Project "Percent Complete" Calculation - Duration to Effort Based

[jwilcox]

How would one change the calculation of project "percent complete" from duration based to effort based?  

Based on this change, are there concerns with future upgrades not being compatible?

As we all know, the "percent complete" field is scattered in various workbench's and the workspace so it's an important value.  From my perspective in professional service, effort based calculations are more valuable.

[Brian Gadeberg · Accepted solution]

Hi jwilcox

In the London release the percentage complete is set on the child task and rolled up to the parent. I assume you are talking about PRJ and PRJTASK. I would say there are at least two ways of using the indicator - the workers best guess or a calculated value. 

The best guess -> current used hours incl. the extra hours on top of planned effort to complete the requested task.

Calculated -> actual effort hours compared to planned effort hours. But then the actual hours - if using timecards - needs to be approved before actual effort is updated. Remember if you spend all your planned hours and the task outcome is not delivered, then the task will close when you reach 100% in "percentage complete" 

I think both scenarios are ok - it depends on how you handle project change request or how you consider the task to be completed. If you always have a project change request for all task then calculated is ok. But I prefer the more agile approach of best guess and trust that my project manager has a financial buffer/slag. 

So to solve your challenges I would create a rule calculating the field - but only when it is a child - the parent is already taken care of in the baseline functionality. Any way you need to agree agree with the PMO on what the field represent.

Regards, Brian

[jwilcox]

Thank you for  the response Bryan.

You are correct in that my main concern here is the PRJTASK level as the rollup to PRJ is part of the core functionality of the tool.  We use a "Planned Effort" field for our tasks that calculates to a custom "Effort Percent Complete" field based on "Planned Effort" and "Actual Effort".  The Project Managers control the "Planned Effort" and enter their estimate based on effort at completion.  

We are currently in Kingston and the logic for the "Percent complete" field is based on curation.  The issue is that the "Percent complete" field is used in other modules such as the "Workbench".  The use of a duration based percent complete is not valuable for my team.  I've been told that it is not advisable to change the programming of the logic for calculating "Percent complete".  Ideally, it would calculate as we have done with the custom "Effort Percent Complete" field and give us the ability to replicate in the Workbench and other areas that the field is available.

Are you saying that the logic of automatic calculation for "Percent complete" can be changed in London?  I'm not interested in manual "Percent complete" entries.

[Brian Gadeberg]

Hi jwilcox,

It makes sense to create a new field for custom functionality. 

As a similar thing - you could be inspired to replicate - I like when we use the platform functionality before creating new fields.

On the Project table ServiceNow has created a field called Project Manager - instead of using the "Assign to" field. The field Project Manager is used in many places for the PPM Suite, so I can't ignore the field and only use "Assigned to". Then I decided to create a rule keeping the two fields in sync, created an ACL to make field "Project Manager" Read Only and finally I removed the field wherever possible. Now I have the benefit of both the platform functionality and PPM functionality. Maybe you can use the same configuration and copy your new field to the baseline field. Just keep in mind that th field value if compared with other applications use of the percentage complete field, could be different. 

Brian