Re: [Planner Dev] Suggestion for project tracking planned v. actuals using Phase as a commit/restore tag.

["lincoln phipps openmutual net" <lincoln phipps openmutual net>]

Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 21:14 +0100, lincoln phipps openmutual net wrote:
>
> > Been bugging me to discuss this - Baselines (as MS Project
> > Refers to them) and how do we implement the same in Planner ?.
>
>
> Can you just clarify something, since I don't use MS Project: is a
> Baseline in their notation the same thing as what Planner is calling a
> Phase? Or does it imply some extra semantics or conditions?

MS Project baseline v. Planner phase:

The Planner phase right now is simply an informational
field in Planner which you can change at will. My proposal
is to snapshot the whole state of a project with a phase
as the label.

The MS Project baseline is a 1-off (though you can repeat
this again and again) store of the current task/resource
details into a "baseline" from which it can then compare
the current project with to derive metrics. I haven't seen
MS Project 2003 or the MS Project Server so maybe you can
report trends on that for the purposes of EVM.

If we store and remember by phase this should make Planner
a more capable tool than MS Project and nore suitable as
a EVM ( Earned Value Management) tool allowing it to be used
or would attract interest from more people.

The focus here is ANSI/EIA Standard-748-A–1998, Earned
Value Management Systems. This is also where I was interested
in the Monte Carlo stuff that someone mentioned in the
planner-dev as this can also be used to derive the
Contract Budget Baseline (CBB).

This won't really complicate Planner at all for people who
don't use this stuff. They'll see a cost figure and the phases
as today but the EVM stuff could be quite hidden if you
want it to be.

If we have snapshot by phase then we (or an external program)
could create suitable cost curves of...

PV - Planned Value (BCWS - Budgetted Cost of Work Sheduled),
EV - Earned Value (BCWP - Budgetted Cost of Work Performed),
AC - Actual cost  (ACWP - Actual Cost of Work Performed)

on a phase by phase trend. We can also thus report the
usually described variances e.g.,

Cost Variance = (BCWP minus ACWP),
Cost Variance % = (CV/BCWP X 100%),
Cost Performance Index (CPI) = (BCWP/ACWP),
Schedule Variance = (BCWP minus BCWS),
Schedule Variance % = (SV/BCWS X 100%),
Schedule Performance Index (SPI) = (BCWP/BCWS),

Thus also ideally store a number of Estimates at
Completion (EAC)...

ACWPcum + 1/CPI X (BAC minus BCWPcum),
ACWPcum + 1/CPI X SPI X (BAC minus BCWPcum):
Variance at Completion (VAC) = (BAC minus EAC) for both EACs above,
Variance at Completion % + (VAC/BAC X 100%) for both EACs above,
Expected Funds to Completion (ETC) = Budget At Completion (BAC),

and Expected Completion Date.

Once we have the basic cost stuff recorded the actual calculations
are just maths (I'd hope) and that 90% of the problem is getting the
first cost calculation figure right and the actuals are just
(percentage completion * cost) snapshotted by phase.

It would be nice if anyone has any experience with the cost
reporting or has access to related document to point where
we can pick them up or any good links e.g.,

http://www.acq.osd.mil/pm/

Rgds,
Lincoln.