Re: Actual Work Greater than Baselined Work

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Thanks very much Steve. This was a big help towards my understanding. I
couldn't respond before because of mysterious 'page errors'.

I expect I'll wind up creating a somewhat makeshift solution for our Project
template. Since our PMs already complain about the complexity of using
Project, I'll probably use Work, Resource Names, Predecessors, Project Start
date, and Leveling Can Split to generate most of the task dates and durations
- along with Fixed Work tasks. That's for project planning.

For tracking (after baselining), we'll use Actual Start, Actual Finish and a
customized Duration field to hold task actual effort and duration. Maybe
later, we can 'graduate' to take advantage of more that Project has to offer.

Thanks again for your (and Julie's) help. Any other suggestions will be
welcome.

Bill

"Steve House" wrote:

The thing is, work and duration are related to each other through the
resource allocation percentage. The allocation percentage is a measure of
the rate at which the resource turns time into output, ie, hours of time are
reflected in man-hours of work. If you have a baseline work of X man-hours
and a baseline duration of Y hours and increase the work while *holding
allocation constant*, the duration simply must increase by a corresponding
amount UNLESS the extra man-hours of work are performed as Overtime Work, in
which case they don't count towards duration. Whether you're talking about
scheduled parameters or actual performance, the prime directive of Work =
Duration * Allocation Units must always be obeyed and Project will always do
so just like Excel will always give '4' as the result of the formula '=2+2.'
Now Actual Start and Actual Finish dates that differ from baseline may
certainly be entered, no problem with that, but the Actual Duration will
always be the calendar hours between those two dates while the Actual Work
will always be ((Actual Duration * Resource Units) + Overtime Work).
Because these measures are related mathmatically, you can't have all of them
at once as independent variables. As in any equation, there will always be
constants and dependent variables as well.

Assume a standard 8 hour calendar here. We have Bill assigned @ 100% to a
task with 80 hours (10 days) duration, the task's start date is today, 04
Dec and it will finish Fri 15 Dec. Bill is doing 80 man- hours of work.
When we do the task, we find it took 100 man-hours to do. The most anyone
can ever do is 100% - 1 man-hour of work being done for each hour of time
spent, more than that is simply a physical impossibility - and so Bill is
alerady scheduled at the maximum it is possible for him to do. The calendar
says that Bill is only on the property for 8 hours per day, period. Thus it
is impossible for him to do more than 80 man-hours of work between now and
15 Dec. So if the task took 100 man-hours of work, it simply cannot have
finished on the 15th of December because the MOST regular work it is
physically possible for Bill to do during that period is 80 man-hours. The
only way he can do more is by extending his workday with overtime, doing 8
man-hours of regular work + 2 man-hours of overtime work for a total of 10
man-hours per day. This is the only way he can do 100 hours of work during
10 days of duration and not have the finish date change. But unless you
actually manually enter OT work hours as they are used, Project will assume
all hours entered are regular work hours. Thus your desire to have more
regular hours entered without increasing the duration and thus reflecting a
change in finish date is asking Project to report something occurred that is
actually physically impossible. The solution is to account for the hours.

Now here's the rub ... when you simply enter in Actual Work without entering
any Overtime work in the resource usage view, Project assumes the amount
input is all regular work. It never assumes overtime or an increased
allocation, no matter what. So if your PM's need to say "Our baseline
called for 2 weeks duration and 80 hours of work ... it still took 2 weeks
but the guy did 90 hours of work" they're going to have to enter the extra
10 hours by hand as overtime hours on the days where the resource worked
more than scheduled. They can't just enter start date, finish date, and
total work hours and have it all work out somehow.

This same argument holds true for assignment percentages less than 100%
though it's not quite as clear why. If you assign someone at 50%, that
means they have other commitments that prevent them from generating more
than a half-hour's worth of work for each hour of time put in. In effect,
whether you've said their maximum is 50% or have simply assigned them only
50% on this task even though they have a maximum of 100%, you have input to
Project that the unassigned hours are out of the picture entirely. So even
if you substitute 50% for 100% in the above paragraph the same results will
obtain. Now if I assign Bill at 50% for that 10 day task the resource
usage view will show him doing 4 hours per day for a total of 4 hours. But
here's the tricky part - that doesn't really mean he's doing 4 hours on that
task working full speed, say for the morning, and something else the
afternoon. What it really means is that he's working on it all 8 hours but
because he has to juggle it simultaneously with other things, he only gets 4
hours of Full Time Equivalent work done, ie , he takes 8 hours of time to
realize 4 man-hours of progress. Now if I post in 6 hours of work instead
of 4 in the Resource Usage view, it assumes he "jumped the gun" on some of
the hours for the future and is getting a headstart on tomorrow's work, it's
not his assignment that is increased or the hours required that have gone up
but rather we will get the total required hours done sooner than expected.
Conversely, if we post he did 2 hours instead of 4, it's not the required
hours that have gone down but rather he wasn't able to work as fast as
expected and the duration must grow to take into account the slower
progress.



Sorry if this is a bit convoluted, hope it helps you figure out a way to get
what you need.



"WillW" <WillW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ADA5FC56-0A32-49A9-AB6C-6ABAAB925E05@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks, Steve --

In my experience, it often is necessary for project resources to work more
thantheir estimated effort - whether by working additional hours or by
working beyond the allocated percentage on which project planning is
based.

I'm quite happy to let Project adjust allocation percentages (since it is
often necessary for resources to do just this). This is also more
realistic
for our project teams than entering OT. However, when I try to increase
actual task effort and still maintain some control over Actual Duration,
Project generally will not have it.

I would like for our project managers to be able to easily enter Actual
Work
for a task that is greater (or less - but Project doesn't complain about
this) than the baselined amount, while entering Actual Start and Finish
dates
that may be different - and maybe of even shorter duration - than the
baselined dates. As you know, despite the best project planning,
sometimes
circumstances necessitate applying more effort than planned to get a task
done.

I hope my difficulty is a matter of technique in using Project (settings,
forms, etc.) and that, after years of using Project, I'll finally
understand
what it takes to track project effort (Actual Work) efficiently.

Bill




"Steve House" wrote:

If the actual work is greater than the baselined work, how could the
actual
finish date NOT be later than the baselined finish date? Joe is assigned
a
task that requires 40 hours of work and he works 8 hours a day. The task
will be scheduled to finish 5 days after it starts. But if he actually
has
to put in 80 man-hours in order to complete he required deliverable, that
means he's worked on it 10 days and the Actual Finish will be 10 days
after
it starts, not 5 as originally scheduled. That is, unless the added work
is
entered into Project's tracking as overtime work. OT work does NOT count
into duration, so in the example, 40 hours work plus 40 hour overtime
work =
80 hours of total work but only 5 days of duration (only 40 hours counts
toward duration) and the finish date will not be later than it was with
only
40 hours of work being scheduled. Overtime is work done in excess of the
work hours defined by the resource's working time calendar but work
covered
by the resource assignment percentage is work WITHIN the working time
calendar. So Joe's assignment is 20 hours of work over 5 days (40 hours)
duration - ie, his assignment is 50%. Now he actually works 30 hours but
still gets done in 40 hours but he didn't do it by working overtime, he
did
it by eliminating whatever was requiring him to divide his attention so
he
worked more efficiently. To get Project to show the increased hours at
you
have to let it increase his percentage to 75%, reflecting the fact that
he
made more progress per hour worked than but the total effort needed to
create the deliverable was also greater than estimated, thus the gains in
time achieved by working faster were consumed by the additional effort
required.

Remember that required hours (that is, man-hours) of work and hours of
time
are two completely separate measures that can only be related to each
other
within the context of the resource's allocation.

HTH
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



"WillW" <WillW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:D36AE1D0-B148-471D-AAFC-C5E4B0DF9FF6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Planning:
Fixed Work tasks
Baseline generated
Tracking:
A task's Actual Start and Finish are different from Baseline
That task's Actual Work is greater for all assigned resources than
Baseline Work (e.g., it was necessary for resources to work beyond
their
allocation %; or, resources had to work overtime to catch up)

How (and in which view) do I record Actual Work greater than Baseline
Work
and Keep the Actual (real) Finish date (Project seems to inevitably
insist
on
a different Actual Finish)?

PS I tried to find an answer in previous questions, but so far nothing
works for me. Thanks in advance.




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