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Percent complete

9 replies [Last post]
Tue, 2006-10-17 11:21
Laurie Willis
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Hi,

My first post, so hello everyone.

I am trying to understand a plan that my colleague has created. The table shows an Actual Percent Complete column next to a Percent Complete column. The data shown is exactly the same.

What is the difference between the two columns? When would the data shown be different?

Many thanks, Laurie
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Replies

Wed, 2006-11-29 11:53
#1
Tom Howard
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my experience went:

PowerProject v5 (I think) : 4 years

Primavera v3.1 : 4 years

Primavera v5 (whatever the new one is called) : 2 weeks (at a cost of £4K+ for TWO of us)

PowerProject v8-9 : 6 months and counting

The latest Primavera is a crock of ****. It may be fantastic at multi-rollout "framework" projects, but for stand-alone construction, it sucked big time. The actual bar chart area took up less than 1/3 of the screen and it was a nightmare to create simple links. Went straight in the bin much to the amusement of my Director (Not !!!)
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Wed, 2006-11-29 11:45
#2
David Bordoli
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Tom...

Thanks for your kind words...

I have to regularly use Powerproject, MSP and P3 (no-one I have come across is using P5 or whatever it is called so I have not had to get my mind around those changes yet). It seems to me that all software has its positive and negative quirks, I am trying not to get too hung up on them and just to accept things as they are.

Most of the time most of us could get by with a simple piece of software - but don’t we all now want interruptible tasks and buffer tasks - fantastic developments!

Only this morning a colleague was using MSP and was getting mighty frustrated by the number of options and how the program had to be set up so that it did not automatically reschedule or automatically link around new or deleted tasks. I am sure MSP advocates can’t live without those features but they drive me mad!

And don’t get me going about limited ’undo’ facilities!

Regards

David
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Wed, 2006-11-29 11:11
#3
Tom Howard
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hi David - nice lecture last week at the Asta conference (if it was you...).

I realise that too many options is preferable to too few. I also realise that it is very difficult to judge the content and scope of a piece of software that is to be used by such a wide variety of roles and industries.

HOWEVER... all important progress entry in P3 is relatively straight forward. There are very few permutations of settings and options within the software to alter the final results (IMO there doesn’t have to be). In fact, the only gripe that I was ever regularly faced with was the ability to only suspend and resume work ONCE, rather than "stop / start / stop / start etc".

As I mention below, the vast number of percentage definitions alone in PowerProject is baffling. Indeed, I think it was Richard Ormerod who laboured the point at the Asta conference about using "Overall % Complete" as oppose to other values. Throw in all the settings for Progress options and it becomes a true "trial and error" test to discover what is right for your business. (I’m still looking, as the Asta day made me question my "solution")

I also find it highly annoying that previously entered "actual start dates and durations" can easily be changed by the software as you update further progress periods. The idea of creating multiple baselines is also alien to me - surely any project plan is baselined once at the start of the job and not changed until completion ? (Major variation / delaying events aside).

I’m sure in a few years I will have warmed to PP’s progress style, but for me at the moment I am fairly unimpressed.
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Wed, 2006-11-29 10:47
#4
David Bordoli
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Lawrie, Tom, James...

Powerproject, on one hand, seems to be criticised by Primavera Users for not having all the features it has - then we get moans like this that it has too many features!

I guess that Asta don’t make up new tokens for the fun of it, I imagine they are responding to customer feedback or they have developed the program such that it can carry out tasks that some users haven’t knowledge of.

Too many options is a pretty new phenomenon as far as gripes go but if you are distressed by it I think you can customise Powerproject so that all options are not shown or you could use Easyplan which I understand is more suited to casual or low-level users.

Regards

David
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Thu, 2006-11-23 12:26
#5
James Griffiths
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Tom - I fully concurr with your sentiments. I do like the dufflecoat-description, though.

James.
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Wed, 2006-10-18 05:10
#6
Laurie Willis
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Hi,

Thanks for your posts. Yes, re-reading your other post Tom, this is part of your bigger problem. I will follow the process you have used to see if it works for me. (Btw, what’s a duffel coat production line, lol!)

Alexandre, to me, your explanation of what Actual Percent Complete is should be what Planned Percent Complete is! What, therefore, is the difference between these two?

Thanks, Laurie
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Wed, 2006-10-18 04:39
#7
Tom Howard
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This is a small part of the problem I have just endured. (see previous thread). These titles (descriptions) are confusing. Throw into the equation the fact there are about 17 needlessly different percent complete options (ie actual, planned, duration, user, overall, cost, etc etc etc) and you have a recipe for disaster !

To me, the term "Actual Percent Complete" describes a realistic snapshot of progress of any task at any point in time. This is the meaning of Actual ie true. There can be only one answer to this question for each task, and this represents the most important percentage value once a project has started.

The only other percentage value that is worthy of measuring is the "Planned Percent Complete" ie how complete a task SHOULD be at any point in time. This is a close second for most important percentage.

Getting back to your question though, I have just tried situations where the "Actual %" is different to "% complete", and I can only find it on summary bars when you change the attributes for the "Percent Complete" column (Table Definition, Highlight Percent Complete, Attributes, tick show distributed average for charts / summaries).

I realise many, many different industries and planners use PowerProject, however I’m sure 95% of them are pretty bog-standard construction planners.

Sure there may be a "Chief Planning Engineer" in the Gulf of Mexico working on a nuclear-powered, fully automated, weekend working only, duffle coat production line who couldn’t function without all these variations of percentage complete, but I suspect the rest of us will never dust these silly options off.

(Have just looked at the options in Primavera P3 software, and they only have one other %, which relates to resources)
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