As you complete the activities for a given task, you should mark that task as completed via the completion checkbox.
Checking the box marks the task complete with the current date and time. If you need to enter a different completion date, press and hold the Ctrl button on your keyboard as you click the checkbox.
When you mark a task complete with this checkbox, the dashboard will automatically change the currently active task to the next process step in the current component. (This behavior can be disabled with the Preferences Editor.) If the timer is currently running, it will automatically stop recording time for the given task and start the timing of the next task. For more information on using the timer, see the Using the Play/Pause button help topic.
Tasks marked as complete will show a little checkmark in the completion checkbox. (If you hover the mouse over the checked box, the tooltip will tell you exactly what date and time the task was marked complete.)
If you need to go back to a previous phase in a given process, you can still do so even if the completion checkbox has been pressed. The dashboard will still accumulate time in whatever task you make current. (It will display a warning to make certain you're not logging time to the completed task by mistake, but you can safely dismiss this dialog.)
By default, a PSP project will be considered complete when all the phases
in the project have been marked complete. However, if you manually edit the
project completion date on the plan summary form (either via the input field
or the checkbox), then you have manually overridden this behavior. From then
on, the project completion status must be edited manually; it will no longer
respond to changes in phase completion status. (Actually, you can restore the
default behavior by typing DEFAULT in the project
completion date input field on the plan summary form.)
It is worth remembering that the "To Date" data entries, the data analysis reports, and the PROBE tool only use data from components that are marked complete, so it is good to make a habit of marking your components and tasks complete, either with the completion checkbox or via the Project Plan Summary form.
Also remember that the Task and Schedule tool tracks your progress by looking to see which tasks have been marked complete, so it is good to make a habit of marking tasks complete. To help you keep track of what has and hasn't been marked complete, the task selection menus will use a strikethrough font to display the name of completed tasks.
