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Tracking Progress Exercise

The document describes tracking progress on a book launch project plan in Microsoft Project. It discusses saving a baseline of the original plan, recording completed work as scheduled through a date, entering completion percentages for tasks, and entering actual duration and start/finish dates when work differs from the plan. By entering actuals, Project updates progress bars and roll-up values, and highlights changes from the baseline and scheduled plan.

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Cowly Chinetseu
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150 views

Tracking Progress Exercise

The document describes tracking progress on a book launch project plan in Microsoft Project. It discusses saving a baseline of the original plan, recording completed work as scheduled through a date, entering completion percentages for tasks, and entering actual duration and start/finish dates when work differs from the plan. By entering actuals, Project updates progress bars and roll-up values, and highlights changes from the baseline and scheduled plan.

Uploaded by

Cowly Chinetseu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tracking Progress Exercise

Save a baseline of your plan


The scenario: At Lucerne Publishing, the new book launch plan is now fully developed.
Actual work on the project will soon begin. To allow for later comparison of actual work
and the current schedule with the original plan, you will first save a baseline. Open
SimpleTrackBaseline, and then perform the following tasks:
1. Save the baseline for the entire plan; use the default baseline settings.
2. Switch to the Task Sheet view.
3. Display the Variance table to see scheduled and baseline values.

The scheduled dates in this plan match its baseline dates, so the variance values are
zero

Track a plan as scheduled


The scenario: Some time has passed since you saved the baseline in the new book launch
plan. Work has been completed through the first week and a half, as planned. You need to
account for the completed work in the plan. Open the SimpleTrackActuals plan, and then
perform the following task:
1. Use the options in the Update Project dialog box to record that work has been
completed as scheduled through January 17, 2018.
Project records the completion percentage for the tasks that were scheduled to start
before January 17. It displays that progress by drawing progress bars in the Gantt
bars for those tasks.

After you record progress through a specific date, Project displays the progress bars
and, for completed tasks, the completion check marks in the Gantt Chart view

In the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view, the progress bar shows how much of
each task has been completed. Because tasks 2, 3, and 4 have been completed, a
check mark appears in the Indicators column for those tasks, and the progress bars
extend through the full length of those tasks Gantt bars. Task 5 is only partially
completed, however.

Enter a tasks completion percentage


The scenario: Work continues on the new book launch. You have additional progress to
record in the plan as percent complete values. Continuing in the SimpleTrackActuals plan,
perform the following tasks:
1. Set the following tasks to 100 percent complete:
5, Design and order marketing material
6, Planning complete!
8, Kickoff book launch meeting
Project records the actual work for the tasks as scheduled and extends progress bars
through the length of the Gantt bars.

Recording 100 percent complete is a quick checklist way of recording that a task was
completed as scheduled, with no variance
Because task 6 is a milestone task with no duration, there is no change in the
appearance of its symbol in the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view as there was
for tasks 5 and 8. However, the completion check marks for all three tasks appear in
the Indicators column.
2. Set task 9, Prepare book P&L statement, to 50 percent complete, and then point to
its progress bar.

Point to the progress bar in the partially completed tasks Gantt bar to see its key
progress indicators in a ScreenTip
Note that although 50 percent of the work on task 9 is completed, the progress bar
does not span 50 percent of the length of the Gantt bar. This is because Project
measures duration in working time but draws the Gantt bars to extend over
nonworking time, which in this case includes Thursday, January 25, a nonworking

day.

Enter actual values for tasks


The scenario: A few more days have passed, and work on the new book launch has
progressed. Resources performing the work have given you actual progress that differs
somewhat from the plan, and you want to record these actuals and observe the effect on
the overall plan. Continuing in the SimpleTrackActuals plan, perform the following tasks:
1. Use the Tracking table to record that task 9, Prepare book P&L statement, required
a total of 24 hours of actual work to complete.
Because 24 hours is greater than its original duration of 16 hours, Project marks the
task as completed and extends the Gantt bar of the task to indicate its longer
duration.

When you record actual duration, the change highlighting is a great way to see what
other changes in the plan the actuals introduced
2. Use the options in the Update Tasks dialog box to record that task 10, Plan
authors travel itinerary, started one working day ahead of schedule (the Tuesday
before its scheduled start date) and required a total of seven days to complete.

When recording actual duration, you should also record the actual start date if it differs
from the scheduled start date
3. Click OK.
Project records the actual values for the task and marks it as complete. The updated
values roll up to the Internal Launch Phase summary task (task 7) and the project
summary task (task 0), as indicated by the change highlighting.

Actual values that you record at the task level roll up to the tasks summary
task and to the project summary task
4. Use the options in the Update Tasks dialog box for task 11, Channel
Sales prep. This task started on time and has three days of actual
duration but will still require five days of remaining duration to
complete. (Remember to enter the new remaining duration value after
entering the actual duration value.)
This gives the task a new total duration of eight days: three days actual
duration plus five days remaining duration.

Unless you record an actual start date, Project assumes the task started as
scheduled
Because you did not specify an actual start date, Project assumes that the
task started as scheduled. However, the actual duration and updated
remaining duration value you entered caused Project to calculate a new
finish date.

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