A percent complete graph is intended to monitor the progress of an activity, phase or project. Using this method you are able to establish whether there is consistent progress or not. You can also compare e.g. activities and establish whether labour has been moved between them (i.e. one activity progresses faster than usual and another one progresses slower or not at all). You can establish whether e.g. a subcontractor has increased the workforce or not, and which activities, phases or projects are in trouble.

The procedure is to track the percent complete of selected activities, phases or projects between updates. This allows you to draw a graph of percent complete versus time (date of update). A consistent slope means you are progressing consistently, a steep slope means you are progressing rapidly and a shallow slope means you are progressing slowly (or not at all if the slope is zero).

You can easily produce these graphs using CSP in conjunction with a spreadsheet. You would copy the desired activities to the spreadsheet and then copy the percent complete values into a new column after every update. The graphs would then be produced in the spreadsheet.

Example: You are working on several projects simultaneously, and you wish to track and compare 2 projects in particular. By monitoring the percent complete for each project over several weeks (in this case on 1 Jan, 8 Jan, 15 Jan and 22 Jan) you can get a fair idea of the progress of the projects.