Chapter 13: Tracking Progress on Tasks and Assignments

Chapter at a Glance

Update a baseline prior to tracking actual work, page 287. Enter actual work for tasks and assignments, page 291. Enter timephased actual work for tasks and assignments, page 298. Interrupt work on the project to restart after the date you specify, page 303.

In This Chapter, You will Learn How to:

• Update a previously saved baseline plan.

• Record actual work for tasks and assignments.

• Record actual work by time period.

• Interrupt work on a task and specify the date on which the task should start again.

Tip 

Do you need only a quick refresher on the topics in this chapter? See the Quick Reference entries on pages xxv–xlviii.

Building, verifying, and communicating a sound project plan might take much or even most of your time as a project manager. However, planning is only the first phase of managing your projects. After the planning is completed, the implementation of the project starts-carrying out the plan that was previously developed. Ideally, projects are implemented exactly as planned, but this is seldom the case. In general, the more complex the project plan and the longer its planned duration, the more opportunity there is for variance to appear. Variance is the difference between what you thought would happen (as recorded in the project plan) and what really happened (as recorded by your tracking efforts).

Properly tracking actual work and comparing it against the original plan enables you to identify variance early and adjust the incomplete portion of the plan when necessary. If you completed Chapter 6, “Tracking Progress on Tasks,” you were introduced to the simpler ways of tracking actuals in a project plan. These include recording the percentage of a task that has been completed as well as its actual start and finish dates. These methods of tracking progress are fine for many projects, but Microsoft Office Project 2007 also supports more detailed ways of tracking.

In this chapter, you track task-level and assignment-level work totals and work per time period, such as work completed per week or per day. Information distributed over time is commonly known as timephased, so tracking work by time period is sometimes referred to as tracking timephased actuals. This is the most detailed level of tracking progress available in Project.

As with simpler tracking methods, tracking timephased actuals is a way to address the most basic questions of managing a project:

• Are tasks starting and finishing as planned? If not, what will be the impact on the project’s finish date?

• Are resources spending more or less time than planned to complete tasks?

• Is it taking more or less money than planned to complete tasks?

As a project manager, you must determine what level of tracking best meets the needs of your project plan and stakeholders. As you might expect, the more detailed the tracking level, the more effort required from you and the resources assigned to tasks. This chapter exposes you to the most detailed tracking methods available in Project.

In this chapter, you work with different means of tracking work and handling incomplete work. You begin, however, by updating the project baseline.

Tip 

This tip describes enterprise project management (EPM) functionality. This chapter describes entering actual values directly in Project. Project Professional, when used with Project Server, offers more sophisticated ways of collecting information (such as actual work) from resources and other stakeholders. To learn more about the enterprise collaboration tools available with Project Server, see Part 4, “Introducing Project Server.”

Important 

Before you can use the practice files provided for this chapter, you need to install them from the book’s companion CD to their default locations. See “Using the Book’s CD” on page xix for more information.