Forum Discussion

parlisingh's avatar
parlisingh
Copper Contributor
Aug 17, 2022

% Work Complete Status

A have a project plan and had about 300 lines as was progressing through project the % Work complete was showing as 20%.  I have added a further 200 lines, and increased the length of the project.  The % work complete still shows 20%.  I can manually mark items as complete and that increases % complete.  however adding more tasks or significantly increasing the amount of time on a task(s) doesn't change the % work complete field.

 

Problem:  Because we have only started project, i would say we are only about 5% into the project (No of hours billed versus forecasted hours)  but project is showing as 20% complete.  Why is this?

  • John-project's avatar
    John-project
    Aug 31, 2022
    parlisingn,
    Duration doesn't necessarily "map" back to actual work. For your server example, it sounds like you should use fixed duration as your task type. Duration is entered as a week. The 3 hours of labor (work) to accomplish that task may be linearly spread over the week, occur all on the first day, all on the last day or any combination thereof.

    John
  • John-project's avatar
    John-project
    Silver Contributor
    Aug 17, 2022
    parlisingh,
    My guess is that you have not selected the option to tie % Complete to % Work Complete (i.e. task status versus resource status). This option is set under, File > Options > Schedule Group > Calculations for project > "Updating Task status updates resource status".

    I assume you are referring to the % Complete value shown for the Project Summary Task. The % Complete value for any summary line is calculated by Project as:
    % Complete = (Sum of all subtask actual durations)/(sum of all subtask durations) * 100%

    When you add tasks, you are increasing the sum in the denominator of the equation.

    Hope this helps.
    John
      • John-project's avatar
        John-project
        Silver Contributor
        Aug 18, 2022

        parlisingh 

        Thanks for the screen shot, it doesn't tell me everything but it does give some critical information.

         

        First, I note you have successor links on some summary lines. Summary lines are not tasks and should neither have links (predecessor/successor) nor resources assigned. I suggest you re-structure your plan to address that issue. The risk you run for not doing so is even more things that don't make sense.

         

        Percent Work Complete is calculated by Project as, Actual Work / Work * 100%. Simply adding tasks to your plan will not change the % work complete value until actual work is accrued. If you manually edit tasks as complete via the % Work Complete field, because the option to link task status with resource status is checked, that will then also update the % Work Complete field.

         

        When you say % Work Complete doesn't change even though you "significantly increase the amount of time", are you talking about increasing the task duration or the amount of work? I suspect you are referring to increasing the duration. Also, are there resource assigned to the tasks where you "increased the amount of time"?

         

        When you say you are only about 5% into the project (billed versus forecasted) how does that relate to how the plan was updated (i.e. what was entered for work and actual work)? The 20% shown by Project is calculated based on that data, not on how much was billed.

         

        John