Re: statistical graph showing percentages

"John" wrote:

In article <FE9FDC80-F139-4C45-90F1-AB3F9D037763@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Sandy82 <Sandy82@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Forgive me if I was a little vague, I am a complete novice with Project. I
have to create a report or graph which shows, month on month cumulatively,
the percentage of tasks which have been completed in comparison to the
predicted task durations (baseline). There are no resources or costs to
consider.

Sandy82,
My first question is, how did those tasks get completed if there are no
resources assigned to do them? Pretty neat trick - you must be saving
tons of money on labor costs. Just an observation.

Getting a cumulative value of how many tasks have been completed each
month is pretty easy but I don't quite understand what you mean by
"predicted task durations" and how that relates to task completions.

In Project, duration is the difference in working time between the start
of a task and the finish of that task. That duration is only a
"baseline" if a baseline is set, otherwise that duration is the
scheduled duration and subject to change as the schedule is accelerated
or falls behind.

It sounds to me that perhaps what you want to do is to get a cumulative
value of how many tasks actually completed each month compared to how
many tasks were scheduled to finish during that month, and perhaps you
want to track the original finish dates (i.e. baseline) of each task.
For that, you need to set a baseline under Tools/Tracking/Save Baseline.
That will basically take a snapshot of various Project data fields and
store those values into separate defined baseline fields. However, if
you've already been messing around with the schedule such that dates are
changing, it is going to be pretty hard to establish baseline data that
was valid when the plan was first developed.

Well ok, let's say you did save a baseline, now what? You could create
two filters and then count the tasks that resulted when the filters were
applied. The first filter would find all tasks that are between month
start and month end and are 100% complete. The second filter would find
all tasks that have a baseline finish date between month start and month
end. To create those filters, do the following
1. Go to Project/Filtered for/More filters
2. Hit "new", then create the following filter - call it "Cmpl this
month", or whatever.
And/Or Field Name Test Value
Finish is greater than or equal to "Enter Month start"?
And Finish is less than "Enter Month end"?
And % Complete equals 100

uncheck the option to show related summary rows

3. Repeat step 2 and create a second filter as follows:
And/Or Field Name Test Value
Baseline Finish is greater than or equal to "Enter Month
start"?
And Baseline Finish is less than "Enter Month
end"?

uncheck the option to show related summary rows

4. Apply the first filter and count the tasks
5. Apply the second filter and count the tasks

Now here are some downsides to this simplistic metric. Counting task
completions tells you absolutely nothing about how the schedule is
going. You could have tons of unimportant tasks complete and the metric
would look great but you're really in deep yogurt. Similarly you might
have 5 tasks that were supposed to be complete this month and 5 tasks
that were complete this month - the metric looks great, except it won't
show if the 5 tasks that were complete were the 5 tasks that were
SUPPOSED to be completed.

John
Project MVP

Hi John
Thank you for your help, I have tried out your suggestion and it is a really
useful tool, however my manager would like me to investigate further options.
I realise the reporting criteria seems odd but basically, for one of our
KPIs this year, our Project Department has been asked to track the task
performance of 10 of their projects. The remit is to save a baseline and
ensure the actual task durations stay within 80% of the baseline task
durations (the idea is to track using a high level view). The status of the
tasks will be updated using “percent complete” in the “Task Information”
option and I have to produce a chart or report that shows the total
percentage of any schedule variance from the actual tasks performed vs. the
baseline tasks on a monthly basis, for example a bar chart showing months
January to December showing baseline task durations vs. actual task
durations. I have tried using the Gantt Wizard choosing a customised Gantt
but can’t seem to achieve the desired results (the percentages show per
individual task). I do hope I have explained myself clearly, I am due to
attend intermediate and advanced MS Project training this year when hopefully
things will become clearer, but unfortunately my reports have to be produced
by the beginning of February so if you or any of the other experts have any
further suggestions I would be extremely grateful.

Best regards
Sandy82



"John" wrote:

In article <CB1B73F8-1444-4CDF-B2D7-C6E811D3EEF7@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Sandy82 <Sandy82@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I would like to produce a statistical graph in excel showing the
percentage
of the duration of the project elapsed and the percentage of the tasks
completed, in comparison with the baseline.

Sandy82,
There are various ways to do it, but first a little better understanding
of your parameters is required. For example, are you looking for a set
of three data points for the whole project taken over time (i.e. 3 data
points as of today, 3 more as os next Monday, etc.), or are you trying
to plot 3 data points for each and every performance task? Also, what do
you mean by "baseline"? Project has several baseline fields. Are you
talking about baseline duration, baseline start, baseline finish, or
some other baseline?

Once the parameters are nailed down and appropriate data calculated (if
necessary), the data can be exported to Excel using an export map, a VBA
macro, or if you have Project 2007, visual reports.

Lots of options.

John
Project MVP


.

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