Forward progress is a date and time value. It is used to help determine on-schedule status for projects and tasks. The forward progress date and time are based on the task(s) completion status.

If a four-day duration task starting at the beginning of the day Monday is 50% complete, the forward progress date will be the end of the day the following Tuesday (assumes Monday through Wednesday are full working days in the work schedule).

If forward progress for a task reflects a date and time prior to the current date and time, the task is considered to be behind schedule. The same calculation is done across multiple tasks within a project to determine the overall project schedule adherence. In any instance where a project is displaying as behind schedule, the next step is to review the individual tasks to see more specifically which tasks are responsible for the behind schedule condition.