Fixed task time with flexible schedule

[Pete Hay]

I am trying to create a yearly task schedule for building maintenance. My
task durations are fixed at 4 to 8 hours but each task needs to be scheduled
for sometime during the week of...
"8 hours window cleaning anytime during the third week of July" for example.

How do I represent this in MS Project 2007?

 

[Jim Aksel]

Here is a reasonable work around. Project cannot schedule work "Any random 8
hour period during the week of January 25, 2010 to Januar 29, 2010." Here is
what it can do:

First key the task name and duration.
On the main Gantt, select Window/Split... This creates an upper and a lower
pane.
In the bottom pane, change the task type to Fixed Duration. On the left
side of the lower pane, assign your resources and the number of work hours
you want each to be available on the task. Instead of keying hours in the
work column, you could key a units% such as 20%. So you can assign Fred at
20% which will allocate 8 hours of work to him during the entire week. Best
we can do is peanut butter these 8 horus over the week.

Another way to do it is to change the task type to Fixed Work. Now, when
you key the duration, the 8 hours assigned to Fred will stay constant, even
if you have to change task duraiton. Again, the work assigned is peanut
buttered accross the entire duration.

Now, you can go to the Task Usage View (on the View Menu) and look at the
task. On the right side of that view, you will see the 1 hr/day in the grid.
If Fred can work better than an hour/day then manually adjust his
assignement on the Task Usage view. Tacky, but it works.

So, you are scheduling the year in January and that may look good for a
Window Wash in July. Meanwhile, time marches on and it is now July 19th and
Fred tells you he can do the job Tuesday PM and Wednesday AM. Now you can do
to the Task Usage view and make the changes (4 hours each day). You can
change the duration of the task to 2 days on the Gantt Chart.

If you are throrough, there would be a predecesor on the Wash Windows Ttask
that would schedule him to start Tuesday. If the schedule still says Monday,
you can change the constraint type to "Start No Earlier Than"

It may be helpful for you to read about Task Types on my blog since we
didn't discuss the nuances of each of these... and that God Foresaken "Effort
Driven" check box.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Pete Hay]

So Project wouldn't handle a situation where a PM has say 6 tasks that add up
to 36 hours worth of work that he/she wants to assign to Employee "Joe Blow"
to be completed this coming week. Does the PM actually need to schedule the
day of the week the task needs to be done? Project can't represent "Here are
your tasks for the week - How you schedule them is up to you?
BTW - Great Blog. And please bear with my questions. I am new to MS Project
(and Project management) and have been asked to evaluate Project/Project
Server/MOSS for my company.
Pete

 

[Jim Aksel]

Great Pete, we are all here to happily answer your questions. Just a note, I
am currently in the midst of a Project/Project Server/SharePoint
recommendation for my customer.... I feel your pain.

To answer your question, there are reports in the client (desktop) version
of project that create "To Do" lists for assigned resources. That will give
you exactly what you want. In P2007 (Reports/Reports/Assignments/To Do
List). The default is by resource by week. That is easy to change.

Now for the boring stuff. You can assign Fred to a group of tasks to be
done in one week. For the sake of argument, let's just use 5 tasks and each
is scheduled for 5 days. Assume each one takes 8 hours and that can be done
in any order (I can clean the garage before or after I mow the lawn, etc.).
So, I happen to have 5 tasks, each 8 hours of duration and that just so
happens to total up to my 40 hours for the week (my, how convenient).

Project is going to peanut butter those 8 hours for each 5 day task accross
the entire week. It is going to assume that Fred mows the lawn for 1.6 hours
per day for 5 days totaling 8 hours. Same for clean garage.

So, if Fred cleans the garage on Monday, he claims 8 hours actual work,
remaining duration is 0, remaining work is 0. The world continues to spin
clockwise and the task automatically shortens itself to 1 day. Since he will
start Mow Lawn on Tuesday, he can key an *actual start* (different than
*start*) for Tuesday, say his remaing work is 8 hours, remaining duration is
1 day. His task shrinks to one day, etc.

However, while we did all this, the world does start to spin counter
clockwise. The reason why is all that "unstarted work" is piling up and is
showing Fred to be overloaded. He may say he can work 8 hours on Mow Lawn,
but he also has "Wash the cars" and Project thinks he's doing this for 1.6
hours that same day. So Fred shows up overalloacted... and the world turns
the wrong way.

So, the way we do this is to look only at reporting periods. We report
progress every week. As long as Fred only has 40 hours of work assigned to
him during the week period, we just don't care that it is peanut buttered
over the whole duration of the task. Come Friday he will say, "I got all
this done" and we give hime 100% (as of the status date (Project/Project
Information...) and not concern ourselves with the peanut butter and
durations. His to do list gave hime 5 tasks and they were all done.

When this becomes important is when you assign him that 6th task and he
becomes overloaded. The way I would handle that is to change the six tasks to
1 day duration, 8 hours each with Fred Assigned. Since they do not have to
be worked serially, then they will all stack up based on predcessors. For
example, they may all be on Monday and poor Fred has to work 48 hours that
day.

Now you can use the resource leveling features of Project. You can set
priorities for the tasks and then tell project .... "Go Level Fred so he does
not have more than 8 hours in any one day"... all of a sudden, the tasks get
moved out in accordance with the priorities and he has 6 tasks, each one day.
You use the priority to determine the order (Yes, Fred has to tell you the
order he will work them this week).

This topic gets involved and since you are starting, it may be more useful
to just talk for 10 minutes or so...becuase it takes so long to type this
stuff... So, if you go out to my blog, you can poke around and you should be
able to find 10 digits that will work nicely. If you catch my drift. Don't
usually do that, but I am not all that busy today.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com