Physical % complete summary fields aren't summing 1

[djoliver1]

Hi:
I hope someone can help with this. I've pasted some values into the Physical % Complete column, but the Outline Level 0 summary task and all summary task fields below it show 0%. In other words, this column is not summing up the values that I pasted below it. How can I get it to do so?

Background: I'm trying to use Physical % Complete to base MS Project's Earned Value fields on % Work Complete instead of % Complete. % Work Complete is a work based calculation of the completeness of a task or a project, while % Complete is a duration based calculation. Earned Value calculations should use % Work Complete. This is a recognized problem with MSP. Microsoft provided the Physical % Complete field to allow users to base Earned Value calculations on other values. (You have to set the Earned Value field on the Tools / Options / Calculations tab to use Physical % Complete.) This is what I did. Then I hid the summary tasks and pasted the % Work Complete task values into the Physical % Complete column (highlight source column, copy, high target column, paste). Then I displayed the summary fields again and found that whereas the % Work Complete column showed a project level value of 96%, the Physical % Complete field showed a project level value of 0%. Why is this and how can I correct it? Also, any recommendations for how to get %Work Complete to display in the Physical % Complete field, so that MSP uses this value for EV calculations, instead of % Complete???? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for any feedback or suggestions. (By the way, I'm using MSP 2003 Professional both offline and with Project Server.)
Djoliver1

 

[PDQBach]

Some initial thoughts.

1. You are somewhat mistaken in your description of the implementation.

"You have to set the Earned Value field on the Tools / Options / Calculations tab to use Physical % Complete.

In fact, the setting of default task earned value method specifies, for a particular task, where the EVA data is to come from for that task.

2. It is an "after the fact" switch. Once you set it (in Tools | Options | Calculation-tab and Earned Value button), you are setting the default for all new tasks -- it doesn't reset it for existing tasks.


You can confirm this by:

View | Gantt
insert the "Earned Value Method" column

and then toggling back-and-forth in the Tools | Options ... display between "Physical % Complete" and %Complete.

You can also choose the setting for a specific task by double-clicking on the task, clicking on the Advanced tab and setting the EarnedValueMethod field.


3. It is not possible to set up a calculation to move the task %WorkComplete to the task PhysicalPercentComplete (or the other way). You'll need to use some VBA for that although (and I haven't tested this out) you shouldn't need to do that because the EarnedValueMethod field should specify where the data is to come from. If you really do want to use some vba, here's a code fragment that should work.

Sub temp1()
Dim tsk As Task
For Each tsk In ActiveProject.Tasks
    Debug.Print tsk.Name _
      & " " & tsk.earnedvaluemethod _
      & " " & tsk.PercentWorkComplete _
      & " " & tsk.PhysicalPercentComplete
    tsk.PercentWorkComplete = tsk.PhysicalPercentComplete
Next

End Sub

(Watch out for linewraps when the code is displayed)

If there's anything I haven't answered, let me know.

 

[djoliver1]

Thanks PDQBach:
I didn't know that the choice between Physical and % Complete was not retro-active. I used your test to illustrate that. It seems that changing the value under Tools / Options / Calculation / EV will immediately change the EV Method value on all summary tasks, but not on non-summary tasks. So I changed the EV Method field value on all non-summary tasks to Physical % Complete manually, and then noticed that this action had set all SPI and CPI values to 0. (Before there had been SPI and CPI values -- the outline level 0 cumulative was 1.46 -- now it was 0 from top to bottom of the schedule.) Does this mean that it is not possible to change the EV calculation method for tasks already created and doing so manually won't properly change the EV calculation??

Also, the other question contained in my original post was "why isn't the % Work Complete" summing properly once I paste it into the Physical % Complete column? What can you do to fix that? What can you do to fix any number column that isn't summing properly? I've seen that happen with Actual Work, for example, and didn't know what to do except consider the schedule corrupted and start over. (Crazy bad luck if you are in the middle of a large project.)

 

[PDQBach]

The "forced setting" on the summary task is probably one of those things like the task Type -- if you make a task a summary task (by indenting something beneath it) then the task type is forced to Fixed Duration.

Also, for EV to work correctly, it should ignore the summary tasks and just use individual tasks. Hmmm ... as I type that, it occurred to me that you might have assigned a resource to a Summary Task (something I never do) and then that would certainly have an impact on the calculations. Hmmm. I'll have to think about this for a bit.

As for the %WorkComplete summing properly, it's not (technically) a sum but a calcuation. If you have a summary task with two sub-tasks and one subtask with 1 day of work is 100% complete and the other with 9 days of work is 0%complete then the %WorkComplete isn't the sum of 100+0, nor is it the average of 100+0. It is 1WorkDay / (1WorkDay + 9WorkDays) or 10%.

I used to have problems with some of the summations in P98 but since moving to P2003 I haven't seen the issue come up.

You might want to consider sending me a copy of your schedule. You can reach me as PDQBach4100 on Microsoft's h0tmail program. In order to sanitize the schedule, just copy/paste from UniqueID to the TaskName field and do the same on the Resource display.

 

[djoliver1]

Thanks for answering again. No, I don't assign resources to summary tasks either. And I do realize that the %WC is a more complex calculation than a simple sum or average. I assume the % WC summary calc is Sum of Detail Actual Work / Sum of Detail Work, but this may not be how MSP does it.

I definitely will send you the schedule, but I've got to cut out now for the holiday. I wanted to share a little experiment I did since my last post. I created a new schedule offline and added 3 tasks. Task1 and Task2 were created when default EV Method was % Complete. Task3 was created when EV Method was set to Physical % Complete. After I baselined the schedule and entered some Actual Work Updates, I pasted the % WC value of Task3 into the Physical % Complete field and it calced properly. I then changed Task3's EV Method to % Complete and it would calc this way too. It was 100% functional under both EV Methods. However, Task2 would not calc properly when I changed its EV Method to Physical % Complete. With that EV Method it only displays 0s. If I set it back to EV MEthod = %C, it calcs correctly. Interesting bug, isn't it! It sucks though because it means that if you don't start out with EV Method = Phys%C, you can't ever change it later on. By the way, the Phys%C column would not calculate or display anything but 0 at the Outline Level 0 either. I will try to send you this 3 task test schedule so you can see what I'm talking about. I'll send you the other schedule I was working with on Friday. It is a 2003 schedule that has a problem calculating values properly at the summary task level. Have a great Thanksgiving and hope to hear more from you Friday or sometime soon thereafter. I'm very glad for the opportunity to talk with you about this. Thanks again!
djoliver1
PS I assume I should send schedule to PDQBach4100@hotmail.com? If not, please advise again. I'm not sure what you were saying. Also about sanitizing schedule, if I highlight the task ID column then it captures everything doesn't it? So I'm afraid I lost you there too.