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CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

  • 1.  CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 06, 2014 01:16 PM

    Many customers look at the Task Assignment Actual Cost and the ACWP values.  Sometimes the value on the this field is lower than the expected Actual Cost. 

    Many times the reason for the lower amount is because there is a past date in the Project 'As Of Date'. 

    Remove the date or set it to the current date and execute the 'Update Earned Value Totals' job.

    Here are more details on this field:

    ACWP: Actual Cost of Work Performed

    ACWP: Sum of the actuals on the project through a point in time. That point in time is the Project As Of Date, if set, else the current system date. If you have future posted actuals, they will not be included in this calculation unless your As Of date is at or beyond the last date of posted actuals.
    Baseline Required: No

    Detail Task Level: ACWP = Sum of all assignment Actual Cost values for the task
    Summary Task: ACWP = Sum of ACWP for Child Tasks
    Project Level: ACWP = Sum of ACWP for all Level 1 Summary Tasks

     



  • 2.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

     
    Posted May 06, 2014 03:46 PM
    Kathryn_Ellis:

    Many customers look at the Task Assignment Actual Cost and the ACWP values.  Sometimes the value on the this field is lower than the expected Actual Cost. 

    Many times the reason for the lower amount is because there is a past date in the Project 'As Of Date'. 

    Remove the date or set it to the current date and execute the 'Update Earned Value Totals' job.

    Here are more details on this field:

    ACWP: Actual Cost of Work Performed

    ACWP: Sum of the actuals on the project through a point in time. That point in time is the Project As Of Date, if set, else the current system date. If you have future posted actuals, they will not be included in this calculation unless your As Of date is at or beyond the last date of posted actuals.
    Baseline Required: No

    Detail Task Level: ACWP = Sum of all assignment Actual Cost values for the task
    Summary Task: ACWP = Sum of ACWP for Child Tasks
    Project Level: ACWP = Sum of ACWP for all Level 1 Summary Tasks

     


    Thanks for the tip Kathryn!



  • 3.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Posted May 07, 2014 09:29 AM

    Kathryn,

    First, love the hat. 

    Second - are any best practices available regarding how this "As Of" date field should be used?

    Seems that if management relies on having up to date EV metrics/reporting, then having this field available, where a user can put a date in and leave it set forever, works against having up to date information.  So, why have this field at all, and if there are good reasons to have it available, how best to use it?

    Thanks,

    Dale



  • 4.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 07, 2014 02:12 PM

    Hi Dale,

    Thank you for the compliment.

    Different companies will have different intended uses of this field. I think that if the Project Manager understands the impact of the field within Clarity, it can be utilized to see data at a point in time.  I think the configuration of this field would be determined by how they want to use this field with the understanding of the specific functionality impacts within Clarity.  Perhaps the company can add text to the field tip to help remind how it impacts the functionality. 

    Maybe someone in the community has project management 'best practices' on how the 'As Of Date' is to be used (not necessarily tied to Clarity functionality) and from that the configuration of Clarity can be altered to accomodate that best practice.

     



  • 5.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Posted May 14, 2014 06:06 PM
    Great TT Kathyrn – great question Dale.
    I’ll take a stab at the theory as I understand it and then give you our real world practice.
    Theory: You’re the Project Manager or Project Financial Manager on a large multi-million dollar project in a fiscally mature organization where your project’s EV data is closely monitored. EV data is only as accurate as what’s posted. If division X met all of last month’s deliverables but their time isn’t posted, or the hardware has arrived but the finance month end runs a month behind and these costs haven’t posted to your project yet, calculating through ‘today’ will be missing actuals, impacting the EV data making Clarity present 'untrustworthy' data. Nobody wants this, but Clarity can’t guess at what ‘done’ is. Someone or Something has to tell it. Being able to control the ‘As Of’ date is the PM or PFM’s quality control tool – allowing them to say “I approve this project to be EV evaluated through this date”. This works great.
    IRL: We’re not that cool or mature but we do like much of the EV information (BCWS, ACWP & SPI/CPI trending). We also like to keep it simple.
    - PMs properly monitor & control their plans updating their % Complete to keep it in sync with their % Expended (No, we cannot use the job. Don’t get me started – Enhance ‘Effort % Complete Calculation Method/Design/Functionality’.
    - We’re only tracking labor costs at this time (timesheets & rate matrix).
    - We’re good at getting our timesheets in. Our mantra is “honest, accurate, and approved”. I like to add “…and posted”. The ‘accounting’ system is therefore trustworthy.
    We post time every Tuesday at 1AM. Every Tuesday at 2AM we run a job that automagically updates the ‘As Of’ date on active projects to the date of last posted time (Friday of Previous Week), then we run the EV jobs.
    Voilà  – trustworthy, consistent, automagic EV data with no effort from the PMs. We’re been doing this for a couple years – I don’t think anyone thinks this operates anyway other than automagic.
    HTH.
    Rob


  • 6.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Posted May 19, 2014 03:59 PM

    Rob,

    Thanks for the input.  Like your approach and have voted for your idea. 

    Though I've not heard from anyone regarding a 'non-automagic' approach, your comments are solidifying my opinion that automagic is the way to go.  I'd even go so far as to hide this field or make it 'read-only' or 'enter once' (ran into an issue a few years ago - where 'read-only' prevented both users and processes from writing to the field - don't know if this has changed since then).

    Thank you!

    Dale



  • 7.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Posted May 19, 2014 05:09 PM

    Hi Dale.

       Here's a thread detailing the setup (2010 - 12.05 era) - EVM Configuration. I'm assuming this is still good or close enough.

       The 'Update As Of Date' code is a update command Stored Procedure. Completely frowned upon & unsupported but pretty harmless as well. If you wanted to move the As Of off screen or make it read only, this command'll get the job done even if the project is locked. FYI - if On Demand or any other reason one does not want to use a SP, one can write to a read only attribute via XOG but there are... opportunities for improvement here... that would have to be handled (Please vote up Ability to Schedule Object Based Processes, Allow NULL Read Only Attributes & Workflow automatic retry when project is locked). I have solutions for these as well if one wants to stay on the fully supported path.

      EVM is cool stuff! It's star is waning as we venture into the Agile & Project Social future, but ya bought the big enterprise waterfall tool - why wouldn't you want it to do "Easy EVM" automagially out of the box?

      HTH,

         Rob



  • 8.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Posted Jun 02, 2014 09:04 AM

    Thanks, Rob.

    I've voted for the 3 ideas you suggested - all make perfect sense.

    And, thanks for confirming thoughs on 'as of date' - makes sense that this ought to be automated.  If a user wants to change dates to analyze something, fine - but for most cases, have the date automatically increment makes sense.

    Dale



  • 9.  Re: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jan 06, 2015 05:17 PM

    I just wanted to add, if the As Of Date is blank it uses the system date.

     

    If you post timesheets in the future and want to see  their ACWP you will need to fill in a future date for the As Of Date.



  • 10.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Posted Jan 08, 2020 04:34 PM
    Where is this as of date?  I don't see it on the project object.  We are having an issue with the Financial Forecast Review because the as of date is not set so the Forecast Remaining is excluding actuals.

    ------------------------------
    Project Manager, Sr. Manager
    College of American Pathologists
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jan 08, 2020 04:51 PM
    Hi Judy,
    Can you try adding the field in the Project List, and you should be able to see it in the columns:
    Then once added you can check the value and edit if needed. 

    Original Message


  • 12.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: ACWP affected by Project As Of Date

    Posted Jan 08, 2020 06:30 PM

    Thank you.  I swear we looked for the attribute on the project object and didn't see it.

     

    Thanks again.

     

    So just to clarify, the PM or PMO is supposed to update this each month for each project?  Is that how it is supposed to work?

     

    Judy Meigel

    Senior Manager, Project Manager III, IS PPM

    College of American Pathologists

    325 Waukegan Road, Northfield, IL 60093

    jmeigel@cap.org

    Dir: 847-832-7757 Fax: 847-832-8757

     




    Original Message