Project Tasks reflectin real life

Hi David

Thanks for your question. To summarise you have a plan with tasks that also have assigned resources. You have probably also saved a Baseline (Tools > Tracking > Save baseline) so that you can compare your progress with the originally agreed schedule.

When it comes to recording what really happens you have a couple of choices.

Simplest is to double click on a task and record the percentage complete. In its simplicity though it loses detail. It wouldn't really help in the example you quote for instance as it's not precise enough and it is designed to measure duration complete rather than work.

An alternative might be to switch views and have a look at the Resource Usage view.

This view re-organises your project and groups your tasks by the resource assigned to do them. So in this example you would find the resource in question and under their name find the task to update.

On the right hand side of the screen you will seen the sheet (called Time phased data) that shows when planned work will take place. You now want to add what actually happened. To do this right click anywhere in the yellow sheet on the right and select Actual data form the menu that appears.

Now you can type below the planned work for each day what was actually completed. If you record less hours than planned Project will extend the duration of the task to carry the unfinished work forward.

If you anticipate work will start but there will be a gap of a few days before work resumes put zero on the gap days and Project pushes the unfinished work amounts later in the schedule.

If you switch back to the Gantt view you will find the task bar has some progress recorded and split (dotted blue line reflecting the zero days) with the unfinished work completing the bar later in the schedule.

Try experimenting with this using one task and one resource and see if it models the results you are looking to achieve.

I hope this helps - do let us know if you have any further questions.

Kind regards,
Andrew