12/14/2010 Microsoft Project: 25 – Beginning Tracki…

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Microsoft Project: 25 – Beginning Tracking

If you ve been following through all my articles, you should now be in a position to launch your project and begin to see work
happening. So, this month we ll make a start at Tracking: or the act of progressing or tracking the progress of the project as
time goes by.

Setting

We need something to work with and we can use the same Aircraft A project that we started using in Microsoft Project: 17
Multiple Projects. I ve reset the Project Start date to 1 Jan 06 for future use, and you can download my Aircraft A file here:
[Link] .

Tracking Gantt

So, we ve made our plan, levelled and fine-tuned it to an acceptable plan and we now want to launch it. Hold on! There re
some extra steps we should take. Project has a View/Tracking Gantt. You will notice that it is similar to the normal Gantt
Chart view, though the bars are thinner and they all have 0% complete showing at the end of each bar (because the project
hasn t started yet). We will need this view to see the baseline.

Baseline

A baseline is a snapshot of the main elements of the project as it is before we start. Thus, if we need to compare progress
with the starting data we must save a baseline before we update any of the data. So let s do that now: Tools/Tracking/Save
Baseline

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which opens the Save Baseline dialog. For the moment, we ll accept the default settings of Baseline for the Entire
Project, by clicking the OK button.

The effect is immediately obvious in the Tracking Gant view as there has appeared a set of grey bars identical to the original
planned bars. These are the Baseline bars.

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To see the baseline data, View/Table: Entry/More Tables

and in the More Tables dialog, make sure Task is selected (because we ll be looking at a task table) select Baseline and
Apply.

Open up the table by dragging the vertical divider line to the right.

We can see that a baseline is a set of original Durations, Start and Finish dates, Work and Cost estimates that we planned
and have just saved. It is the primary reference point against which we measure changes in our project. So we are now ready
to roll! Reset the Table to the Entry Table via View/Table: Baseline/Entry.

Tracking Progress

There are many ways to track projects, so we ll have a look at what s available. First, though, we have to create a false

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situation so that we can observe the effects. The project is due to start on 1 Jan 06. Let s suppose the first week has gone
and some work has been done.

Current Date

Set the current date to Monday 9 Jan 06 via Project/Project Information

and in the Project Information dialog, either enter the 9 Jan 06 or use the calendar pick list.

The Current Date assumes a default point in time of 0800.

Status Date

Now, it takes time to get progress information to us, and the Status Date setting allows us to enter the date/time when the
data was valid. Let s say that the status reports reach us on the Monday (the today s date we have just set up as the
Current Date) but were completed as effective at 1700 on Friday 6 Jan 06. We need to set this up, again though the
Project/Project Information dialog, this time selecting or entering the Status Date. (Check that the Current Date is still
showing 9 Jan 06.)

The Status Date assumes a default point in time of 1700.

Project Start

Oh dear! Information has come in that the aircraft was delayed by weather and it didn t arrive until Monday 2 Jan, and thus

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the project start was delayed until Tuesday 4 Jan. We need to feed that into our schedule. So, select the Start Aircraft A
milestone task, and then Tools/Tracking/Update Tasks

in the Update Tasks dialog, for the Start Aircraft A task, enter 3 Jan 06 (or select from the drop down calendar) in the
Actual Start: cell and then OK.

Immediately we can see the effect of the delay. Note that the grey baseline bars do not move and the other bars show the
slippage in this case the end date has gone out to 6 Feb 06.

%Complete

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Now let s assume the work due for the first week has been progressing and we have some measure of progress. We could
use the same Update Task s dialog for each one, but I d like to develop that further another month. So, to get the information
into Project quickly, let s use the Tracking Toolbar right-click on a toolbar and select Tracking or

via Tools/Customize/Toolbars

in the Customize dialog, from the Toolbars tab, select Tracking and Close.

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The Tracking toolbar should appear amongst your toolbars.

Select Task 1 Start Aircraft A, then click the 100% button on the toolbar.

You ll notice the tick appearing in the Indicator column. If we hover the mouse over the tick, we ll see what is indicates.

Repeat this process giving Task 2: 100%, Task 3: 25% and Task 7: 50%. Note the filling in of the planned blue/red bars to
indicate progress and the % figure changing at the end of the bars.

Effect of Task Delay

Now let s also suppose we ve also been notified of a delay in the expected start of Task 4, as there some additional parts to
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be assembled incurring a new estimate of Monday 16 Jan 06. Open up the Table a little by dragging the vertical divider line
to show the Start Date column, click on the appropriate cell and type in or select a new date of 16 Jan 06.

A Planning Wizard will give us some self-explanatory options select the middle one to keep the linkage. This is important,
as if its predecessor runs late, we will want this task to move accordingly.

This delay will put a constraint of Start No Earlier Than for the task, as can be seen by hovering the mouse over the
Indicator, and we can view the resultant slippage on the blue bar.

Conclusion

We ve seen how to set up a baseline before launching the project. We ve input progress and delays, and observed the effect
on the Tracking Gantt chart.

Next Month

In the next month s issue we ll continue Tracking and see some facilities to help us to revise the schedule.

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