Do Late task Hours Show Up on Resource Planner Hours

[LaurenMc2]

If tasks are late, do the planned hours for them still show up in the planner, or do they fall off with the week that the task was due? Lauren McCollim, M.B.A, PMP Advertising Project Manager Pensacola Christian College

[SkyeHa]

planned hours show up in the resource planner based on the task's planned completion date. They stay on or fall off based on your filters after that point. When you say tasks are late, do you mean they are past the planned completion date? If so, the task planned completion date unfortunately needs to be corrected for the planned hours to accurately show in the correct week. If you chose to filter out tasks that are done, I suppose you could also look back at the prior week and see what hours are planned there and add them to the previous week, but I don't usually look at past weeks because it's simply not our practice to keep a planned completion date in the past (it makes the rest of the project timeline look wonky and people don't really know when anything is due) -skye

[VicAl]

Hi Lauren, As Skye mentioned they will show up wherever their Planned Completion Date falls. If that's in the past, doesn't matter. It only looks at the date. However, it depends on which planner you're looking at. If you're looking at the Agile Team Working On planner tab, there is a switch you can toggle to have it look at Project Completion Dates (see attached). Projected Completion Dates will move past dates to the present. This is also available at the project level under the Staffing > Scheduling tab. However, I don't see the same option in the full Capacity Planner (I suspect that'll be down the road : or maybe it's there and I just don't see it). We use the Planned Completion Dates because the predecessors are driven off that. So what we do is have the PM adjust the task dates to reflect the new reality. There's two very good reasons for this: The reason you mentioned : your capacity plan won't let you know if someone is overbooked because their planned hours are in the past. You want the task to move to see if it impacts your overall timeline (i.e. if it's on the critical path it'll move your project end date : which is important so that it tells you if you're in trouble) This is where people will vehemently declare that their project end dates aren't allowed to move. That's fine. You don't have to communicate or announce a date change. But wouldn't it be great to know ASAP that you're in jeopardy of missing that date? The earlier you know the easier it is to adjust. Keeping the plan with current dates lets you know where you're tracking. And if you need to know which tasks are late etc. There are a dozen ways to address that. But I (and the PMI) highly recommend keeping task dates up to date. Hope that helps.

[LaurenMc2]

That's very helpful! I've been debating about letting our department supervisors move the dates on things, but it sounds like it's the best way for us to have the most accurate information about our planned work. One thing i do think i want to implement with them is being sure the client has approved the dates to be moved to a later due date before we do it. Thank you all! Lauren McCollim, M.B.A, PMP Advertising Project Manager Pensacola Christian College

[VicAl]

Yeah I agree. We don't get too fussed over a task date moving unless it impacts the project date. But if the project end date moves the PM has a few options. Verify the tasks are correctly estimated and linked If so, see if they can tweak the schedule to reel the date back in (i.e. add resources, add OT hours, cut scope, etc.) - of course this has to be done honestly and without introducing unacceptable risk If none of that works and the project end date does have to move, they turn the project to a Yellow or Red status and submit a Change Order to the Project Sponsors indicating the schedule change and why. And the Sponsors have to Approve it for the project to proceed. I also created an easy dashboard to track late tasks. I created a custom form that has one field (Original Due Date). It is not attached to anything in advance. If you look at the dashboard below, the report view has the Original Due Date field in it. If a task moves, simply enter the Original Due Date inline. This will automatically add the form to that task and retain your original date. Then you can change the Planned Completion as needed. I set the report to highlight the entire line if that Original Due Date exists. It also highlights the Planned Completion Date when it is an incomplete task has a date that's in the past (i.e. it needs to be updated). Hope that's helpful.