Take a look at the new server:
It has 3 building elements
that have actual progresses of 100%, 100%, and 0%. How should we combine those values and determine the progress of new server?
One way is to calculate an average of those three items. This method can be fine in some situations, but it practically gives the same weight to all items. What if specification and hardware are really simple, and software is 10 times bigger than those two?
That’s why we usually consider a weight
for items. In the assumption above, software has a weight
of 10, and the other two have a weight of 1. To calculate the progress of their parents, instead of a simple average, we will calculate a weighted average:
( 100% × 1 + 100% × 1 + 0% × 2 + 0% × 2 + 0% × 2 ) ÷ ( 1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 ) = 25%
P3pper assigns a weight
of 1 to every new item, and that’s why the actual progress of new server is equal to a simple average at the moment, which is 40%.
Do you remember the three values you can see by hovering your mouse pointer over the status symbols? The third element is the weight of the item.