% Complete issue

Joseph Tuccillo

I am seeing what may be a bug but perhaps another set of eyes can help here.

 

I have a task which has 2 children. Those 2 children each have children of their own (grandchildren).

 

The Children are showing the correct % complete rolled up from the Grandchildren. However the parent is not.

 

It is my understanding that the formula used to calcualte % complete is:

% Complete is based on sum(duration of individual tasks * % complete of indivual tasks) /  sum(duration of individual tasks)

 

I have verified this works. However, On  the top level parent row it does not. I can't figure this out!

In the screen shot below, you will see the task name, duration, % complete, and then 2 custom columns I created for testing. The first is "True % Complete". This is using the formula above on each line and parent line. The second is "Working days" which is used to get the true duration of the parent tasks. Since in this example you will notice that the duration of the "Execute Cutover" task is 7.25d even though the tasks are only 5 hours total. This is due to a gap in time between tasks.

You will see that the True % Complete matches the % Complete in every Row except the top row ("Cutover"). I have done the math several ways and it seems that the % Complete should be rolling up to 57% not 41%. What is going on here? 

 

Thanks for the help.

 

Richard Rymill SBP

Nicely explained |Craig! 

Thanks

RichardR

 

J. Craig Williams

Joseph,

 

What you are seeing is correct, at least as far as Smartsheet is concerned.

 

Each child task's working duration is [% Complete] * [Duration]

Each parent's [% Complete] is the formula you used above.

But each parent's duration is not the Sum of the children's Duration but rather its own start & end dates. That's why you see 7.25d for Executive Cutover, not 0.625d

Now the Grand-Parent also follows the same rules for the parent.

It looks at the formula you have to determine its [% Complete], not the sum of its grand-children.

Because Executive Orders is so much longer in duration than 'hold', it has more weight in the final result.

Put a 6d lag between the two tasks under 'hold' and you will see the [% Complete] change. If Smartsheet was calculating effort (and it isn't) then that would be wrong.

 

i am not defending this, only providing the reason why you are seeing 41% instead of 57%

 

Craig