Actual effort / progress

To assess the actual status of a project, you should regularly review not only the planned values but also the effort and costs that have already been incurred.

In smenso, you can record and compare plan and actual values for tasks. In addition, the evaluations in the project status help you keep track of effort, costs, and project progress.

Use plan and actual values in tasks

In tasks, the available fields include Plan effort, Plan costs, Actual effort, and Actual costs.

You can use Plan effort and Plan costs to specify the effort and costs planned for a task. Actual effort and Actual costs, on the other hand, represent the values actually incurred.

By comparing plan and actual values, you can identify at an early stage whether effort or costs are developing differently than originally planned.

You can find more information about the plan/actual fields here:

Plan/actuals fields of a task

Record actual effort using time tracking

Actual working time can be recorded directly on tasks in smenso. By default, the recorded time is transferred to the Actual effort of the respective task.

This allows the actual effort to be documented continuously and compared with the planned effort.

You can find more information about time tracking here:

Time logs in smenso

Evaluate effort, costs, and project progress

Various evaluations are available in the project status to help you keep track of the development of your project.

The Project progress widget compares the current status of tasks, costs, and effort with the respective plan values. This allows you to view different aspects of project progress together.

This makes deviations between plan and actual values easy to identify and allows them to be taken into account when managing the project.

You can find more information about the available widgets and where they can be used here:

Widgets in the Project Overview

Widgets: Overview, customize & areas of use

Best Practice

For effective project management, we recommend:

• maintaining realistic plan values for effort and costs,
• recording actual working time regularly,
• comparing plan and actual values regularly throughout the project, and
• considering effort, costs, and project progress together.

This allows deviations to be identified at an early stage and further planning to be adjusted based on the actual course of the project.