Percent complete for projects, set flag properties for at risk

Wrike should calculate a % complete based on number of tasks in the project and target complete date. PM should be able to set a a zone to auto turn the project red or yellow. I manage 80 to 90 projects at a time and the manual aspects of Wrike have me considering new PM software options.

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Stephanie Westbrook

Hi @Norma, thanks for leaving this feedback here. I went ahead and asked your account manager to reach out so he could talk through things a little more with you.

I understand your use case and wanting some automatic calculation. To provide some context for the current logic: part of the rationale for how Wrike currently works is that not all tasks may carry equal weight/effort. For example, if Project A has four tasks (1,2,3, and 4), task 1 may be a simple action item, while task 3 takes weeks to complete. In that case a percentage based calculation might not provide an accurate representation of how much work is left to do. Again, I understand why your team might want more automatic calculation, but just wanted to share some explanation. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Jakob Rager

Dear Norma,

dear Stephanie,

Thanks for bringing this point up. It also a very important point to me: I would like to see where all my projects are in an easy and fast way so that we can treat the emergencies quickly.

I think we are absolutely aware that task counting such as "tasks done" versus "tasks still to do" does not help us judging project progress. As you mentioned Stephanie, tasks have different weights.One starting idea might be to calculate a ratio of "hours estimated" within all the tasks of a project versus "hours actually worked". I guess that needs spreadsheet like calculations so that everybody could create their own indicators adapted to their project management...

Would be great to have some ideas from the wrike team on how to measure progress easily with Wrike already today.

Kind regards Jakob

Jason Robinson

I agree that the above request would be helpful, but I would like to see slightly different information.

I would like to see % complete of each task (Manual Entry is fine).

I would like to see the Actual complete date listed seperate from the plan.

I need to know when a task is completed if it was done on time / early / or late.

If a one week task is not completed yet, I would like to know if it is 0%, 50% 75% complete.

Stephanie Westbrook

Hi @Jakob, really interesting idea about using planned time vs. time spent to monitor how much is left to do on a task. I talked with one of our Deployment specialist and I'm adding details below on one way to use that idea to track progress within Wrike. Automatic calculations aren't possible, but I think Reports might help you compare data. I'm going to reply to Jason after this and that response will have some options for ways to track % complete.

We're going to use Custom Fields and Reports to track planned time vs. time spent.

Select a Folder/Project and switch to the Table View.
Click the "+" button to add a new Custom Field. Title your field "Planned Time" (or something similar). Select the field type "duration" and click "Save".
Click the "+" button and add another Custom Field. Title your field "Actual Time' (or something similar). Select the field type "duration" and click "Save".
Select the "Reports" tab.
Click "New Report from Scratch".
Select "Tasks" and choose the Folders/Projects you would like to Report on.
Click "Add more filters" from the third panel. Check the boxes next to the Custom Fields you created in steps 2 and 3 above. (You can choose to only include tasks which have data filled in for these fields).
Choose "Table".
Click "Save & View".

If your team tracks time using Wrike's Time Tracker, then you can skip step 3 and just add the Time Spent column which displays time tracked using the tracker. To add this column to a Report, just click the gear icon on the Table Report, and check the box next to "Time Spent". Once you create the Custom Fields, you can add those columns to any other Folder. Just select that Folder, switch to the Table View, click the "+" button, and search for the Custom Field by name (that way you don't have to keep recreating the field and if one task lives in multiple locations, the data from the Custom Fields is visible no matter what Folder you're viewing the task from).

This method won't give you a percentage, but it will help you get an idea of how much time is left to do on each task/Project. If you're using Projects, you can use the Project Status to indicate how the project is progressing - Green for on track, Yellow for in danger of missing a deadline, Red for projects that are behind schedule.

Here is an example of what the Report could look like: https://www.screencast.com/t/t8BcrG0ls

I know there's a lot here, so please let me know if you have any questions about how this works. I would love to hear what you think about this option

Stephanie Westbrook

@Jason Hi, thanks for the comment and sharing those product requests. There are a few things you can do as workarounds manually within the Workspace and I wanted to share those here in case they help you or other community members.

Professional Subscriptions

Task Names - As team members make progress, have them update the task's name to reflect percent complete. This would let you view task progress without opening a task. For example, a task "Create Design Template" would be "(45) Create Design Template" or "Create Design Template (45).
Task Description - Include a line for percent complete at the top of each task's description field. Team members can then update the percent complete as they progress.

Business/Enterprise Subscriptions

Custom Statuses - Create a Custom Workflow with four types of Active Statuses: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%). Team members can update the task status as they work on the task.
Custom Fields - Create a Custom Field with dropdown options (0, 25, 75,100 or 1, 10, 20, etc). Team members update the Custom Field as they work on the task and you can run a Report to see overdue tasks. Here is an example of how the report would look: http://screencast.com/t/x6rgTen6MX7

In terms of the actual completed date, you can filter for tasks based on their actual completed date. Instructions on how to do that in this post: Actual Finish Date. However, I think you may be asking to see the actual completed date listed somwhere in the Workspace, is that correct?

Jeremy Blackburn

Norma and Jakob both have really good points that a % completion, even manually entering 25, 50, 75, and then a yellow, red indicator for projects is really needed. I find myself constantly asking for updates from team members on where they are at on a given project or task. They then have to respond back, when if they could track their progress by clicking would save them and PM time.

Permanently deleted user

Hi Jeremy, thank you for sharing your feedback! It's really helpful hearing about your use case, and I agree that default fields for tracking process would be useful for getting updates. Something that could help manually track a % completion is the Custom Fields functionality, here's how to create one for Projects:

Open Table View.
Click "+ Add Column".
Enter the name of the column and click "Create".
Select "Percentage" as the field type, and apply it to Projects only.

This Custom Field can be updated from the Project view or from the Table, and you can run Reports based on this field to easily track Project progress.

Happy to answer any questions about this!

Scott Henderson

Stephanie,

RE:

"...context for the current logic: part of the rationale for how Wrike currently works is that not all tasks may carry equal weight/effort. For example, if Project A has four tasks (1,2,3, and 4), task 1 may be a simple action item, while task 3 takes weeks to complete. In that case a percentage based calculation might not provide an accurate representation of how much work is left to do"

Why not have Wrike calculate a project completion % based on 1) a % Complete AND 2) an Estimated hrs of effort of all tasks that make up the project? IOW, roll up the weighted % complete of tasks in a project based on # of estimated hrs for each task. So a project with 3 tasks, like this:

Task est. hrs % comp

Task1 80 0

Task2 10 50

Task3 10 100

...would calculate as Project % complete = 15 (since total hrs, in this simple example comes to 100)

This would be useful for large projects.

Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Scott, that's a really interesting approach to the situation and I love that it works in some existing functionality (Custom Fields). Calculations for values in Custom Fields aren't currently on the near-term roadmap, but I can see how this could be a use case for that type of functionality as well.

Ilkin Guliyev

Hi to all. Dear Wrike staff, we as the biggest bank of the country did start works at wrike program. Now we are using several different programms (pmo etc) as well. The main issues that we really need asap at wrike its the percentage of completed sub-tasks at projects and percentage of affecting it on overall % o f the projects itself. This is really important and im more than sure it will add a new value to your program.

Thanks!
Cheers,

Ilkin

Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Ilkin, thanks for adding a comment here to let us know this is important to you. If you haven't already, please make sure you add a +1 to the first post in this thread.

Patrick Dale

how is this not part of your program guys?? so many comments have spelt out the importance of this simple feature...the further i dig the more reasons I find to move onto a different product...unfortunate, as I really do like your product, but some things around % complete and the general presentation of reports (imperative to any schedule as you report to management and or investors) falls on its face.... simple stuff guys and it's a shame this needs to be spelt out in forums over many months.

Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Patrick, I understand how this feature would be useful to teams and we pass all feedback from the forums on to our Product Managers. They then use that information to help gain insight into what people are interested in or looking for. Unfortunately they can't implement everything, but they're constantly making releases and working on enhancements to make the product better. In terms of reports, what type of information were you looking to show management?

Gregg Mercede

Tracking scheduled vs actual dates. Storing milestones. And yes Percentage Complete.

Wrike has fabulous collaboration tools, but the project management needs improvement.

Permanently deleted user

Hi Gregg, thank you for commenting here! Those are all good points, and storing milestones is something that hasn't been brought up on the Community yet. I'd love to learn a bit more about this request, it would be great to hear about the process you have in mind here. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Michael Armata

I needed a "collaborative cloud-based" version of traditional PM software, not an agile/scrum software with some additional functionality (such as having a Gantt chart). The people here who need "percentage complete" are running deadline-based project management (such as needed in manufacturing), an area where the soft-deadline (or no-deadline) world of 2010's software development project management does not perform as well. There is a cultural disconnect here (between generations / between industries / between PM methodologies) that is hindering the software from claiming its full market potential. It's close, and the current added "agile + collaborative" functionality lifts it beyond just a Project Planning software to a real Project Management software (unlike the traditional PM software - can I mention MSProject?); but percentage complete, "undo"'s for every action, and probably other functionality needs to be in place before my team can use it fully.

LeeAnn Friemoth

Rolling up tasks to indicate % project complete is a standard function in MANY pm software tools. This should not be a feature that Wrike does not address in the near future or feel little urgency to address. Put this functionality on the priority list!

Maria Boutzoukas

@Michael Armata, I may be missing something here but your comment on needing a "percentage complete" would be incredibly useful for Agile as well. Even with a "soft deadline" I could imagine knowing the percentage of completion on a project would be incredibly useful. I think regardless of a completion date or PM methodology, percentage complete (or a burndown chart) on a project/folder would be a feature that is a no brainer to add to the UI.

Lisa Fanoni

Adding my 2 cents that a % Complete feature isn't just valuable from a project progression standpoint -- which is covered in the comments above -- but also from a budgeting standpoint. If I estimated a task at 40hrs, and halfway into it, I'm actually only 25% done, the hours and budget for that task has significantly increased. Wrike should be able to calculate both in order for PMs to have an accurate view on the hours, money, and time needed to complete to scope.

Bailey Burke

After creating a long term detailed project that needs status updates over the course of the project, I found this thread very helpful to find workarounds until this issue is resolved by Wrike (fingers crossed)

Some feedback I have from the "adding a custom field" solution that Anastasia Z suggested choosing in one of the comments above. This ended up being the one that will work best for our team. However, it was suggested that "percentage" be selected as the "field type", which was not helpful for us and we changed to "text" field and are typing in the % symbol. For anyone thinking about choosing "percentage" it will automatically sum up your percentages on the tasks below, and tasks and subtasks are not weighted against totals. I.e. it is possible for your project to be completed 1000% with no tasks actually completed, as it is automatically summed up from the percentages below in this feature. As you have to go in to overwrite Project and Folder statuses as well any tasks with subtasks the text type was the way to go.

Hopefully a better work around will be resolved.

Josefina Teroganesyan

Can Wrike calculate % based on the duration of the task just like Microsoft Project does?

Jenina Gaines

Tracking percent complete based on actual duration vs remaining duration is a base Microsoft Project feature that should be in Wrike. Definition from Microsoft: "The % Complete fields contain the current status of a task, expressed as the percentage of the task's duration that has been completed."

I have been using the workaround suggested (to add the % complete column and aggregate it as an average), and it's just completely deceptive. I compare my total aggregate percent complete for the project with my financial spend percentage and it's inaccurate, because Wrike is just averaging the % complete entries across tasks instead of taking into account the duration of the tasks. So this doesn't work at all for me, and I'm not going to manually calculate % complete by using the other work around (have people enter planned and actual time for each task - they won't do it). So I have to copy/paste my tasks from Wrike into MS Project to get an accurate % completion for my project. This feature absolutely needs to be fixed in Wrike since it's a standard function of MS Project that people expect. I really hope this gets fixed so I can keep using Wrike.

Ricard Martin Sol

I have the same issue, here. The workaround illustrated is not resolving the issue of dealing with multiple big projects. We really need to see the total completion rate, any time a subtask is completed or partially completed.

Why do not enhance how the current custom workflow works? It could be easily achieved if when creating the workflow items you can associate an extra field %:

Active = 0%
Assigned = 10%
Work in progress = 50%
Under Review QA = 70%
Completed waiting confirmation = 90%
Completed = 100%

Any time the status of the task change it will automatically reflect a new number. This combined with the task duration will give the relative task weight and completion, permitting the report show tasks % sub-totals or project % total. In a similar manner than the duration appears.

What do you think? This issue was raised a while ago, I do not believe this is not in your dev pipe yet. I'm sure this will be another reason to select Wrike as a PM tool (or at least to avoid Clients leaving)

Alex Blanton

Hello - we have used the TeamGantt tool and it totally rocks in this area. We really depend on this for our high level reviews to get a quick check on progress completion rate across the portfolio. The methods outlined above are total hacks. These should be features built in to Wrike and I would recommend they look to TeamGantt and have an integrated method for tracking time estimates, time spent, time remaining, % complete of total (both individual and roll up), and finally displaying this in a graphical format on the Gantt view. It is indispensable.

Michelle England

This is a feature that is very much needed and needs to be as simple as updating the status of a task or project - it should come standard. While all tasks are not created equal or weighted equally, Wrike should be able to add a drop down that includes "Not Started, Behind Schedule, On Track, Ahead of Schedule" then using those parameters, and the dates assigned use a calculation to estimate the % Complete. It then needs to roll up to the project level, and be able to be reported in a project status report.

Please make this feature happen.

Steff G

It would be interesting if Calendar view offers these possibilities, right?

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hey guys, you might have noticed that the status of this suggestion is now "Coming soon" 🙂

Elizaveta Bogdanova

@All Very exciting news - Project Progress is now launched 🎉 Please find more info in Brought to you by Wrike and on our Help Center.