Predicting a bad situation

jsnodgrass

I have projects with 3 milestones, call them A, B, C

C is dependent on B which is dependent on A.

C is a critical completion date.

If either A or B is late, C is automatically late and that is very bad.

If A or B is late by X number of days, C automatically is now going to be late by that same number of days.

I'm looking to design a report or alert that says -

A has not been completed. It should have been completed X days ago, the new completion date for C will now be Y. (same thing for milestone

Any thoughts on where to begin?

 

 

J. Craig Williams

You'll likely want to:

1. enable Dependencies in the Project Settings.

2. Create copies of the start / end date columns after the schedule is agreed upon. That's your baseline (last approved schedule)

3. Create columns to check variance between actual dates and baseline dates. 

4. Build alerts and formulas and conditional highlighting based on variances.

Formulas will be something like this (not actual code)

 

if ( MS A not complete   AND MS A end date in the past ) then 

days late is MS A end date - today()

you'll want to do A and B separately, because they do not have a precedence over each other and you want to know about both of them, not one or the other.

It isn't as complicated as it may seem but it depends a lot on your particular PM style (or lack of same). If you'd like some PM support or training, reach out to Richard at richardr@smarterbusinessprocesses.com) He's in the UK and we work together.

Craig