Monitoring task slippage
For tasks, slip is the difference between the report date of a specified progress period and the start or resume date of a task. A positive value indicates that work is ahead of schedule; a negative value indicates that work is behind schedule. For summary and expanded tasks, slip is calculated as being the difference between the report date and the task's effective progress date. The effective progress date for a summary or expanded task is calculated from the task's percentage complete and duration. The percentage complete for a summary or expanded task is calculated as the total actual duration of the child tasks, divided by the total duration of the child tasks. You can display the Slip field in the spreadsheet and you can filter for tasks with a particular amount of slip, which helps you to identify tasks which are very far behind schedule - or very far ahead of schedule.
If a summary or expanded task contains a gap between the last completed work and the work that remains to be completed and if the report date is located at some point within this gap, the Slip field for summary and expanded tasks shows zero.
Displaying the Slip field in the spreadsheet
To display the Slip field in the spreadsheet:
- Add a blank column to the spreadsheet.
- Right-click the heading of the blank column and select Field, Progress, then Slip to insert the Slip field into the spreadsheet column.
- Right-click the heading of the Slip column and select Table Definition. The Table Definition Properties dialog appears. Depending on the way Asta Powerproject is configured, the Table Definition Properties dialog may appear automatically once you have selected the field that you want to display in the column.
- Click the Slip field in the list of columns on the left of the dialog.
- Select the progress period against which you want slip to be calculated in the Progress period field.
- Select a time unit in the Override time unit field if you want the slip to be displayed in a particular time unit.
- Click Close.
Filtering for tasks with a particular amount of slip
To filter for tasks with a particular amount of slip:
- On the View tab, in the View Data group, click the Filter dropdown and select New. The Filter Properties dialog is displayed.
- In the Identification group of fields, enter a name for the filter in the Name field and select the Display on menu check box if you want the filter to appear on the Filter dropdown in the View Data group on the View tab, making it easier to apply the filter. If you want to assign a category to the filter, select a filter category in the Category field. Categorising filters makes it easier to find the filter you are looking for, for example when selecting a filter to apply to the current view. Whenever you select a filter, they are arranged into their categories, with any filters that do not belong to a category being displayed below the filter categories that do exist.
- Subheadings, which display the chart path of the filtered objects, are displayed in filtered views by default. Click Subheading Properties to display the Filter Subheading Properties dialog, in which you specify the appearance of the subheadings.
- Click Insert to insert a new criterion into the filter. The Filter Wizard appears.
- On the first screen of the Filter Wizard, select All task and allocation types then click Next.
- On the second screen of the Filter Wizard, select the Slip check box then click Next.
- On the third screen of the Filter Wizard, click the appropriate radio button to specify whether you want to filter for tasks that are Behind schedule or Ahead of schedule.
- Specify the amount of slip for which to filter in the by fields. For example, you could filter for tasks that have exactly 2w of slip, more than 4d of slip, or less than 1w of slip.
Even if you are filtering for tasks that are behind schedule - ie those with negative slip - you must enter a positive value. For example, to filter for tasks that are 2w or more behind schedule, click the Behind schedule radio button and select More than and 2w in these fields; to filter for tasks that are 2w or more ahead of schedule, click the Ahead of schedule radio button and select More than and 2w in these fields. - Select the progress period against which you want slip to be calculated in the Slip to be calculated against which progress period field.
- If you want to be able to specify the slip parameters each time you apply the filter, select the Ask me about the slip filter settings... check box.
- Click Finish to create the filter, which is then added to the list on the Filter Properties dialog.
When you apply this filter to a view, all of the items with the specified amount of slip are displayed in the view.