hello,
I am new to project. I have been reading information but I am still unable to get my project to display what I want. what I want to do seems pretty easy but I have been struggling for awhile to get this to work.



I want to be able able to track estimate vs actual.

I am tracking the progress of development tickets for the developers that I am working with. I am using summary tasks with sub tasks for "development" and "testing". I have a ticket and I have a estimate start date, and estimate end date and the estimate development hours. I am using the start, finish, and duration. I am also using the actual start, actual finish and the actual work to track the actual hours.

this is a sample task "development" - est start date 11/01/10 est finish 11/03/10 est hours 24. "testing" est start date 11/04/10 est finish 11/05/10 est hours 16.

now I want to enter the actuals - "development" act start date 11/01/10 act finish 11/02/10 est hours 11.

The problem - the est finish date changes from 11/03/10 to 11/02/10 and the est hours change from 24 to 11. the gant bar for development goes to 100%.

what I want to see is the est start date and the est hours stay at 11/03/10 and 24 hr and the gant bar to show the estimate and the actual data

can someone let me know if this is possible to do this type of tracking in project and if so, what am I doing wrong in that I am not getting the information that I want.

Set a baseline.... Tools > Tracking > Set baseline... for entire project.

This copies several reference points (including your start and finish dates) to other fields. Now add the fields "Baseline Start" and "Baseline Finish" to your table.

You might also choose to set Interim plans as the project moves along. This will copy the existing Start and Finish fields to Interim Start and Interim Finish fields, allowing you to compare the Actual finishes to the dates that were recalculated after there was a change (like maybe a scope change, or a task went horribly long), that makes your baseline plan no longer very useful. You can set multiple interim plans as your project is under way, each will copy start and finish fields to new fields (InterimStart1, InterimFinish1, InterimStart2, InterimFinish2, InterimStart3, etc).

I am concerned that you might be routinely entering dates into Start and Finish fields as you are entering tasks into your plan. In general, you should allow Project to calculate these based on your tasks duration or work, and that of predecessor tasks.

Kimberly

thanks for the quick reply. so you are saying that every time I add a new task and want to set the estimate using the start, finish, and duration fields, I would set the baseline for the task so that the estimate date is saved. then I would update the actual fields with the date.

okay, I will try to work with that concept

No! Ideally you should create a baseline right before you start working the project, after all the tasks are entered, etc.
You just set a baseline one time... again, this is done between the time you create the plan and start working the plan... right before you enter any actuals.

Setting one now though would be muich better than not one at all.

Also, you are not supposed to enter dates at all, except for Actuals or constraints.

then how am I supposed to track the estimate verus the actual. every time I change the actual data the estimate changes to match the actual.

I am not sure if I am wording my process correctly or not.

I have a estimated start, stop and hours for a task. this is set for every task that I enter. I will get tasks every day that I will want to enter into the project so that I can track it.

I then want to enter the actual start, stop and hours for the task. I want to see in the gant the estmate data against the actual data to see how the actual did against the estimate.

I was using excel for this.

these tasks are really development tickets that we are assigning to developers. we want to be able to track the estimate versus actual for each ticket that is assigned to the developer. we would being using this also for resource tracking to see who has tickets open and when they would freeing up for future assignment for new tickets.

Stop trying to compare Actual Start to Start (which is apparently what you are calling "estimate start"?).

You should compare Actual Start to Baseline Start. (Baseline Start is locked in at whatever Start was at the time you set the baseline.)

Kimberly

thanks for working with me on this. I still am not getting this

I have 6 fields
id est-start-date est-end-date est-hrs act-start-date act-end-date act-hrs

I just want to compare the est fields against the act fields. it didn't sound that difficult when I started this but now I am not so sure.

I get tickets every day. I will add tickets to the project every day. I need a way to save the estimate data so i does not get overlaid with the actual data.

I don't believe those are real field names in Microsoft Project. Can you upload a screenshot?

You can set baselines for only selected tasks. I havent done it before, but you can check it out.
Her is info about baselines:
http://www.project-blog.com/?p=72

The baseline is nothing else than a frozen picture of your project at a certain point time.

they are not actual field names in project.

this is the information that I am trying to report on. I am not sure what fields I need to use in project to get this info.

I want to be able to enter the estimate start and end dates and the estimate hours, and then when the task starts be able to enter the task start date, and when the task ends, enter the task end date and the hours that it took to complete the task.

I would then want to see the gant chart showing the estimate info and the actual info so that I can see how I did.

I am not sure how to get this information or what fields I need to populate to get this information.

Project was designed to calculate a variable for you, but I think you can do this:

1. Go to Tracking Gantt View
2. Go to the Tracking table (if you have trouble getting to the correct view AND the correct table, let me know)
3. in the table, right-click on Act. Start and choose Insert field... choose Baseline Start
4. right-click on Act. Start again and this time choose Baseline Finish
5. Right-click on Act. Start again, this time add Baseline Work
6. Move columns so that the first 7 are in this order: Baseline Start, Baseline Finish, Baseline Work, Act. Start, Act. Finish, Act. Work, % Comp.

Now think of the baseline fields as what you are calling "estimates"; (baseline work is "est_hrs").
Fill those in and then when the task is complete, enter the actual start, actual finish, actual work, and lastly, type in 100 in the % Comp field.

Kimberly
I have selected "tracking Gantt" under the View menu bar. In the View-table I have "entry" and I have the following fields displayed. task name, start, finish, duration, actual work, actual start, actual finish, actual duration, aseline start, baseline finish, baseline duration, resource.

when I select view-table and select tracking, I only see task name. when I right click on task name, I see the list of tables that I see when I click the view-table option. at the top of this list i see "calculate project" and at the bottom of the list I see "more tables" I do not see the insert option. I only see this when I am in the entry table.

Could it be that you need to drag the vertical split bar to the right so you see less chart area and more table?

That is what you should get if you right-click to the left of Task Name. Please try again.