell you is you're on schedule while Actual Cost of Work Performed compared to Budgeted Cost of Work Performed tells you if you're over or under budget. ...
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