pm-lotus by Howard Vaughan

Custom fields in Microsoft Project offer a host of possibilities for tracking and managing schedules. I like to use the indicator functionality to help monitor and control progress. In the example below I’ve used the custom field “Number1″ to indicate task status based on total slack.

Here’s how to set this up-

• Select Tools, Customize, Fields
• Select the field “Number1″
• Click Rename to relabel field as “Schedule Indicator”, then OK

• Click on Custom Attributes, Formula
• Enter the formula:
  IIf([Baseline Finish]>100000,-1000,IIf([Actual Finish]<100000 And [Finish Variance]=0,-998,IIf([Actual Finish]<100000 And [Baseline Finish]>[Actual Finish],-998,IIf([Actual Finish]<100000 And [Actual Finish]>[Baseline Finish] And [Finish Variance]>0,-999,[Total Slack]/480))))
• Click OK

• Click on Values to Display, Graphical Indicators, and set up the images in the order below:
  White = -1,000 (will show tasks that are not baselined)
  Blue = -999 (tasks that finished late)
  Dark green = -998 (tasks that finished on time or early)
  Red <=  -5 (incomplete tasks that are late by 1 week or more)
  Yellow <= 0 (incomplete tasks that are up to 1 week late)
  Green >= 0 (incomplete tasks that are early or on time)
• Click OK, OK

Lastly, we set a Deadline on the Project Complete milestone to provoke negative slack values when behind schedule-

• Double click on the milestone name, then go to Task Information, Advanced, Deadline

That’s about it!