Calendar Types and Weekend Working

[Hardip]

Hi All

I've created a new calendar (by copying the standard) to allow for weekend
working. I've assigned this to the Project Information. This allows weekend
working to be included in the hammack durations. This was my original issue
as weekend working wasn't being calculated.

The project also has resources that use the standard calendar as they don't
work weekends. I've left the standard calendar assigned to these resources
in the resource sheet. However, when I assign a duration to these tasks they
also get assigned to weekends.

What is the best method to setup my project file to allow for weekend and
non-weekend working whilst ensuring all durations are being calculated? Is
there any pointers you can provide?

Thanks to Jan and Dave for responding to early posts.

Cheers, H

 

[Hans]

Project 2003 or 2007?
Durations are calculated different in 2003 and 2007.



Projectopolis



Hardip wrote:

Hi All I've created a new calendar (by copying the standard) to allow for weekend working. I've assigned this to the Project Information. This allows weekend working to be included in the hammack durations. This was my original issue as weekend working wasn't being calculated. The project also has resources that use the standard calendar as they don't work weekends. I've left the standard calendar assigned to these resources in the resource sheet. However, when I assign a duration to these tasks they also get assigned to weekends. What is the best method to setup my project file to allow for weekend and non-weekend working whilst ensuring all durations are being calculated? Is there any pointers you can provide? Thanks to Jan and Dave for responding to early posts. Cheers, H

 

[Hardip]

Hi Hans

I am using Project 2003.

I hope you can help as this must be possible.

Cheers, H

 

[Steve House]

Tasks are scheduled by the Project Calendar when they are first entered,
prior to resource assignments. If you don't assign resources or use a task
calendar, the Project calendar remains in control. But when you assign a
resource to the task, the control of the task scheduling switches to follow
the resource calendar. So if your project calendar shows 8 to 12 and 1 to 5
on all seven days to be working days and you enter a 5-day duration task
starting at 8am Wednesday morning, work will be scheduled for Wed, Thur,
Fri, Sat, and Sun and it will show finishing at 5pm on Sunday. But if you
now assign a resource to the task who's Resource Calendar is the default
Standard calendar, Saturday become non-working and it will show ending
Tuesday at 5pm.

Note that durations are always stored and calculated in minutes, other units
being converted during data entry and display. The option setting "hours
per day" is used to convert whatever unit you choose to enter duration in
into working minutes. Then the working time calendar kicks in to control
which minutes during the 24-hour clock day count to burn up duration and
which minutes don't. If you have a 1-day duration task and use the default
settings for hours per day, that's 480.0 minutes. Project then looks at the
task's start time and starts counting in the calendar, stopping the task
when it has used up 480.0 of what the calendar is defining as working time
minutes.

Don't be confused by the vertical grey bars on the Gantt chart indicating
the weekend. They are just a graphic, drawn by whatever calendar controls
the display of non-working time for the timeline. They have nothing to do
with whether the task is actually working then or not.

(Hans - durations are dealt with the same in both 2003 and 2007.)

HTH

 

[Hans]

In most cases, duration is calculated the same in 2003 and 2007. But there are some differences. For example, duration for a fixed duration task is calculated different in 2003 and 2007. In 2003, duration on a fixed duration task is calculated as elapsed days, not working days.





Projectopolis





Steve House wrote: Tasks are scheduled by the Project Calendar when they are first entered, prior to resource assignments.  If you don't assign resources or use a task calendar, the Project calendar remains in control.  But when you assign a resource to the task, the control of the task scheduling switches to follow the resource calendar.  So if your project calendar shows 8 to 12 and 1 to 5 on all seven days to be working days and you enter a 5-day duration task starting at 8am Wednesday morning, work will be scheduled for Wed, Thur, Fri, Sat, and Sun and it will show finishing at 5pm on Sunday.  But if you now assign a resource to the task who's Resource Calendar is the default Standard calendar, Saturday become non-working and it will show ending Tuesday at 5pm.

Note that durations are always stored and calculated in minutes, other units being converted during data entry and display.  The option setting "hours per day" is used to convert whatever unit you choose to enter duration in into working minutes.  Then the working time calendar kicks in to control which minutes during the 24-hour clock day count to burn up duration and which minutes don't.  If you have a 1-day duration task and use the default settings for hours per day, that's 480.0 minutes.  Project then looks at the task's start time and starts counting in the calendar, stopping the task when it has used up 480.0 of what the calendar is defining as working time minutes.

Don't be confused by the vertical grey bars on the Gantt chart indicating the weekend.  They are just a graphic, drawn by whatever calendar controls the display of non-working time for the timeline.  They have nothing to do with whether the task is actually working then or not.

(Hans - durations are dealt with the same in both 2003 and 2007.)

HTH

 

[Steve House]

HUH???? You've got to show me. Give me a step by step example that shows
durations suddenly appearing in elapsed days.

Use Project 2003, all calendars set to standard and default settings (ie,
hours per day = 8, etc). Set Project start to any Wednesday, take your pick
(that way a week-long task will have a non-working weekend in the middle).
Input a task. Mark it fixed duration. Edit the default "1d?" duration
field to "5d". That task will show ending Tuesday 5pm, not Monday 8am which
it would if the duration had been entered as "5ed." Create a resource "Joe"
and assigned him to the task 100%. Task still ends Tuesday with Joe doing
40 man-hours of work. Edit him down to 50%. Duration remains 5 days, task
ending Tuesday, Joe now doing 20 man-hours of work. Edit him to 60
man-hours of work. Task duration remains 5 days, still ending Tuesday. Joe
now showing overallocated at 150%. At no time in this whole prcess did the
duration suddenly stop obeying the working time calendar and revert to
elapsed days with the task ending shifting time from Tuesday to Monday
morning 8am.

Same with hammock tasks. Take two milestones at either end of a simple
linear sequence. Create a hammock task linking the earlier milestone start
to the hammock start and the latter milestone finish to the hammock finish.
The duration field for the hammock will read out the time in duration days,
not elapsed days, regardless of the task type setting of the hammock task.

BTW, "fixed duration" does not mean the duration can't change - it only
means what term in the equation W=D*U is to be held constant when editing
resource assignments. So changing the durations of the tasks in the
sequence that includes the two milestones, causing the milestone dates to
change, will subsequently cause the duration of the hammock to change
accordingly, HOWEVER its duration field will always show true duration time
as defined in the working time calendar that governs it, NOT 24/7 elapsed
time (unless you have made the 24 hour calendar the project calendar, the
resource calendar or the task calendar, of course).

It's not that a fixed duration task is using elapsed days - fixed duration
means that when you have resources on the task and edit their assignments,
if you change work, units are updated and if you change units, work is
updated.
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant

-----------------

In most cases, duration is calculated the same in 2003 and 2007. But there
are some differences.
For example, duration for a fixed duration task is calculated different in
2003 and 2007. In 2003, duration on a fixed duration task is calculated as
elapsed days, not working days.

Projectopolis


Steve House wrote:
Tasks are scheduled by the Project Calendar when they are first entered,
prior to resource assignments. If you don't assign resources or use a task
calendar, the Project calendar remains in control. But when you assign a
resource to the task, the control of the task scheduling switches to follow
the resource calendar. So if your project calendar shows 8 to 12 and 1 to 5
on all seven days to be working days and you enter a 5-day duration task
starting at 8am Wednesday morning, work will be scheduled for Wed, Thur,
Fri, Sat, and Sun and it will show finishing at 5pm on Sunday. But if you
now assign a resource to the task who's Resource Calendar is the default
Standard calendar, Saturday become non-working and it will show ending
Tuesday at 5pm.

Note that durations are always stored and calculated in minutes, other units
being converted during data entry and display. The option setting "hours
per day" is used to convert whatever unit you choose to enter duration in
into working minutes. Then the working time calendar kicks in to control
which minutes during the 24-hour clock day count to burn up duration and
which minutes don't. If you have a 1-day duration task and use the default
settings for hours per day, that's 480.0 minutes. Project then looks at the
task's start time and starts counting in the calendar, stopping the task
when it has used up 480.0 of what the calendar is defining as working time
minutes.

Don't be confused by the vertical grey bars on the Gantt chart indicating
the weekend. They are just a graphic, drawn by whatever calendar controls
the display of non-working time for the timeline. They have nothing to do
with whether the task is actually working then or not.

(Hans - durations are dealt with the same in both 2003 and 2007.)

HTH

 

[Hans]

I haven't used Project 2003 for quite some time now, but did some testing yesterday. We had a case where Duration was calculated different in 2003 and 2007, but apparently, this has been fixed in SP3. So my apologies for the confusion.

But still, duration is calculated differently for Fixed Duration and Fixed Work/Units tasks. Some examples. My choice of words was not the best. It does not show up as 'elapsed days (ed)'. Try the examples below to understand what I mean:

First example is when using non-standard project and/or task calendars, duration is calculated different for Fixed Duration and Fixed Work/Units tasks.

- Create a new 7d calendar: Mo -Sun 8:00 - 12:00 and 13:00 - 17:00
- Assign the new calendar to the project
- Create a new resource, but assign him the Standard (5d) calendar.
- Create a new task (Fixed Work or Fixed Units) and make it start on a wednesday
- Set the task duration to 5 days. The task ends on Mondey 5PM
- Assign the resource (100%). The task ends on Wednesday 5PM because of the resource calendar being a 5d calendar. The duration remains 5 days.
- Now switch the task type to Fixed Duration.
=> The Task Duration now changes to 7 days, while Work and Units remain the same. The formula W=D*U does not apply anymore

Another example (using the standard calendar only)
- Create a task (fixed duration)
- Set task duration to 5 days
- Create a task split (split after day 2 and insert a split of 5 working days) => Duration remain 5 days
- Change task type to Fixed Duration => Duration changes to 10 days



Projectopolis



Steve House wrote: HUH????  You've got to show me.  Give me a step by step example that shows durations suddenly appearing in elapsed days.

Use Project 2003, all calendars set to standard and default settings (ie, hours per day = 8, etc). Set Project start to any Wednesday, take your pick (that way a week-long task will have a non-working weekend in the middle). Input a task.  Mark it fixed duration.  Edit the default "1d?" duration field to "5d".  That task will show ending Tuesday 5pm, not Monday 8am which it would if the duration had been entered as "5ed."  Create a resource "Joe" and assigned him to the task 100%.  Task still ends Tuesday with Joe doing 40 man-hours of work.  Edit him down to 50%.  Duration remains 5 days, task ending Tuesday, Joe now doing 20 man-hours of work.  Edit him to 60 man-hours of work.  Task duration remains 5 days, still ending Tuesday.  Joe now showing overallocated at 150%.  At no time in this whole prcess did the duration suddenly stop obeying the working time calendar and revert to elapsed days with the task ending shifting time from Tuesday to Monday morning 8am.

Same with hammock tasks.  Take two milestones at either end of a simple linear sequence.  Create a hammock task linking the earlier milestone start to the hammock start and the latter milestone finish to the hammock finish. The duration field for the hammock will read out the time in duration days, not elapsed days, regardless of the task type setting of the hammock task.

BTW, "fixed duration" does not mean the duration can't change - it only means what term in the equation W=D*U is to be held constant when editing resource assignments.  So changing the durations of the tasks in the sequence that includes the two milestones, causing the milestone dates to change, will subsequently cause the duration of the hammock to change accordingly, HOWEVER its duration field will always show true duration time as defined in the working time calendar that governs it, NOT 24/7 elapsed time (unless you have made the 24 hour calendar the project calendar, the resource calendar or the task calendar, of course).

It's not that a fixed duration task is using elapsed days - fixed duration means that when you have resources on the task and edit their assignments, if you change work, units are updated and if you change units, work is updated.

 

[Steve House]

I haven't had a chance to check it with 2003 as yet but you're absolutely
correct in regard to 2007. I was not aware of that. And I believe 2003
does work differently to the best of recollection. I'm not privy to the
inner workings at MS but I would suspect this to be a bug rather than an
intentional change in a feature as the work formula, W=D*U, is so
fundamental to the process of task scheduling that it should never be
violated under any circumstances. In that respect, 2003 is correct and 2007
is incorrect in its handling.
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant

I haven't used Project 2003 for quite some time now, but did some testing
yesterday. We had a case where Duration was calculated different in 2003 and
2007, but apparently, this has been fixed in SP3. So my apologies for the
confusion.

But still, duration is calculated differently for Fixed Duration and Fixed
Work/Units tasks. Some examples. My choice of words was not the best. It
does not show up as 'elapsed days (ed)'. Try the examples below to
understand what I mean:

First example is when using non-standard project and/or task calendars,
duration is calculated different for Fixed Duration and Fixed Work/Units
tasks.

- Create a new 7d calendar: Mo -Sun 8:00 - 12:00 and 13:00 - 17:00
- Assign the new calendar to the project
- Create a new resource, but assign him the Standard (5d) calendar.
- Create a new task (Fixed Work or Fixed Units) and make it start on a
wednesday
- Set the task duration to 5 days. The task ends on Mondey 5PM
- Assign the resource (100%). The task ends on Wednesday 5PM because of the
resource calendar being a 5d calendar. The duration remains 5 days.
- Now switch the task type to Fixed Duration.
=> The Task Duration now changes to 7 days, while Work and Units remain the
same. The formula W=D*U does not apply anymore

Another example (using the standard calendar only)
- Create a task (fixed duration)
- Set task duration to 5 days
- Create a task split (split after day 2 and insert a split of 5 working
days) => Duration remain 5 days
- Change task type to Fixed Duration => Duration changes to 10 days


Projectopolis


Steve House wrote:
HUH???? You've got to show me. Give me a step by step example that shows
durations suddenly appearing in elapsed days.

Use Project 2003, all calendars set to standard and default settings (ie,
hours per day = 8, etc). Set Project start to any Wednesday, take your pick
(that way a week-long task will have a non-working weekend in the middle).
Input a task. Mark it fixed duration. Edit the default "1d?" duration
field to "5d". That task will show ending Tuesday 5pm, not Monday 8am which
it would if the duration had been entered as "5ed." Create a resource "Joe"
and assigned him to the task 100%. Task still ends Tuesday with Joe doing
40 man-hours of work. Edit him down to 50%. Duration remains 5 days, task
ending Tuesday, Joe now doing 20 man-hours of work. Edit him to 60
man-hours of work. Task duration remains 5 days, still ending Tuesday. Joe
now showing overallocated at 150%. At no time in this whole prcess did the
duration suddenly stop obeying the working time calendar and revert to
elapsed days with the task ending shifting time from Tuesday to Monday
morning 8am.

Same with hammock tasks. Take two milestones at either end of a simple
linear sequence. Create a hammock task linking the earlier milestone start
to the hammock start and the latter milestone finish to the hammock finish.
The duration field for the hammock will read out the time in duration days,
not elapsed days, regardless of the task type setting of the hammock task.

BTW, "fixed duration" does not mean the duration can't change - it only
means what term in the equation W=D*U is to be held constant when editing
resource assignments. So changing the durations of the tasks in the
sequence that includes the two milestones, causing the milestone dates to
change, will subsequently cause the duration of the hammock to change
accordingly, HOWEVER its duration field will always show true duration time
as defined in the working time calendar that governs it, NOT 24/7 elapsed
time (unless you have made the 24 hour calendar the project calendar, the
resource calendar or the task calendar, of course).

It's not that a fixed duration task is using elapsed days - fixed duration
means that when you have resources on the task and edit their assignments,
if you change work, units are updated and if you change units, work is
updated.

 

[Steve House]

Following up, I had a chance to try this with Proj 2003 SP3 yesterday and
it also behaves the same way as you describe for 2007, incorrectly
calculating duration for split Fixed Duration tasks by not backing out the
non-working time represented by the split. Now this is just plain weird!
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I haven't used Project 2003 for quite some time now, but did some testing
yesterday. We had a case where Duration was calculated different in 2003
and 2007, but apparently, this has been fixed in SP3. So my apologies for
the confusion.

But still, duration is calculated differently for Fixed Duration and Fixed
Work/Units tasks. Some examples. My choice of words was not the best. It
does not show up as 'elapsed days (ed)'. Try the examples below to
understand what I mean:

First example is when using non-standard project and/or task calendars,
duration is calculated different for Fixed Duration and Fixed Work/Units
tasks.

- Create a new 7d calendar: Mo -Sun 8:00 - 12:00 and 13:00 - 17:00
- Assign the new calendar to the project
- Create a new resource, but assign him the Standard (5d) calendar.
- Create a new task (Fixed Work or Fixed Units) and make it start on a
wednesday
- Set the task duration to 5 days. The task ends on Mondey 5PM
- Assign the resource (100%). The task ends on Wednesday 5PM because of the
resource calendar being a 5d calendar. The duration remains 5 days.
- Now switch the task type to Fixed Duration.
=> The Task Duration now changes to 7 days, while Work and Units remain the
same. The formula W=D*U does not apply anymore

Another example (using the standard calendar only)
- Create a task (fixed duration)
- Set task duration to 5 days
- Create a task split (split after day 2 and insert a split of 5 working
days) => Duration remain 5 days
- Change task type to Fixed Duration => Duration changes to 10 days


Projectopolis


..

 

[Rob Schneider]

Following up, I had a chance to try this with Proj 2003 SP3 yesterday
and it also behaves the same way as you describe for 2007, incorrectly
calculating duration for split Fixed Duration tasks by not backing out
the non-working time represented by the split. Now this is just plain
weird!

Hopefully Microsoft is seeing this?

 

[Steve House]

I hope so!

SJH

Hopefully Microsoft is seeing this?

 

[Hans]

You want weird?
Try the same on the RTM version of Project 2007 ;-)

In the RTM version, the duration is calculated correctly for Fixed
Duration tasks (that's why I said duration for fixed duration tasks is
calculated different in 2003 and 2007).
But somewhere along the way in developing SP1 or SP2, they introduced
the problem again.