Schedule and Budget Status

Hi Kiara,

1. To see the project as off track I think you're supposed to leave the due date as is. If you adjust it, the project will again be shown as on track. The tool you should consider using here is the baseline option. There you would see the planned vs actual.

2. Not sure about out of the box functionality, but creating this logic in a custom workflow should be very simple to do.

To add to Guy's comments, for #2 I think the existing "Budget Status" field should cover this scenario. Budget Status is based on CPI (Cost Performance Index) which looks at how much you should have spent by today in the project (Earned Value) VS. how much you did spend (Actual Cost).  If you are 20% through the project and have used 75% of the budget, the Budget Status should be Red. 

To get even more technical, if CPI is less than 0.7, Budget Status should be red, between 0.7 and 1 is amber, and above 1 is green. It should align well to what you want to achieve in the second bullet. 

Right, but if I don'd adjust it how would I know when my project is estimated to finish. Using the multiple baseline add in won't help either, the problem is the changing status lights.

Thanks Josh, I will look into what you said because that is not the definition we got. Any idea on how to fix #1?

What Guy described is the best practice, setting the baseline and then updating your plan based around real-time execution. When something is red or orange, I really see it as a call-to-action such as adding more resources, removing responsibilities, modifying calendars, or pushing out the project timeline. Hope this makes sense.

Yes, I understand. The business, however, would like to show that if the original end date of the project has changed the project is behind schedule. (ie. schedule status is red) Regardless of best practices, do you have suggestions on how to do this?

Thanks,

Kiara

If you set the baseline right before the project begins execution, Clarizen will automatically calculate a field called "Baseline Variance." That will show at any moment in time exactly how behind or ahead of schedule your project is vs. the original plan, and you can even plot these differences in the Roadmap or Gantt. This will also give a greater degree of precision versus red/amber, you will be able to see exactly how many days behind/ahead the project is and can even see this value for every work item inside of your project.

Hi Josh,

Is there a formal definition on how budget status is scheduled? I don't see it in the definitions page. 

If I am using multiple baselines, then the variance will rely on the last set baseline, right?

Thanks, 

Kiara

Budgeted Status gets calculated once per day around midnight and again is based on the CPI score. The out-of-the-box variance field is based on the standard baseline (which you can reset as needed). With multiple baseline, you may need a custom field to calculate the variance between the other baselines and the existing dates, I'm not 100% sure if this is baked into the app for multiple baselines.