Actual Work moving to future

[Scott McClure]

Background: Our tasks are effort-driven and fixed units. Constraints are
avoided. Our resources are groups of skills with 100% = 1 person. The
calendar for the resource shows a 10 1/2 hour day with a 1/2 hour lunch. We
are running PS and MSP2002.

We enter our actual work centrally via a slightly modified Task Usage screen
in Project Pro.

Problem: Sometimes, for reasons we don't understand, when a time, say 1
hour, is entered for a task, the software breaks that time up and moves some
of it to the next day. In this case the day we are entering takes .8 and
the next day (the future) gets .2.

We had thought this might be because the resource was tapped out -- out of
available hours for the day. In this case the resource has 6 units
available or 60 hours. When the 1 hours was split into today and tomorrow,
the result of adding that 1 hour to the resource would have resulted in a
total reported labor of 32 hours. This sort of blows theory one.

Now, the previous day 69 hours were reported. Question: does this affect
how actual hours are accepted for subsequent days? If so, how? I know that
MSP thinks minute-to-minute but even if the entire 9 hours were moved into
today this still would have only resulted in 41 (of 60 available) hours
used.

This is most frustrating to our data-entry person and prevents us from using
a macro to automatically load the actual hours from our work order system
because we don't trust what MSP will do with it.

Is there any way to resolve this???

TIA,
Scott McClure

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Scott,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

I don't profess to know the answer, but it could be because of mis-matched
hours. Have a look at FAQ Item: 5. Default Working Hours.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://www.mvps.org/project/

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Scott McClure]

Thanks for the response. Well, I've read the FAQ and checked our setup and
am afraid I don't understand the idea of mis-matched hours. We have
assigned custom calendars to each of our resources as there are many
different shifts around here. In looking, for instance, at the calendar for
the resource giving us the problem outlined below I can confirm that the
hours are right. What am I missing?

Thanks,
Scott

 

[Steve House]

Look again at your alignment between the hours per day in your resource
calendars and the hours per day in the Calendar Options page that defines
the relationship between a duration "day" and the hours in that day. You
said the resources are doing a 10 1/2 hour day with 1/2 hour for lunch.
Does that mean they're on the property for 11 hours such as 8am till 6pm
with a 30 minute lunch somewhere in there to give 10 1/2 hours of actual
*working time* in their day or are they at work for 10 /1/2 hours, 8am -
530pm, with a 30 min lunch for a total working time during the day of 10
hours? The "hours per day" and "hours per week" entries in the Tools,
Options, Calendar page should conform to the *actual* working hours *only*
with the lunches, etc backed out. Don't know if this is the problem but
it's the first thing I'd check.

 

[Scott McClure]

Steve,

Thanks -- I'll check again but I wasn't very clear about the calendar. It
shows a *total* of 10 1/2 hours with a 1/2 hour break. That is, they are
on-site for 10 1/2 hours including their lunch time.

So our Calendar options say the default hours per day are 8, per week 40,
and days per month 20. Of course, we have people working all kinds of
different shifts. In this case, their calendar says 6:00am to 12:00pm and
12:30pm to 4:30pm. Friday is a non-working day. Because of the different
shifts there is no way I can get the options page to match all resources.
Is this somehow casuing my problem? If so, is there anything I can do
(short of rescheduling everyone which would make life a lot easier on me)?

Scott

 

[Steve House]

The Project Calendar should, IMO, conform to a generic "typical" resource's
workday and the Tools Options Calendar fields should follow suit. The
"hours per day" entry really is only a conversion factor used when inputting
or displaying durations. Project stores all durations in the database in
minutes. If I say a task is "3 days duration" how many minutes do I mean it
should take? The Calendar Options page field "Hours per day" answers that
question. It should conform to the number of working hours in a "workday"
as defined in the base calendar selected to be the Project Calendar. If
your resources are on the property for a total of 10 1/2 hours including a
30 minute lunch break, the Project Calendar (Tools, ChangeWorkingTime then
Project, ProjectInformation) should show hours of work perhaps as 0800-1300
and 1330-1830 for a workday of 10 hours and non-working time in the middle
of 1/2 hour (note the elapsed time is 10 1/2 hours) and the "hours per day"
entry would show 10 hours (non-working time such as lunch is NOT to be
included). Think of the old adage "A day's work for a day's pay!" That's
what we're defining here - how many man-hours worth of sweat are we paying
for when we schedule a day's work on the project?


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs