Hi! yes, I would recommend having a baseline set before you start to status a project. I didn't cover that because I considered baseline stuff to be out of scope of this video.

It's out now!

Hi! the Status column is automatically calculated by MS Project, so you cannot change it. You can however create your own "Status" column using a custom Text field and a formula to have it show whatever you want.

Glad you found the video useful!

I will cover statusing tasks that have resource assignments in a future video!

Hi @Eleven2410. You can keep track of late tasks by making sure you set a baseline on your tasks before you start to status them. When you set a baseline on a task, MS Project will store the originally planned start and finish dates in the Baseline Start and Baseline Finish fields. Once you start statusing tasks, you can see how far off from the baseline dates your tasks have moved by looking at the Start Variance or Finish Variance fields. Hope this answers your question.

If you have task that has an actual start date and some actual duration in the past, and its scheduled finish is 25/12/2023, and you are told that the best estimate now is 07/01/2024, what choice do you have but to increase the remaining duration? You are calling this task "late" simply because you now forecast a finish which is later than the original. If you don't have a baseline, then MSP just forgets about the original 25/12/2023. You only need a baseline if you want to fret about the variance. You can still happily plan and re-plan without it.

I don't know whether you are saying that the people who do the work should update the schedule because they "know" the dates, or should not do it because they don't know how. They don't really know the dates, and they should not be asked for dates. If you already know the dates, you don't need the software. Finding out what the dates are is what CPM is for.

No, mark on track does not align the Actual Start date with the Baseline Start. It just adjusts the percent complete (actual duration) of the task relative to the current start and project status date.

Yes, I agree! I considered discussing the baseline out of scope for this video, but yes, in general a baseline should be set on the project at the very beginning before any official reporting cycles begin.

Ask the person who is responsible for the task when they think it's going to start and when they think it's going to finish.

"Is there any way apart from rescheduling uncompleted work after status date.??" What else would make sense? In CPM tasks are scheduled to start asap. A planned start earlier than the status date is not possible. Immediately after the status date is asap.

Hi Ani, the summary "% Complete" is automatically calculated by MS Project based on how many days of actual duration are on the child tasks under the summary. Physical % Complete is a manually entered number, even on summary tasks. I would not recommend worrying about the % Complete or Physical % Complete on summaries because summaries are just an abstract rollup of a collection of tasks. We do not status them, just the tasks under them.

Thanks for your feedback. You are welcome to continue using the old version of the 14 Point Assessment. In a future update, we will be including what you listed in #1 and #3.

@@StructuredSolutionsInc How can I use the old version? I didn't see a way to revert back to the last update.

You NEVER want to enter a number in the regular % Complete column. let MS Project calculation that for you by using the "mark on track" button after you update the start/finish dates for the task. Sure, you could wait to resolve the out of sequence issues after you statused all the tasks. It's in the video because many people don't know what it means for something to be out of sequence, let alone how to fix it. Out of sequence issues are very likely to arise when you start taking status on the schedule.

Be very wary of asking questions where the answer could be a % (of anything, whatever), and wary of any answer in %. It is pretty much useless and uninformative. Example, if you have a task to lay 10000 bricks, and it has some planned duration, and it already actually started on some date in the past, and has been in progress for some days, and some number of bricks are laid, and some remain, so that as well as remaining bricks there is also some remaining duration, remaining work and remaining cost, then hearing someone say that the task is some % complete does not get you anywhere, and is not "data" that you can use. On the other hand, if you ask the right questions in the right order, and only accept proper answers to those questions, it all works. Has the task actually started? Answer is yes or no. When did it start? Answer is a date/time? How many days of actual duration? Answer is a number. How many days of remaining duration? Answer is a number. No % required.

No, we really shouldn’t ignore reality just because of the CPM. If we know for a fact that task C isn’t going start right after task B then we shouldn’t leave it in the schedule that way.

Would still probably be good to know what tasks were necessary predecessors to the task.

I see it done all the time! People need to be taught the correct way.

This isn't necessarily true. The Physical % Complete and the Duration Based % Complete do not need to be the same value and are often different in real world projects. Take this scenario for example: Imagine a 10 day task where the status date is at the end of the 5th day. The Duration Based % Complete will be 50% but perhaps the task manager states the physical % complete is only 25%. But they assure me they want to keep the current finish date where it is. How can this make sense? Well, consider this - maybe the task manager only spent 2 hours working on that task for the first 5 days but then plans to spend 6 hours each day working on the task for the next 5 days and therefore believes they can finish the task by the current finish date without moving it. In this case, it makes sense that the Physical % Complete of the task is only 25% but the duration based % complete is 50%.

@@StructuredSolutionsInc well stated. This is what we teach at the College of Performance Management (CPM). Use the Physical Percent Complete as a sanity check, and if the physical and duration % complete differ by a significant amount, use that to challenge the task owner (CAM, Work Package Lead, key resource. . . whoever is providing the information to the scheduler) and ask why they different. But the finish date / remaining duration must be independently estimated. And, of course, use Physical % Complete for earned value calculations if the schedule is being used for EV.

@@michaelbreuker4170 I agree 100%!

@@StructuredSolutionsInc I am not saying that physical %complete should always be the same as % complete, only that it usually is or should be. Let's skip the percentages and try some numbers. The task was to lay 10000 bricks. After 5 days of actual duration, it is hoped that 5000 bricks are laid, but sadly it is only 2500. All of the evidence of progress that we have at this point says that 7500 bricks cannot and will not get laid in the remaining 5 days. Pretending otherwise is just denial. However, as you say, someone may think that the first 5 days went different to how the remaining 5 days will go, and the forecast finish date is still the same as it was before any (and not enough bricks) were laid. He believes he can finish the task by the current scheduled finish date. Yeah, right. We should base our project plan on data such as numbers and arithmetic rather than belief. A belief is not the same as an estimate. In your example, you introduced the actual work and the remaining work, which is the information needed for physical %complete to not be the same as % complete. Well, that changes things a bit. The actual 10 hours should be logged on the days it occurred and the estimate of the remaining work should be distributed over the remaining duration. We don't know what the planned work was at the start, but at this point, at this status date, we know the actual work is 10 hours and the remaining work is 30 hours, spread over 5 days. Let's not kid ourselves. That guy resists re-estimating the remaining duration and the planned finish because he doesn't want to say his task is going to be late and that will delay other tasks, it's successors. It's already late, and we don't have to wait 5 days to find that out. If he insists on holding the finish date, then in 5 days we will know if he was right. If he was wrong, then we will have lost the opportunity to act on the early warning. CPM is all about early warning, timely action and avoiding surprises.

Sure, you can apply the tracking table if you like, Trevor.

This assessment tool does not come out of the box with any version of MS Project. It is part of SSI Tools for Microsoft Project, a MS Project add-in that includes this assessment and many other tools to help work with MS Project.

It works with any version of MS Project 2010 or greater

You would need to first purchase SSI Tools. If you need help, please reach out to us here: ssitools.com/contact/