Upgrade D6 to D7 fails

I am encountering an issue with upgrading the 'progress' module on multiple sites.

Error encountered when running update.php:

progress module: Update #7101

Failed: DatabaseSchemaObjectDoesNotExistException: Cannot change the definition of field progress.start: field doesn't exist. in DatabaseSchema_mysql->changeField() (line 462 of /var/www/{mysite}/includes/database/mysql/schema.inc).

Nasty "workaround" to proceed with upgrade: Disable (dis) and uninstall (pm-uninstall) module and dependecy (module 'background_process') with drush.