Hi Jill & Nick, I agree with Skye and Doug. You set your Target Dates by using a Custom Form field. And you only change it when you truly believe your date is moving (you have no way to make up the delays). You can do the same using Baselines as Doug said. I like the form because it's easier to show the project sponsors (along with other information). The key to remember (and apologies to those who have heard this rant already) is that Workfront and your project plan are just a tool to let you know you're about to step in shhhh... er something. It's an early warning detection system (if you create your plan properly). It should always be real and it should always be accurate (to the best of your ability). So you actually WANT that Planned Completion Date to move to show where you're really headed. Better to discover bad news early so you have more time to adjust. But that date moving is your warning sign. It's a good thing. Now you can make strategic adjustments. Doesn't mean you're changing your Target Date. Just means you're currently tracking beyond your Target, so you have some work to do. And the project plan will help you do that. So everything you mentioned Nick is pretty typical on all projects (dates shift). The PM's job is to know when a date has shifted, update the plan to reflect the shift, determine if that shift mattered, and either devise a plan to make a correction or honestly report when your project will truly be done. You can do all that easily if you keep a well maintained plan. To do that in Workfront I recommend the following: Create a solid project plan with realistic estimates (especially the durations as that's what will drive your critical path). Use predecessors and make sure your Task Constraint is set to As Soon As Possible as often as possible. Only used Fixed Dates when absolutely necessary. Your deadline should NOT be fixed in the plan (use the form as discussed above). You want this date to move (if tasks are late) so you know when you're in trouble and how much trouble you're in. NOTE: it's important to set proper preds because then when a task is delayed you only have to update that one task to see what happened to your project. Without them you're updating multiple tasks and leaving more room for error and wasting time. It'll make updating your project plan so much easier and saves you a ton of time. When a Task starts late, change the Start Date to reflect the new date. This should push any successor Tasks out as well. When an in-progress Task is going to take longer to complete, I adjust this by extending the Duration so I don't lose the Start Date and true duration. When a Task is completed I ensure the Planned Completion Date matches the Actual Date. Because your preds are driven off the Planned Completion Date, not the Actual. I update the plan once a week, every week (at least once a week). This is important because you identify issues or delays within the week and it's easier to adjust. If you wait 2 weeks or longer, things could have already gone out of control. And now you're scrambling. Plus, it's easier/faster to update in 1 week increments. I have a dashboard that allows me to see what Tasks were completed this week and what Tasks are scheduled for the upcoming week. This makes the Status meeting with the team go smoother and is easier for me to manage the tasks. It also gives you a good opportunity to sync up the plan for accuracy (a team member may say, hey I can't start that Task until Task A is done – cool add the pred). Sounds like a lot, but it's only 7 steps. Not quite like 7 minute Abs, but... Anyway, I'll stop now. I know others have great ideas and methods to run projects. But Workfront can really help you save time as a PM if you put the plan together well from the start. It sounds like a lot of work (and it is in the beginning), but after that it takes me no more than an hour to update my plan each week. Usually a lot less. Hit me up if you want me to explain or discuss further. Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | IT | Sr. IT Project Manager Denver Water | t: (303-628-7262) | c: (303-319-6473) "http://www.denverwater.org/">
http://www.denverwater.org INTEGRITY | VISION | PASSION | EXCELLENCE | RESPECT ------Original Message------ Jill, if you or Nick need to be able to compare an actual project completion date to a date that you had planned to have it completed, I'd advise you to set up a custom form field that is a date field for your project's planned completion date. The explanation is a little lengthy to go into here, so I'll just mention that our projects are set to schedule from a start date so we can't even access the project's Planned Completion Date field. If we wanted to do any comparisons between an actual completion date and the date we had in mind, then this would definitely be our only option. Moreover, this usually works better for us since the date we usually have in mind is a distribution date about midway through the project. Nick mentioned flagging projects as late. I wanted to let you both know that this is something our PMs opt to do manually. Sometimes when a project is a little late, we don't want it to pop up in anyone's late report, because we know we can catch up and make the distribution on time. So we opt to have everything show up as being fine, and manually flag those ones that are in trouble. It seems to me that if you specifically want to show something as late, this would be the direction you choose to go. At this point, you can probably(?) run a report on completed projects flagged as late and show a comparison between your custom "planned completion date" field and the project's actual completion date. -skye
