In large schedules it can be useful to filter the tasks for the ones that are likely to require a status update. For this the filter ‘Tasks for updating’ is available that filters all tasks that should already have started on and before the date you enter in the filter. After selecting the view ‘2b Enter Task Progress’ this filter pops-up automatically.
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Tip: Enter a date that is 1-2 weeks ahead, to allow for the possibility that some of the tasks may have started ahead of schedule.
Note: Tracking needs to be done on lowest level activities. Tracking summary tasks will result in many unexpected mistakes in the schedule.
Do you want this filter?
Would you like to get this filter for free? Leave a comment below that you are interested and we will contact you via email so you get this filter!
In our e-course we’ve created a custom view to compare the Duration Tasks vs. the Baseline. In this view you can learn from your actual progress. The smileys will tell you how your duration is doing compared to the (current) baseline.
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2c. Duration Tasks vs. Baseline
Go to view 2c. Duration Tasks vs. Baseline:
Green smiley = value has not changed
Amber smiley = value has increased, but not more than 10%
Red = value has increased by more than 10%
Green minus symbol = value has decreased, but not more than 10%
Amber minus symbol = value has decreases by more than 10%
Explaining the results
Hovering over the symbol will show you the result of the calculation: duration / baseline duration. Notice that this is also done for summary tasks.
A positive result (more than 1) means that the current duration of activities needs more time than previously estimated within the project: we have lost time! If the concerning activity is on the critical path, the project will be delayed!
A negative result (less than 1) means that the current duration of activities needs less time than previously estimated within the project: we have gained some time!
Although a negative result is of course good news for the project, we consider this to be an estimate that is not so good, as it would have delayed preparations for successor tasks longer than needed, freed up resources later than possible, etcetera.
Meaning of the flag
The flag in the column Finish vs Baseline indicates if the task has moved, warning that you should also consider if the following tasks require a new start date. If you forget this, you might lose valuable time in your schedule or you are considering end dates for tasks that are not realistic anymore.
Green flag = task finishes as expected
Red flag = task finished sooner or later than expected
Use of the baseline in your organisation
How often is the baseline functionality in MS Project used within your organisation?
Share it in the comments below.
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Update tasks so you can predict your project’s end date
There is only one thing that will never change in your project, and that is the fact that everything will change constantly. We cannot count the number of times our students have brought up this fact as an argument for the statement that it has no use to try to plan a project. “We cannot predict the future”, is often said.
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We totally agree, just like we cannot exactly predict on what minute we will be home when driving back home after a holiday. We do like the GPS in your car however, which takes all assumptions we CAN DO and transforms this into the most likely Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA). And when we hit a traffic jam, it will start adding minutes to this ETA, telling me that I have to change my strategy (average speed for example) to catch up. Because I know this well in advance, I might still have enough buffer to catch up.
Adding progress to your tasks
The GPS in your car does this updating automatically, but for your schedule you need to put in your actual progress. Adding progress to tasks is about reviewing the tasks that were supposed to be done in the past period and update your plan with what was actually done.
Adding progress in your schedule
How frequently to you add progress to the tasks in your schedule?
Share it in the comments below.
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You want to evaluate and optimize your schedule? When you evaluate the progress against the baseline you may have found that the new situation offers new challenges; for instance because you are warned by one or more Red Exclamation Marks in the first column of your schedule. This means that your updates have caused one of your milestones to pass its deadline, which means you need to take action to manage this delay back.
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Learn from your estimates
Always compare the duration of your tasks with its baseline duration to see whether you can learn from your estimates. If you can find a pattern in types of tasks that keep delaying it is smart to take the average deviation and adjust future similar tasks accordingly.
Your experience with evaluating
Do you ever adjust your schedule during your project based on the comparison between duration and baseline duration?
Using the baseline could be a formal method to compare your progress to the original schedule. For this reason there are a couple of things you should consider. Here our top 5 tips for baselining:
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Tip 1: When you have an approved scope/time change, rebaseline the current baseline (BL) (this will be the latest baseline) and save baseline 2 (BL 2), in case you want to compare multiple baselines later.
Tip 2: Do not delete or move tasks, but reduce remaining work to ‘0’ and/or create a new task on the new location.
Tip 3: Be careful with drag & drop and indent/outdent as summary lines will deviate from the baseline.
Tip 4: When you add tasks to the baseline, also rebaseline the tasks that are affected by the added task, such as successors or summary tasks.
Tip 5: The ‘To all summary tasks’ option (roll up baseline) will also change baseline summary tasks. This might give a wrong image of the starting situation and is like rebaselining all the summary tasks.
Share your secret
Do you have another tip we can add to this list? Share it in the comments below so we can help each other.
How to determine durations correctly in MS Project?
Do you determine durations correctly in MS Project? Why are we not finishing all our projects on time? Do we actually calculate correctly from beginning on when setting up the tasks, durations and their estimates?
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Save yourself and your whole project team time and money by giving your tasks the right duration. So how do you do that? Let’s start at the beginning:
From the moment you have all your tasks structured in your schedule, it is time to give these task the right duration. At this point, consider the number of working days (exclude weekends) between start and finish of the task. This means that if you work two hours per day on a task for five consecutive days starting Wednesday, the duration will be 5 days.
Adding durations to tasks in MS Project can be done in two ways:
By typing the number of days into the Duration column
Have Duration be calculated by MS Project by assigning resources and their availability to the task and estimating the hours of ‘work’.
This is explained in our e-course ‘Resource Management‘, as many factors will then determine your duration.
You will see that sometimes the duration has a question mark. This appears when the duration column has not been edited. The idea is that as long as this value is not put in by the user, it is an estimated value.
Duration of tasks
Durations of tasks and thus projects are determined by the amount of effort they take and the availability of resources that spreads this effort over the duration of the task. This means that whether you put in the duration in your schedule directly or have duration be calculated by MS Project, duration is ALWAYS effected by the total estimated amount of effort and how the resource is assigned to the task. After agreement on resources and on budget, and this budget is correctly reflected in the availability of resources in your schedule, the process of effort (‘work’ in MS Project) estimating becomes the most important factor to get reliable lead times.
One of the prerequisites for producing the bestestimate is to have spent sufficient time analyzing and understanding the requirements and the proposed solution.
Managing project durations is often a challenge due to (the great number of) uncertainties. Planning without regard for these uncertainties would induce risk of not meeting the agreed plan date. Plan dates depend on information we know – the agreed triple constraint (scope, time and resources) as well as things we do not know – actual scope, actual effort, actual resource availability and risks (based on agreed changes). To include contingency time for 100% of all likely and unlikely events is not wanted. Therefore the level of risk you accept to take largely determines the estimates of the effort. At the next chapter we discuss how you should factor in the risk in your estimate.
Level of detail
The level of detail you choose determines the accuracy, and thus the quality of the estimates. The notion that detail is needed to make more accurate estimations is NOT correct. When planning tasks of an hour, the likelihood that you will exceed by 100% is much greater than planning tasks of for instance 40 hours. For planning with as accurate as possible estimations 16 – 40 hours per task is ideal.
On the other hand, the validity of the estimate largely depends on how much time in advance the estimate was made, regarding the simple fact that uncertainty increases when you look further into the future.
As a guideline: plan tasks of about 16-40 hours (can be spread over a longer duration) for the next 3 to 6 months. Every task after this period could have less detail as many things could still be unknown.
Estimating effort (work)
There are many factors that determine the estimates:
Experience
Avoiding risk of failure
Wishful thinking
Pressure from stakeholders to shorten the plan
Pressure to come up with a plan fast (not enough time to perform estimation)
Experience of colleagues
The complexity of the tasks
Are the deliverables clear?
Available knowledge
Available FTE and resources
Etc.
The best practice for coming to estimates is:
Select a group of 6-8 of the most knowledgeable people with regard to the topic for the session, for instance engineers, stakeholders, certain team members and if known the resource that will be doing this assignment. These experts do not need to be from the own project team. Since many times the actual resource is not yet known, the experts need to consider a generic resource (a role) – how many hours would the average person in this role (with this competence) need. Later the estimate can be reevaluated by the actual person doing the task.
Prepare the session as good as possible by knowing the deliverables and their requirements, having the necessary documents available, and have specifications and must-have results aligned with the sponsor.
In the session: Align the tasks (every person has the same understanding of what needs to be done) and have every person give their best estimate for the tasks.
Plot the 6-8 estimates in a graph like below. Less estimates means less combined expertise and will decrease the accuracy of the estimate.
Discuss the estimations all participators made and learn from each other which assumptions were done making the estimates. Start with the persons giving the highest and lowest values (1 and 5 in above example). Make sure each participant knows why choices are made.
Reach consensus on:
Best case (1,3,6)
Most likely case (6,4,8)
Worst case (2,7,5)
Repeat these steps for all tasks that are part of this estimation session.
The estimate is calculated like this:
Best case : 16 hours x 1 = 16
Most likely case : 65 hours x 4 = 260
Worst case : 120 hours x 1 = 120 +
Total = 396 hours
Divide the total by 6.
396 hours / 6 = 66 hours
66 hours would be a realistic and reliableestimation for this task to use in the column ‘work’ when you create your schedule.
Note: Document the estimations and assumptions which are discussed with the responsible resources to create a reliable estimation database.
Challenges with estimations
What are your main challenges when estimating durations in your schedule?
Leave it in the comments below.
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In a meeting or a series of meetings, where you have all important experts and your (core) team members present, you start identifying all items that should be part of your project to deliver your main or end deliverable. This also includes ‘management deliverables’ such as documents you use for project control. Think of documents like a Project Initiation Document, communication plan, risk register, etcetera. This breakdown of a product is called the PBS (Product Breakdown Structure).
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If, for instance you consider the example of a motorcycle, the main deliverable ‘engine’ is further subdivided into: Transmission, Head, Battery. Head is further subdivided into Pistons and Rings. Note that you could keep doing this up to the bolts and screws level, and thereby easily overdo this breaking down.
WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
For planning and estimatingpurposes it is wise to stop at a certain point, and start mentioning the work (tasks) that is needed to produce these elements of the PBS. This is where your WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) starts. Since you are creating a model, just as a maquette as model for a building, it should not be too detailed. For various reasons it is widely recommended to stop listing the work, when the activities have a duration of 5 days. For instance, if your project is remodeling the backyard, ‘build shed’ is the right level of detail, and ‘pick up screwdriver’ is not. Although you might not want to forget this crucial activity of picking up the screwdriver, your schedule should not resort into a checklist or manual (you will learn more about estimating in our course Task Management).
This breakdown of the main deliverable forms the backbone of your project plan and as such it is essential to give this process the proper attention. For this reason, it was our well-considered choice to explain linking and automating the schedule in our online training about Critical Path Management (Intermediate course).
“I cannot read the Gantt Charts”
“My manager cannot read Gantt Charts” is a remark we hear quite often. We think that this manager is just not able to read this particular Gantt Chart. Since scheduling is about modeling, one of its primary purposes is being a communication means. Think of this before you start randomly typing in the products and tasks.
The correct order in your schedule
When you start planning, pay good attention to the order in which you enter the PBS elements into the plan. Ideally this is a chronological order with the first to be delivered PBS elements located higher in the schedule and the last to be delivered PBS elements lower in the schedule. This way your schedule will look like a waterfall and enhances readability drastically.
Correct naming
This is a good example:
The work breakdown structure (WBS) consists of all the activities that are needed to be able to deliver a PBS element. Whereas the PBS element is logically a summary task, the activities leading up to the delivery of this PBS element are the tasks beneath (indent/outdent) this summary task, and have a <verb + noun> naming convention (e.g. level building site).
With this structure all activities’ effort/cost/etc. will be summarized on the summary task, which makes progress tracking and learning from estimates per PBS-element extremely convenient.
The video clip below shows how to create summary tasks with underlying tasks:
Everything well structured
The purpose of this step is to create a complete overview of all needed activities to complete the deliverables within your scope. This will result in a schedule like the example below:
PBS & WBS best practices
There are several PBS and WBS best practices that we want to share with you in this course. We have translated them into a ‘hands-on’ list of do’s and don’ts.
Do’s:
Summary tasks are ideal for ‘phases’.
Make sure that 100% of the PBS elements defined in the project scope is represented in your PBS.
Make sure that 100% of the work defined in the project scope is represented in your WBS.
Each PBS element, regardless of level, should answer to the following question: ‘what needs to be delivered before we can call the project a success?’
Be specific in naming the elements (example: unit test vs perform unit test for module XYZ).
Each PBS/work element should be unique and the meaning can be interpreted without viewing the context by each team member.
Don’ts:
‘Miscellaneous’ is not a PBS element.
The PBS/WBS should not contain elements that are out of scope, such as external activities or the work of an external supplier outside the scope.
As summary tasks are not real activities which need to be performed, it is very important to ensure that summary tasks NEVER:
Have resources assigned
Have links
Are used to track progress (do this in the tasks)
Do you have more?
Which DO’s and DON’Ts would you add to the list above?
Share them in the comments below.
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From time to time it may be necessary to add tasks to the project schedule after the baseline has been set. When these changes affect the agreed project schedule beyond the project’s tolerances, a new baseline should be set. When no new baseline needs to be set, you can decide to add these new tasks to the baseline.
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In case you want to add new tasks to the baseline:
Select the newly added task(s)
Select tab Project and then select Set Baseline
To add the new task(s) to the baseline, select Set Baseline
Select the Selected tasks option
Click OK
In the screenshot below you see a baselined project schedule where the duration is equal to the baseline duration:
In the screenshot below you will see the result of adding an extra task to the baseline as described above. See that the Baseline Duration of summary task ‘deliverable 2’ is not affected. Additional options when setting the baseline for ‘Selected tasks’ (Roll up baselines):
From subtask into selected summary task(s)
If you select the new task (‘extra task added’) as well as the corresponding summary task (deliverable 2), choose ‘Selected tasks’ and select the ‘From subtasks into selected summary task(s)’ check box, MS Project rolls up the baseline information from ‘extra task added’ into the baseline information of the selected summary task. (See the Baseline Duration of the ‘deliverable 2’ in the example below compared to the situation above.)
To all summary tasks
If you select the new task (‘extra task added’), choose ‘Selected tasks’ and select the ‘To all summary tasks’ check box, MS Project rolls up the baseline information from the new task to all the summary tasks. Be careful with this option as it changes the baseline to the highest level. See Baseline Duration on line 1 (‘project ABC’) in the example below compared to the situation above. If on the highest level the Project Plan Triangle stays intact (you took hours for contingency for example) it is OK to roll up. In other cases, do not use this option.
Adding tasks to the baseline in MS Project
What are your questions about adding tasks to the baseline? Share them in the comments below, we’d love to help you.
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Resource Usage is one of the assignment views, just like the view Task Usage. These views are basically the same, as they show e.g. hours/remaining availability per day per assignment.
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When to use the resource usage and the task usage views?
Use these views if you need to deviate from the default 100% on assignment units. For instance if you want people to work 50% of their time to one task and 50% on another task.
Also use this view if you want to learn more about the assignment, like the work contour, assignment units or peak units.
Good to know
Note that if you change the timescale of this view to for instance months, you get a pretty good overview of the amount of hours you have already scheduled. By right-mouse-click > overallocation or remaining availability, you see how you are doing compared to your resource availability.
How to deal with % assignment on a task, effectiveness and absence?
People are not 100% working effectively on a task due to:
Illness
Part-time days or vacation
Toilet visits/smoking/social talk
Problem solving
Wandering off
Project meetings
Obligations to other projects
Obligations to line organization
Etc.
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The common belief (and chosen approach) is that planning for 80% effectiveness will account for all these situations. Simply putting in 80% as units to a task however, is NOT the CORRECT way to go for different reasons.
How to deal with absence and project time correctly?
The gurus in the field agree that the preferred way is as follows:
Personal Time
Vacation, standard day off – Block days in resource calendar
Sickness, cannot be planned – When it happens, progress tracking will uncover the day(s) that was not worked. Maternity leave, or recovering from surgery can be planned in the resource calendar.
Project time
Problem solving – Increase the amount of (remaining) work, since issue resolution is also part of the task.
Daydreaming, toilet visits, smoking, social talk – Increase the amount of (remaining) work, since for the work column it is more realistic to estimate the gross amount of work. It happens, we are all human right? However, this time will be charged to your project… Your job to keep this within boundaries.
Project meetings – Individual meetings can be planned with Outlook but if the time consumption of these meetings is significant, block a weekly average using the recurring task feature. Note that the series will form the summary task and the occurrences are the tasks to which you can assign resources.
Company time
All-personnel meeting or Friday afternoon drink – Think whether you should plan 1h interruptions. Will this unavailability have such a significant impact to your milestone dates that it is worth to put in the admin?
Other projects – Don’t plan, it is not your scope. If you have a resource allocated to your project for 0.5 FTE, change the Max Units in the resource sheet to 50%, or edit the availability periods in the calendar.
Line activities – Don’t plan, same as above.
Unavailability in your project
Can you find yourself in these 3 ways of dealing with absence and project time or do you have any other thoughts? Share it in the comments below.
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