MS Project. real progress of the project, % complete

Haumi,

Okay let's reset. Three people have responded to your post, yet your only reply is that it's not working. In your original post you tell us your plan has no resources, no cost and no time spent. You also mention that your plan has start, finish, duration, baseline and percent complete. Since you have to manually input the percent complete it is not clear as to what you mean by "real progress".

For reference Project calculates percent complete at summary level using the following formula:

Summary % complete = (sum of all subtask actual durations) / (sum of all subtask durations) x 100%

In order for us to help you, a screen shot of your plan showing at least one summary line and all subtasks under it with these fields: Name, Duration, Actual Duration, Start, Baseline Start, Actual Start, Finish, Baseline Finish, Actual Finish, % Complete and then a Text field (e.g. Text1) in which you have manually entered (i.e. no formula) what you think the "real progress" should show. Then maybe we can help.

John

If all your tasks are "Fixed Duration " type and you assume that everything is happening as planned then your %planned will be your real progress - I think. but you will have to check on specific date - like cut off date.

If above is the case that  suits to you then you will need to create 4 custom fields

Report Date / Cut Off date:

CDate(" what ever date you are in")

Support 1:

ProjDurValue(ProjDurConv([Duration]))

Support 2:

IIf([Finish] <= [Report Date], 100, IIf([Start] > [Report Date], 0, ProjDateDiff([Start], DateAdd("d", 1, [Report Date])) / ProjDateDiff([Start], [Finish])) * 100) * [Support 1] / 100

Note: You will need to add 1 more day as you will need to assume that you wait one day that will compete the last day which is report day. You also can test without this 1 mode day if you need.

% Planned  / Real Progress:

IIf([Support 1] = 0, IIf([Finish] <= [Report Date], 100, 0), Int([Support 2] / [Support 1] * 100)) & "%"

"real progress"? You can't go wrong if you stick to facts.

Real progress is when something, a fact, happens, ie when something actually happens in the past relative to the current status date, which is the date/time up to which progress is being measured.

MSP knows about three things about a task. It knows the duration, work and cost. Of course, if the is no resources, no work and no cost then it only knows about the duration.

Anyway, each of duration, work and cost will have a % complete, because % complete is actual/total and total = actual + remaining.

You can record progress without ever referring to %. A % has a numerator and denominator. Whenever someone mentions a %, ask them what was the numerator and denominator.

For any task, the first fact that occurs is that it actually starts, and it actually starts on a particular date at a particular time.

Then the next fact is that it acquires some actual duration.

Then the next fact is that it acquires some actual work and some actual cost during the actual duration.

And then it actually finishes.

Collect the facts and record them, mainly in the tracking table, in the order in which they occur.

You don't need %. You can safely abandon any reference to % entirely.

Haumi,

It depends on what you mean as "real progress". The passage of time (i.e. duration) is NOT indicative of progress. And for that matter, the status date is not indicative of progress either.

However, if you are looking for "progress" based on everything occurring as planned, then comparing start dates to the current date will give you planned progress. Try that in place of the status date in your formula.

John

Unfortunately, in my case, the formula results are far from reality.