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Running and Analyzing the Project Status Report

Help for running and analyzing the project status report in the project planning and management template for Excel


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Project Planning and Management Help Topics: Defining the Project Resources Defining and Entering Project Tasks Creating the Gantt Schedule Running and Analyzing the Project Status Report Participant Emailing and Workbook Generation

The Project Status Report can be run at any time to gain an insight into the current progress status of the project and identify risks in order to take necessary corrective action. The date for which the project status report is required is specified in the 'Resources' sheet. The project status analysis is broken into four main areas: Earned Value Analysis, Risk Analysis, Project Timing, and Completion Analysis.

 

Earned Value Analysis

Earned value analysis compares the planned resources to the projects time-based schedules and costs, to constitute a cost and schedule measurement baseline. The three main objectives of earned value analysis are:

 

Earned value parameters are calculated for each unit type and capital costs in order to calculate a Cost Performance Index and Schedule Performance Index for each component and for the project as a whole.

 

When running the Status Report, use is made of both budgeted and actual unit costs for the earned value analysis. If zero unit costs are detected, an option to base earned value on Hours rather than Value is given. This enables the earned value analysis to still be run on projects for which costs are not quantified (e.g. internal labor costs).

 

Three basic project performance measurement variables are required to perform the earned value analysis. These are:

 

From these three performance measures, two variances can be calculated:

 

The three performance measurements are also used to calculate the Cost Performance and Schedule Performance Indices, that provides a more standardized analysis of project cost and schedule performance.

 

Period 'snapshots' of both the CPI and SPI for the project can be taken at the bottom section of the Status Report. The Historical Project Performance chart plots the CPI and SPI at the periodic snapshot intervals, to give a clear view on the trend of the project performance since the start date. This trend can be used to view the reaction of the project to actions taken and the plan can be revised in response to the direction and intensity of the trends.

 

Clicking on the 'Take Snapshot' button will append the CPI and SPI values to the Snapshot History table as at the status report date, and update the chart accordingly. Snapshots can be removed by selecting any cell for the snapshot and clicking the 'Remove Selected Snapshot' button.

 

 

Cost Risk Analysis

The Cost Risk Analysis section summarizes the project's total operating and capital costs with projection and recovery calculations derived from the performance indexes. The analysis consists of three calculations:

 

Project Timing

The Project Timing section calculates the expected duration of the project and compares this with the planned end date. The key information displayed here are:

 

 

Completion Analysis

The completion analysis section displays the number of units budgeted, scheduled, and completed for each unit type. The number of units completed is then compared to both the budgeted number of units from the 'Resources' sheet and the total scheduled number of units calculated by the 'Auto-Timing' function in the 'Tasks' sheet. These comparisons are used to determine number of Remaining Units to be completed and Percent Complete against both the budget and schedule.

 

This analysis can be used to give an overall view of project completion and isolate the unit types which may be holding back progress. It also allows the identification of any discrepancies that might exist between budgeted and scheduled units required to complete the project.


Screenshot: Running and Analyzing the Project Status Report