Chapter 14 Viewing and Reporting Project Status

1
Chapter 14Viewing and Reporting Project Status

• What will we do in this chapter?
• Identify tasks that have slipped.
• Examine task costs.
• Examine resource costs.
• Report project cost variance with a stoplight
  view.

2
Viewing and Reporting Project Status

• After project planning is complete, project
  managers focus mostly on identifying, justifying
  and responding to variance. They must also
  document and report it.
• A high level way to see how a project is doing is
  through the Project Statistics.

3
Identify Tasks that have Slipped

• A task that starts late or finishes late cause
  schedule variance.
• Schedule and cost variance are closely related,
  if a project has one it usually has the other.
• There are several different ways to identify
  delayed tasks depending on the information you
  want to see.

4
How to Identify Tasks that have Slipped

• Tracking Gantt view to compare baseline start and
  finish with actual or scheduled.
• Apply Variance table to a task view to see
  variance for task start and finish.
• Apply Slipped/Late progress or Slipping Tasks
  filter.
• Project guide -gt Track -gt Check the progress of
  the project.
• Project guide -gt Report -gtCompare progress
  against baseline work.
• View -gt Reports -gt Current Activities -gt Slipping
  Tasks

5
Examine Task Costs

• If a project includes cost information, a
  critical indicator of how the project is doing is
  cost variance.
• If a task costs more or less to complete than
  planned, cost variance is the result.

6
How to Examine Task Costs

• Apply Cost table to a task view
• Apply Cost Overbudget filter
• Project guide -gt Report -gt See project costs
• Overbudget Tasks report

7
Examine Resource Costs

• Resource costs may be important in the following
  cases
• For some organizations resource costs are the
  main costs of doing projects.
• Billing, either internally or externally.

8
How to Examine Resource Costs

• Apply Cost table to a resource view
• Apply Cost Overbudget filter
• Overbudget Resources report

9
Reporting Project Cost Variance with a Stoplight
View

• Involves using formulas in custom fields.
• The stoplight report represents key indicators
  for tasks as a simple red, yellow or green light.
• Easy to read and understand, and provide a
  general sense of the health of a project.