Comments on: Project / Task progress report – can a task be 90% done?

By: shim_marom

shim_marom — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 03:38:21 +0000

Hi Jim, thanks for your comment. I fully support your comment with the last paragraph in particular, reminding me a project I was working on when one of the developers made a comment about the state of the completion of one of his tasks that “…it’s done, but not done-done’. So you are absolutely correct, it is not unusual for project resources to say that a task is complete when in-fact it is not quite there.

Cheers, Shim.

By: Jim Anning

Jim Anning — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 12:32:01 +0000

I always remember someone I worked with whose mantra was…

“completion is like death… it’s a binary event”

In our planning tool (http://milestoneplanner.com) we have three categories for an action… Not Started, Started or Complete.

Another tip… next time someone tells you that they have completed something try saying something along the lines of “That’s great, what little bits are left to finish off” – you’d be surprised how often people says it’s complete when they actually mean its almost complete.

By: Shim Marom

Shim Marom — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 11:39:17 +0000

quantmleap: Project / Task progress report – can a task be 90% done? http://is.gd/bNMeus #pmot #ftpm #pmp

By: Shim Marom

Shim Marom — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 03:47:06 +0000

quantmleap: Project / Task progress report – can a task be 90% done? http://is.gd/eA0kS #pmot #ftpm #pm

By: Project / Task progress report – can a task be 90% done? | quantmleap Report Me

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:46:24 +0000

[...] more from the original source: Project / Task progress report – can a task be 90% done? | quantmleap By admin | category: project report | tags: brown, craig-brown, first-half, [...]

By: Shim Marom

Shim Marom — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:25:35 +0000

See comments: Project / Task progress report – can a task be 90% done? | quantmleap – http://shar.es/aEBBH #pmot

By: Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:11:42 +0000

Dina,
This is why in the Space and Defense businesses and other US Government and large construction domains the role of “program controls” separates the “doing” of the work from the “reporting” of the progress of the work. The Program Planning and Controls staff also maintains the integrity of the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB), which is a time phased description of the cost, schedule and technical performance.

Here’s some introductory background
http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/12/why-the-performance-measurement-baseline-is-the-basis-of-project-success.html

By: Dina

Dina — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:02:34 +0000

All good points! It pained me in a past job to have to show a ‘percentage complete’ number that wasn’t zero or 100. I felt like I was just playing around with some numbers to produce something that was completely meaningless. I agree that it’s better to just report an estimate of how many hours to complete.

By: Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:32:18 +0000

The Earned Value System Descriptions used by US Defense and Space contractors defines an apportioned milestone measurement approach where predefined percentages complete can be used instead of 0/100.

It is important that the apportioned milestones be “predefined” before the work is started. But the majority of “activities” inside a Work Package are measured as 0/100.

Another little known fact for the space and defense business is that all Work packages can only cross one accounting period. This means the WP is limited to 60 calendar days or 45 (or so) work days.

The key here – no matter how you decide to measure PHYSICAL PERCENT COMPLETE (and it has to be physical) is the answer the question “how long are you willing to wait to find out you’re late?” Then set the measurement points accordingly.

On large NASA programs the answer to that is One (1) Week! We do weekly earned value every Thursday with the Control Account Managers. Then a mid-month “flash report” is sent to NASA and the standard month end 533M report. So twice a month a formal assessment of ETC and EAC is done around a weekly assessment of physical progress.

This seem;s like a lot of work and it is. But the launch date is booked for mid November 2014 and there are billions of $’s of sunk cost that must be recovered with the successful launch.

For IT projects, I’ve seen behaviors that would cause contract cancellation in NASA.

By: Torsten J. Koerting

Torsten J. Koerting — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:09:39 +0000

RT 80/20 rule, still lot of time required @shim_marom: Project / Task progress report – can a task be 90% done? http://shar.es/aKP19 #pmot