Understand date types and progress status

Transcript

There are a few date types that you should know about. I created a short project to show you what they are and how they affect progress status calculations. In the project details tab we can see three main categories of project dates, planned, projected, and actual. With the schedule mode set to start date, the project manager sets the planned start date, then Workfront calculates the planned completion date based on task durations and predecessors.

With the schedule mode set to completion date, the project manager sets the planned completion date, then Workfront calculates the planned start date based on task durations and predecessors. We’re going to schedule from a start date in this example. We set the planned start date to tomorrow, November 8th, and Workfront calculated the planned completion date as November 15th. The actual start date is blank because we haven’t started anything yet. This date will be set automatically to the actual start date of the first task started in the project. The projected start date is calculated as November 8th. Because we have six days to do the work, the projected completion date is calculated as November 15th, and Workfront calculates the progress status. There are three possible progress statuses for a project. On target means the projected completion date is on or before the planned completion date. Now I’m going to change the planned start date to two days ago. At risk means the projected completion date is after the planned completion date but is still in the future, so you’re not late yet, just behind. You might still be able to finish on time. Now I’ll set the planned start date back to last month so the planned completion date is in the past. This makes the progress status calculate to in trouble or late. Remember that progress status is all about the project finishing according to the planned completion date. In the case of the project we also have the condition field. This shows up right here and it can be controlled by the project manager using the condition type field. Right now it’s set to progress status, so whatever the progress status is it will display here, but I can change this to manual, in which case I can choose what I want the condition field to say, either on target, at risk, or in trouble. We’ll leave it as progress status and set the planned start date back to two days ago and then go to our task view. Here in the task view we have the same three date types, planned, projected, and actual. The planned completion date of each task is calculated based on the planned start date and the duration of the task. At this point both tasks are behind, but we can help that by getting to work on task one. Notice that the projected completion dates are after the planned completion dates, but the planned completion dates are still in the future. If we change the percent complete of task one to 75%, we’re now on time. Notice the planned and projected dates are now the same in each task. Task progress statuses are a little different than project progress statuses. In the project on time is called on target and behind is called at risk. Late is the same as the in trouble project progress status and it means the same thing in the task. But tasks have one additional progress status and is called at risk. It’s similar to behind, but it actually means there’s a risk of being behind even though you might not yet be behind. One way this can occur is when we set the task constraint to must start on and the constraint date to November 8th and we’ll reduce the percent complete of task one to 25%. Task one goes back to being behind and task two, because of the task constraint, is at risk of not being able to start on time. It’s not behind yet, but at risk of being behind.