% project completion - planned hours vs. duration

[JamieHi]

Hello, I need to summarise the case for calculating percentage completion for projects using either Planned Hours or Duration. My instinct is to use Planned Hours (currently it's Duration) but I need a compelling reason to change this... Thanks! Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[ShellyLo1]

Jamie - I think it depends on how you are using Workfront. Our planned hours are purely estimates and we do not require our users to log time. Our Duration, however, is set and accurate so we calculate based on duration. Hope that makes sense. Thanks! Shelly Shelly Long Pier 1 Imports

[EricLu2]

Hi: We use planned hours. Here is the reasoning: Duration – Duration happens whether progress is made or not. Time marches on and all that. If you have a task that lasts ten business days, and it is the seventh day, does that mean 70% of the work is done? We don't have any work to do that gets done just through the passage of time; Planned Hours – The percent complete, to us, means the percent of the work done. When people charge actual hours, work is getting done. We ask people to set the percent complete manually through their timesheets. That way, we can compare actual versus planned versus the percent complete to know if we are roughly ahead or behind schedule. I'd go with planned hours. If you decide to go with Duration, let me know what your teams do that cause progress to be made through the simple passage of time. Thanks! Eric

[ShellyLo1]

Eric - I agree. Our users are not required to post time against projects so for us, planned hours would not work. Again, it all depends on how someone is using Workfront. Shelly Long Pier 1 Imports

[JamieHi]

So I guess this is also about how the PMs themselves are entering % complete against their tasks - are they doing it thinking of the passage of time (duration) or in terms of the expected effort (planned hours)? We previously came from MS Project where there are two separate columns - % Complete and % Work Complete - so maybe having a single field in Workfront is potentially causing a difference in expectations? Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[EricLu2]

Yes, good point about the two different attributes. I created a calculated attribute called "Crowley Percent Complete" that calculates the percent of time that has passed for a task. I compare it to the percent complete people declare arbitrarily, and see if anything looks amiss. If there is a big difference, then I look into it to see why. We do not, btw, calculate percent complete automatically. I forgot to mention that. We make people declare the percent complete for each task and it rolls up from automatically from there. Eric

[JamieHi]

Sorry Eric - how do you mean you don't calculate it automatically? Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[JamieHi]

Any more thoughts? Struggling to make the case for using Duration! Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Jamie, To be honest it depends on how you use planned hours in Workfront. In our instance, because we have 17 different agencies and they aren't all mature enough for planned hours for the entire project (almost all projects have hours for developers but that is the only department because it is shared across the network), we use duration. Example Project: Task 1, 1 day, 0 hours Task 2, 8 days, 40 hours (assigned to developer so has hours on it) Task 3, 1 day, 0 hours If we used planned hours, when Task 2 was completed, my project would say 100% complete because all the planned hours are complete. Because we use duration, when Task 2 is complete, my project shows 90% complete. I know in this short example it isn't too compelling, but when you have a project with 200 tasks and 100 of them are completed but the percent complete on the project is still 0% (because they haven't gotten to development yet), it looks weird. Hope that is helpful. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[JamieHi]

Thanks Anthony You make a very good point - I did a quick analysis of our portfolio and 12% of our projects don't even have a single task that contains Planned Hours - so those particular projects could shoot down to 0% if we toggled the setting. But theoretically we could spend some time and get all plans to include Planned Hours - it's just I need a justification of the value of that exercise. Jamie Hill JLL EMEA

[JCMo]

I've always found "duration" to be a confusing term, with how WF uses it. I understand it but a different word might be more clear. I do use both fields, "duration" to drive the window of time available and "planned hours" to address how long a task should take. I find planned hours to be much more useful. JC Morgan Project Manager Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign