Guild of Project Controls: Compendium | Roles | Assessment | Certifications | Membership

Tips on using this forum..

(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?

(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.

How is % complete calculated with multiple resources

1 reply [Last post]
doug weaver
User offline. Last seen 16 years 21 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 2 Nov 2007
Posts: 3
Groups: None
We are using EPM 2007 for a set of very large projects. Many tasks have multiple resources working them with varying amounts of work. When these folks are statusing through PWA (my tasks) the percent complete they see and the percent complete overall for the task cannot (by us) be logically deduced. Has anyone experienced this or can you tell me what the algorithm is to calculate % complete when multiple resources are assigned. Thanks. Doug

Replies

Trevor Rabey
User offline. Last seen 1 year 18 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 29 Nov 2005
Posts: 530
Groups: None
In MSP, % Complete is about Duration.
% Complete = Actual Duration/Total Duration.
It has nothing to do with the Resources and it makes no difference whether zero or 50 Resources are assigned to a Task.
It also has nothing to do with the Cost($) or the Work (Hours), although Cost and Work will both be calculated from % Complete if that option is set.

It especially has nothing to do with how much of the "Task" has been done or remains to be done.

Each of Duration, Cost and Work, and the Task itself (ie 4 things) have a total, actual, remaining and %.

In MSP only % Duration Complete (ie "% Complete") and % Work Complete are built-in fields, but % Task Complete and % Cost Complete can also be readily calculated in spare fields.

So, eg, you might set out to lay 10000 bricks in 10 Days, with one bricklayer for 80 Hours at $50/hour and 10000 bricks at $1/brick ($14000).

At the end of Day 6, % Complete = 60% and you expect 6000 bricks or 60% of the Task to be done, at a Cost of 60% of $14000, and Work = 60% of 80 Hours (48 Hours).

Leaving out Cost and Work for a moment, and considering just the Duration and the bricks,...

Suppose you find that only 3000 bricks have been laid?
After you type in 6 Days in Actual Duration, and since Total Duration = 10 Days and Remaining Duration = 4 Days, % Complete = 60%. You don’t have to type in the % Complete and shouldn’t, because MSP calculates it for you.

Since you discover that your initial 10 Day estimate was way low and/or your bricklayer is not as good as you hoped, you must re-estimate the Remaining Duration, ie you are laying bricks at 500/day instead of 1000/day and 7000 bricks remain, so Remaining Duration is 14 Days.

After you type in 14 Days in Remaining Duration, % Complete = 30%.