Fixed Duration Tasks not staying fixed - Project 2007

[Heidi]

Hi,

I have a project plan with internal resources and external resources
(offsite teams) assigned to tasks. The internal resources have hours
in the project and offsite teams do not have hours. (They are paid by
deliverables regardless of hours.)

Because I do not want the external hours worked to calculate into the
total hours of work on the project, I am using fixed duration without
effort driven checked. When I assign the external resource I clear
the units and work to zero. This worked great in previous versions of
Project.

When I upgraded to Project 2007 and opened my plan all the tasks (both
complete and incomplete) with only the external resources assigned
were changed to zero duration. (Yikes!)

I tried adding a new row, in case the task was corrupted, but this
behavior seems to be by design. (??)

When I try to re-key the duration onto a task, Project immediately
makes the task zero duration again. I can remove the resource and
get the duration to stick, but once I add the resource and zero the
units, the duration goes to zero again.

Why can't I get my tasks to have a FIXED Duration, regardless of
resource assignment? If not, do you know of any work around that
allows me to assign a resource to a task without hours?

Thanks for any help you can provide,
Heidi

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

With Project 2007 I would make your external resources Cost resources. To
assign them, use the Resource Assignment dialog and enter a cost only for
them. They won't affect the duration whatever Task Type you fix.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Heidi]

Ok... that seems like a good enough idea. So I changed my resource to
a cost resource, but I got an error that previous data would be lost.
Not knowing what that meant exactly, I created a new entry for my
resource (Resource2) and reassigned the task. Project crashed. So I
opened it, created the resource again, but this time, I removed the
first resource and THEN added the new resource to the task. Project
crashed. Still struggling to get this week's report out in
time using this new version of project.

 

[Steve House]

A task should correspond to a deliverable and so consider this method.
"Cost Per Use" is a charge that gets added to your costs once for each task
the resource is assigned to. If Joe makes widgets, gets $25 per widget
regardless of the time involved, and has to make 10 widgets, enter Joe as a
work resource with a standard rate of $0, overtime rate of $0, and a Cost
Per Use of $25. Create a summary task "Make Widgets" and indent under it
"Widget 1, Widget 2, Widget 3 ..." etc. Assign Joe to the subtasks and your
costs with show $250 for making the widgets regardless of the time it takes
to make them.

Fixed duration DOES NOT mean what you seem to think it means. IT DOES NOT
MEAN THE DURATION CAN'T CHANGE! I can't say that too strongly, even though
it's counter-intuitive. "Fixed Duration" means that if I have Joe assigned
to a task and edit the assignment data, changing his percentage will change
the man-hours of work and not the duration, while changing the hours of work
will cause the assignment percentage to recalculate and not the duration.
That's all it means. You'll find that's how 2007 does, in fact, behave that
way, except in the special case of when you reduce the work hours all the
way down to zero. Now a new, overriding logic kicks in. If there is zero
work being done, nothing is happening. So like Seinfeld's "Show About
Nothing" how can a "task" where nothing is happening extend over time?
Logically it simply can't have any duration at all. A zero work task is a
milestone, by definition. And milestones have zero duration, also by
definition. So if you take a task that is fixed duration that has a
resource assigned to it and reduce the resource work to zero, the task
duration simply must drop to zero as well, there can be no other outcome
that is logically consistent.

HTH

 

[Heidi]

Thank you for explaining that Project 2007 treats tasks with zero work
differently than previous versions of Project. I reviewed a few
"changes in 2007" lists and haven't seen that one. That was my
confusion. It seems to remove flexibility, which I don't like, but at
least now I know I have to work around it.

What I have been doing with work hours is enjoying the ability to
assign both internal and external resources to tasks, but only see the
hours roll-up for the internal resources because I mark the units of
external resources as 0%. The cost per use would solve the problem
if I was concerned about the cost of the hours, but I'm not concerned
about the cost of the hours on this project. I was using MS Project
more for resource allocation, tracking, and reporting.

I am interested in the concept of a cost resource, but I still can't
get past Project 2007 crashing every time I assign a cost resource to
a task... and I haven't been able to find an explanation for that one.

 

[Heidi]

Thank you for explaining that Project 2007 treats tasks with zero work
differently than previous versions of Project. I reviewed a few
"changes in 2007" lists and haven't seen that one. That was my
confusion. It seems to remove flexibility, which I don't like, but at
least now I know I have to work around it.

What I have been doing with work hours is enjoying the ability to
assign both internal and external resources to tasks, but only see the
hours roll-up for the internal resources because I mark the units of
external resources as 0%. The cost per use would solve the problem
if I was concerned about the cost of the hours, but I'm not concerned
about the cost of the hours on this project. I was using MS Project
more for resource allocation, tracking, and reporting.

I am interested in the concept of a cost resource, but I still can't
get past Project 2007 crashing every time I assign a cost resource to
a task... and I haven't been able to find an explanation for that one.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Cost per Use is not cost for hours. It is a single fixed cost accrued for
each task assigned regardless of the hours required. Standard Rate is the
cost per man-hour spent

 

[Heidi]

Understood. What I was saying is that a solution of tweaking cost
settings doesn't fix my issue which is a cumulation of work issue.
That said, I do think the cost resource would be a viable solution, if
it didn't crash Project every time I tried to use it.