How is Percent Complete on projects/tasks updated?
Article ID: 52459
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
Updating % Complete in Clarity:
There are two ways to refresh and update the values for % Complete. They each have a different processing scope. It is important to understand the two behaviors and how they differ.
What Happens Behind The Scenes:
As you work in Clarity, Clarity keeps track of any changes to tasks that affect the % Complete calculations. For example, the Duration method uses the Task Start and Finish dates. If you change a task start or finish, the task will be flagged as needing to be re-calculated. Similarly, if the actual or total effort changes for a task, it will be flagged because those metrics are used for the Effort method.
Environment
Release: ANY
Resolution
Update % Complete Job:
Clarity has a job that will process, calculate and update all tasks that have been flagged. The job is optimized to only recalculate those projects with tasks that have been flagged. The job will also update up the entire project hierarchy to the top-most master project. Thus, changes made in a nested subproject will get rolled up completely to the top-most project.
This job will automatically be invoked by the Update Earned Value Totals job and the Update Earned Value History jobs. This ensures that % Complete is up-to-date before Clarity calculates earned value metrics.
It is important to schedule this job to run at a recurrence interval that will provide users with updated values at consistent times. You should communicate this schedule to your organization so that users can expect % Complete data to change and to be reflected on a regular schedule. Alternately, you can grant access rights to this job for your project managers and stakeholders that need to view current data on demand.
Update Earned Value Button:
Clarity includes a button called Update Earned Value on several pages (Project Baseline, Task List, Task WBS). This button refreshes the earned value metrics 'as of right now'. In addition, it also refreshes and calculates the % Complete values for the current project only. This is an important difference between the background job and the button.
The button will update the current project % Complete only - it will not push changes to any parent projects up the hierarchy. If the current project has nested subprojects, it will use the % Complete value as displayed on the subprojects which are inserted directly into the current project's WBS. It will not rollup new values from subprojects which are nested deeper down the hierarchy.
What This Means To You:
If you update a project that participates in a master-subproject relationship, clicking the Update Earned Value button will not push updates up to parent/master projects. Only the background job will process changes up the entire hierarchy. If you go to the immediate parent project and click the Update Earned Value button, it will use the current values from its immediate children only. The button will not request the children to be recalculated.
Example:
- Master project 1
- Child project 2
- Grandchild project 3
- Child project 2
Use Case 1:
- Make changes in Grandchild project 3
- Click the button
- % complete is updated in project 3 and project 3's proxy task on project 2, but not the % Complete for Project 2 itself.
Use Case 2:
- Now open Child project 2 and you will see the new values for subproject 3; however, project 2 itself has not been updated
- Click the button
- % compete is updated in project 2, and its proxy task on project 1; using the values of project 3
Use Case 3:
- Now open Master project 1 and you will see the new values for subproject 2; however project 1 itself has not been updated
- Click the button
- % complete is updated in project 1 only; using the values of project 3. The master project is not up-to-date with changes that were originally made to its grandchild project 3.
Use Case 4:
- Make another change in Grandchild project 3
- Click the button
- % complete is updated in project 3 only and it's proxy on project 2.
- Now open Master project 1 and you will see that the values for subproject 2 do NOT reflect any changes that were made to project 3
- Click the button
- No changes are made to Master project 1. This is because the button only calculates the current project. It does not reach down into nested subprojects to pull updated data up through the hierarchy.
- Instead, run the Update % Complete job.
Now you see changes reflected all the way up through the project hierarchy. The job processes all changed data and rolls it up to the top-most master project.
Additional Information
For more information on Calculations for Earned Value, EAC, ETC, and Other Metrics, you can review this documentation:
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