Percent Plan in Microsoft Project – Part 4

This post continues the discussion on the tracking model based on the % Plan custom field.

In the previous posts we defined the % Plan field and the formula that calculate the planned value according to the baseline and the status date for every task in the project, including the summary tasks.

We used other custom fields to create an index that measures the project performance based on the % Complete and the % Plan values.

You may want to check out the previous articles before this one in order for you to have the whole picture:

Percent plan in Microsoft Project – Part 1

Percent plan in Microsoft Project – Part 2

Percent plan in Microsoft Project – Part 3

 

Everything seems fine with the model, except that the % Plan sometimes is not comparable with the % Complete on the summary tasks. This weakness of the model is due to the calculation method we used for the % Plan which is different from the way Microsoft Project calculates the % Complete on the summary tasks.

What to do if we want a more robust model? What to do if we want a model where the % Plan and the % Complete are consistent and therefore we could use that model with confidence in our projects?

 

Well, Proyecteus has developed such a model called the Percent Plan Model, which apply the ideas we developed on this serie of blog posts and that is complemented with some additional custom fields, macros and views.

Using this model, we get a % Plan field which is consistent with the % Complete, allowing us to have a tracking view as in the following examples.

 

Example of Percent Planned Model, with all the tasks progressing as planned.
In this example, the % Plan is equal to the % Complete, both in the detail tasks and in the summary tasks indicates that the model works fine.

Percent Plan Model for Microsoft Project. Example of a project running according to the plan

Percent Plan Model for Microsoft Project. Example of a project running according to the plan

 

Example of Percent Plan Model, with progress of tasks with variations to the plan.
In this example, the % Plan is different to the % Complete because some tasks are running behind and others ahead the plan, but the index (PI or Progress Index) is measuring correctly the project performance at every level of the tasks structure.

Percent Plan Model in Microsoft Project. Example of project running with deviations from the baseline

Percent Plan Model in Microsoft Project. Example of project running with deviations from the baseline

 

You can know more about the Percent Plan Model and buy it on the following page:

Percent Plan Model for Microsoft Project

Please review the Percent Plan Model page, buy it if you consider it can be useful to you and let us know your opinion.

 

This is all for now, thank you for read and have a great day!

Firma RRVL-Proyecteus-PMP-MCITP-nocel

1 thought on “Percent Plan in Microsoft Project – Part 4

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *