Evaluating Project Connected Objects—Exercises

Required Data

Creating Activities

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with the data that must be in place before you can perform the exercises below.

  1. Create activities in your subproject structure.

General exercise for Building Project Plan

Connecting Objects to Activities

Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with the data that must be in place before you can perform the exercises below. In order to do the exercises below, you must connect some objects to some of your project activities.

  1. Create a miscellaneous project demand. From this miscellaneous demand, create the project supply request. In the case of purchasing, process the purchase requisition so that a purchase order is created. The result of this step will be an activity-connected purchase order, shop order or DOP header. Release the order to obtain a Committed cost.

General exercise for Registering Project Demand
General exercise for Purchasing Project Miscellaneous Demand
General exercise for Manufacturing Project Miscellaneous Demand
General exercise for Procuring Project Miscellaneous Demand with DOP

  1. Alternatively, manually connect objects to your activities. Objects you can connect are purchase order lines, shop orders, work orders, DOP headers, customer order lines and material requisition lines. Release the order to obtain a Committed cost.

General exercise for Connecting Manual Purchase Requisition/Order Line
General exercise for Connecting Manual Shop Order and DOP Header
General exercise for Connecting and Registering Work Orders
General exercise for Connecting Material Requisition Line and Customer Order Line

Main Exercise

Purpose: The purpose of these exercises is to show you how to evaluate the cost and progress of objects connected to activities. This lesson will also show you how to evaluate activity exceptions. You will learn how the Gantt chart can be used when evaluating activity exceptions and connected objects.

Windows:
Project Navigator
Project Connections
Activity Exceptions

Evaluating Activity Connected Objects for Cost and Progress

Evaluate activity connected objects in the Project Navigator window:

  1. Open the Project Navigator window, and query for the project to be evaluated.
  2. Select the activity to be evaluated and click on the Connections tab.
  3. Observe the connected objects with their associated costs and progress in the upper part of the table.
  4. Click on an object connection row in the upper part of the table and observe the breakdown of costs into cost elements in the lower part of the table.
  5. You can also right click on the desired object connection row and click Object Details to view the object details more clearly.
  6. Navigate to either the Activity/Cost or Activity/Hours tab (or the Summary tab on the Project window), select the desired rows, right-click and then click Project Connection Details to view the relevant records in the Project Connections window.

Evaluate activity connected objects in the Project Connections window:

  1. Open the Project Connections window and query for the desired records to be analyzed. For example, it is possible to query for a project ID, specific activities, object types or cost elements.
  2. Observe the costs (estimated, planned, baseline, committed, used and actual) per connected object and per cost element.

Analyzing Activity Exceptions

Note: To analyze a planned value exceeded exception in your project perform the following steps:

  1. In order to do this, we have to create a planned value exceeded exception. Find an activity with a connected object that has reported a Committed or Used cost. Ensure that there are no Planned costs for this object or change the Planned cost for this object to be lower than the Committed cost.
  2. Open the Activity Exceptions window (alternatively the Project Exceptions window) and query for the project and activity you worked with in the step above.
  3. Click the Planned Values Exceeded tab and observe that the cost by which you exceeded the planned values has been tabulated.

Note: To analyze a time critical object connected to your project perform the following steps:

  1. In order to do this, we have to have a late connected object. Find an activity with a connected object that is expected to arrive later than the finish date of the activity. Change the Early Finish Date of the activity to be earlier than the intended date for the connected object.
  2. Open the Activity Exceptions window (alternatively the Project Exceptions window) and query for the project and activity you worked with in the step above.
  3. Click the tab corresponding to the type of late object and note that the connected object has caused an activity exception because it is expected after the Early Finish Date of the activity.

Using the Gantt Chart to analyze Activity Exceptions and Connected Objects

Note: To analyze the activity and connected object causing the planned value exceeded exception perform the following steps:

  1. Open the Project Navigator window and query for the project for which you created a planned value exceeded exception in the exercise above.
  2. In the project navigator, select the activity with the planned value exceeded exception.
  3. Click the Gantt tab and observe that there is an exclamation mark to the left of an activity, indicating that there is a exception for that activity.
  4. Right-click on the exclamation symbol and select the menu option Activity Exceptions.
  5. Click the Planned Values Exceeded tab and observe that the cost by which you exceeded the planned values has been tabulated.

Note: To analyze the activity and time critical object perform the following steps.

  1. In the project navigator, select the activity with either a late Purchase Order Line, Shop Order, Work Order or DOP header.
  2. Click the Gantt tab and observe that there is an icon with red text for the connected object which lies in the range of its order date. You can right click on the object and click Object Details to view the connected object details.
  3. You can also observe that there is an exclamation mark to the left of an activity, indicating that there is a exception for that activity.
  4. Right-click on the exclamation symbol and select the menu option Activity Exceptions.
  5. Click the tab corresponding to the type of late object and note that the connected object has caused an activity exception because it is expected after the Early Finish Date of the activity.