The Percent Complete Problem

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the most common mistakes people make when calculating the percentage of completion of a phase or activity group in the schedule. He explains that when calculating this percentage, we need to consider the total duration of phase or group and the worked hours.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody. And welcome to the five minutes. Be on podcasts today. I like to discuss with you the Percent Complete and some thinks that we usually do while competing the Percent complete in the FES level and the project level. Ah, when we have a task or a basic task, it's a very common to set zero. He wrote a 25, 50, 75, 100%. Complete as close as we are from 100 as close as we are to the finish.

This is quite maze can quite simple. If we can, 50% means we are in about me, the love of the task, but one common mistake is a very basic mistake. He must avoid it is to calculate the percent complete of the FES based on it. On first, the average of the percent complete of the tasks that belong to this space. I know that you may be surprised of listening that then say, Oh, who can say we do that?

But it's a very common, I receive at a message a couple of weeks ago for the project manager. Ask him a question about that. So let's suppose I have one task with a 50% Complete and the other one with 20 fives, then the average is 37. So this it's only true. If the two tasks are exactly the same effort, the same durations, the same amount of resources and the same we work.

So this is the work, the volume or a fork. So this is with that. I can do these kind of calculation. So what I like to strongly suggest it's very basic, but it's very important for gap or any kind of calculation with Percent complete. We can not calculate an average. We can not add, we cannot divide it. We can't do anything but analyze the results. The number, why I am saying this because it usually in most of the time, all the tasks that belong to a phase, they are different.

One has one day, you gotta, one has five days. And the other one is three days with five resources. SU we need to understand that all copulations in the face and project level must be done by the work, by the volume of work, by the work hours per resource. Let me give you an example. Let's suppose that to have two tasks, that one resource, each one, its eight hours.

The other one is 16 hours. Both of them are 50% so ate. We have four hours of work done, four hours remaining, or the other one, eight hours of work done eight hours remaining. If we do that craziness of calculate the average, I will tell you, Oh, okay. So we have, let me rephrase this example. Let me do one thing. Let's suppose that one is for hours in Nate. The other one is four hours in a 16.

So one is 50 or a one is 25 or only to not do Xactly in the middle. So one is 25%. The other one is 50%. Then I say, Oh, 50 plus 25, 75 divided by two is 37.7. This is wrong. What does right? The right. This is the total work is eight plus 16 to 24 hours. That work that I done that is done four plus four, eight, eight divided by 24.

This is 33. One third look is different. It's very, very important. It's different. So we need to understand this because maybe I have one task of eight hours. And if I have 10 resources, this is not eight hours of work, but 88 zero hours, it's completely different. It, this is a Ford is probably like the same of two weeks of 10 working days off a regular resource. We need to understand that because we need to calculate in Complete this since the very basic, but a lot of people is doing mistakes on that order.

Very common mistake. It's not using only the Percent Complete but the completion date, date, finish date minus the start date. This is so wrong because I'm assuming that all work between these two dates are the same. I know, I need to understand that you're using one resource is one thing using 10 of your sources. It's a completely different set. And so I need to understand that I need to use the work, the man hours, the hours per a resource to do all this calculation.

This is what most of the softwares in PM. They do like Microsoft projects like Primavera, all the stools. They use an understand this work So and sometimes we are not able to do that. So we try to customize and create custom fields doing that. So, Oh, let's great. On one custom field, it's finished a date minus a start date. And then the current date we'll set up the Percent Complete this is wrong.

Again, this is wrong because all kind of works must be considered in a different way. They must be considered based on the amount of charter work that they require. And with that, I can compare and see if I am 25, 50 or 37 or 87% complete or otherwise I will see a result in the project level that does not reflect the real status of my project.

So I look in the project line, Oh, 80%, but it's not aid. Maybe it's 40%. Why? Because I'm over considering given a very stroke weight to the last important work and four getting the most important work that requires a huge amount of effort. So let's do that. Let's always think in the total work, the total work of the resource that we have.

I hope you enjoy this podcast and

Speaker 1 (6m 34s): Your next week with another top in project management. Bye. Bye.

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