We’re excited to announce a new release of Steelray Delay Analyzer, version 0.41.0.  There are many fixes and improvements in this release, but the biggest one is a feature called forward-looking validation.

Suppose you’re looking at a delay analysis of an update period where some significant progress delays occurred.  You’re aware of the delays, but the schedule update shows that the delays were almost entirely offset with schedule revisions.  As you analyze how the revisions almost offset the delays, you start focusing on one type of revision: the reduction of remaining duration on three not-yet-begun activities.

In the Excel report that Delay Analyzer produces, you can quickly jump to those revisions and see that there are 4 new columns:

Looking at the values on the first row of the table, this is how you would read each column:

Δ Prev:  In this period, the At Complete Duration (ACD) of this activity was reduced by 5 days from the previous period.

PF: At the period finish, it was 10 working days.

Δ Next: The next time it is changes (looking forward), it will increase by 13 wd (23 wd total).

Δ Final: The final value in the data set is 85 days greater (95 wd total).

So you can see that this remaining duration reduction was far from realistic.  Forward-looking validation lets you peer into the future (to the right of the data date) and see whether adjustments to estimates panned out. 

This video takes a deeper dive into the new feature:

Existing subscription holders can download the new version and read the release notes at https://steelray.com/release_notes.php?prod=sda.