Change task distribution with % completed

Question

I'm using MS Project 2010. When assigning a task with duration say 5 days and work of say 10 hours. Then MSP distributes the occupation for that resource over the whole duration.

e.g.

Mon 2h | Tue 2h | Wed 2h | Thu 2h | Fri 2h

So far so good, assume I'm 1 day away from the end date and set the % completed to 20%, i.e. the remaining hours are 8h. How can I make MSP set the occupation for that resource such, that it has to do 8h on the last day?

Mon 0.5h | Tue 0.5h | Wed 0.5h | Thu 0.5h | Fri 8h

I know the feature Task->Move->Incomplete Parts to Status Date That almost does the trick, but using that feature increases the duration. I would like to fix the duration and the work, and simply change the work per day.

I could simply assign the actual work per day in the resource assignment view, but that seems to be somewhat cumbersome if I have hundreds of tasks...

Answer 1

What I have found to be the best solution when recording forecasted and actual work values is to input the actual work values at or after task completion. MS Project does not respond well to changes in work values once the task has started but hasn't finished. This really makes sense in large projects with hundreds or thousands of tasks since you don't really want to be recording actual work values while the task is still in progress. Ideally, you would get an export from a labor management system with actual hours tied to a charge code and a resource name and then feed that data into the project file.

Here is the process that I follow:

1. Delete all progress from the task by either deleting the Actual Start date or set % Complete to 0

2. Modify the Work value to equal the actual hours worked. If you have one resource assigned to the task, you can do this from the Entry table. If you have more than one resource assigned to the task, go to the Task Usage view and adjust the Work values for each resource. By default, MS Project will evenly spread the work hours evenly across each project day. This should be fine in most situations. If you need to be precise, adjust the daily, weekly, or monthly work values for each resource to match the actual distribution of work.

3. Mark the task as 100% complete

This is the smoothest way I have found to accurately account for the total hours worked without screwing up any of the other task dates.