Project Status Date

[sirsleep29]

I am curious as to how often people update the project status date and what are you doing that makes you update it. Appreciate the help.

[#2]

sirsleep29 --

Before you enter task progress in your Microsoft Project schedule, you should always enter the Status Date for the project. The Status Date represents the last day of the previous reporting period, which is generally last Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. You should enter the Status Date as often as you manually enter task progress, which should generally be every week or bi-weekly at the longest.

After manually entering task progress, you should then reschedule incomplete work from the past into the current reporting period. You do this by clicking the Update Project button in the Project ribbon, and then selecting the "Reschedule uncompleted work to start after" option, in which the Status Date has already been entered into this field. Hope this helps.

[#3]

Dale, you talked about scheduling incomplete work into the current period but what if a task started a month ago but goes for a year out? Why would I want to move a task like that? Are you just talking about tasks that have not started yet that should have but haven't for what ever reason. Still learning here so appreciate your help with this.

[#4]

sirsleep --

I said "reschedule incomplete work." If the task started a month ago, and the progress is on track, then nothing will be rescheduled. I am talking about two situations that result in incomplete work in the past:

1. A task was supposed to start last week, but no work was done at all.
2. A task started in the past, but the completed work is behind schedule. For example, the task should be 50% complete and it is only 10% complete.

Either one of these situations calls for the PM to reschedule the incomplete work from the past into the current reporting period. The PM must do this so that the project schedule is accurate and reliable. Hope this helps.