Record progress  At this point in the schedule, you need to enter progress or some other change in task status in the project plan and communicate that change to team members.

 Note   If you assign resources to tasks, you can track task durations, start and finish dates, costs, and work at both the task and assignment levels. If you don't assign resources to tasks, you cannot track work at the assignment level and you must record progress manually.

 Record progress if resources are not assigned to tasks

Click all of the following that apply:

• Update work on a project to update actual (actual: Information that shows what has actually occurred. For example, the actual start date for a task is the day that the task actually started.) start (start date: The date when a task is scheduled to begin. This date is based on the duration, calendars, and constraints of predecessor and successor tasks. A task's start date is also based on its own calendars and constraints.) and finish dates (finish date: The date that a task is scheduled to be completed. This date is based on the task's start date, duration, calendars, predecessor dates, task dependencies, and constraints.), actual work (actual work: The amount of work that has been performed on a task or assignment. When you enter actual work on a task, the remaining work is calculated using this formula: Remaining Work = Work - Actual Work. Actual work is often referred to as "actuals."), actual duration (actual duration: The amount of time a task has been in progress. When you enter the actual duration of a task, Project uses this value to calculate the remaining duration according to the formula Remaining Duration = Duration - Actual Duration.), remaining duration (remaining duration: The amount of time left to work on a task before the task is completed. This is calculated as follows: Remaining Duration = Duration - Actual Duration.), percent complete (percent complete: A field that you use to enter or display how much of a task has been completed. This value is expressed as the percentage of the task duration that has been completed.), or percent work complete (percent work complete: A percentage value that indicates the current status of a task, resource, or assignment, expressed as the percentage of work that has been completed.). Be aware, however, that percent complete, actual duration, and remaining duration are interlocking quantities; updating one of them might cause the values of the others to change.
• Update completed tasks quickly to show that a task is 100% complete.
• Update costs to track the real costs of tasks or resource assignments (assignment: A specific resource that is assigned to a particular task.).

 Record progress if resources are assigned to tasks

Click all of the following that apply:

• Publish the latest plan and team assignments if you are using Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 and want to inform team members of schedule changes that might affect them, such as a new task start date or an increase in the amount of time they're assigned to a task.
• Update work on a project to update actual start and finish dates, actual work, actual duration, remaining duration, percent complete, or percent work complete. Be aware, however, that percent complete, actual duration, and remaining duration are interlocking quantities; updating one of them might cause the values of the others to change.
• Update completed tasks quickly to show that a task is 100% complete.
• Update costs to track the real costs of tasks or resource assignments.

 Respond to incomplete, new, or changed work   You need to make sure that your team completes all planned work and that you can flexibly respond to any unplanned changes.

Click all of the following that apply:

• Analyze project performance with earned value analysis if you want to see how much of the budget should have been spent on tasks based on the amount of work done so far, and the baseline cost (baseline cost: The original project, resource, and assignment cost as shown in the baseline plan. The baseline cost is a snapshot of the cost at the time when the baseline plan was saved.) for the task, assignment, or resource.
• Change the timephased information displayed in the usage views to see work broken down by time period — for example, by day.
• Schedule the remaining work on a task when the remaining work is less or more than you planned for. For example, if you determine that there's less remaining work than planned, you might reduce the number of hours a resource works on the task.
• Interrupt work on a task (split a task) to show when work will continue on the remaining portion of the task.
• Enter or change a task duration if you know that the task will take more or less time than the calculated remainder.

• Create a new task if the scope (scope: The combination of all project goals and tasks, and the work required to accomplish them.) of project work has increased and you need to track the new work.

 Update original estimates  If you find that actual project progress is so different from the baseline estimates as to make comparison between the two meaningless, you need to update the original estimates.

Click all of the following that apply:

• Create or update a baseline or an interim plan if you want to compare the information in your baseline plan or interim plan (interim plan: A set of task start and finish dates that you can save at certain stages of your project. You can compare an interim plan with the baseline plan or current plan to monitor project progress or slippage. You can save up to 10 interim plans.) with your up-to-date schedule later in the project. Saving a baseline enables you to identify and resolve discrepancies and plan more accurately for similar future projects.
• Save a project for comparing, modeling, and archiving.