Converting from Fixed Duration to Hours

[Steve P]

Hi guys,
I have been given an assignment to convert an existing project plan, which
was initially created using fixed duration unitizing, to individual hours
based unitizing.

Is there an easy way to do it or do I need to recreate the plan with the new
units being utilized??

Please help!

 

[Jim Aksel]

I do not understand your term "unitizing" so I will take a stab -- you want
to convert from fixed duration tasks to fixed units tasks.

A plan created with fixed duration will hold task duration constant. Load
your resources as you wish, it will assume 100% utilizaion of the resources
for the fixed time you described with a fixed duration... a 5 day task will
have 40 hours of duration. It is key to note that this is 40 hours of
duration not work. Work and duration are two entirely different things in
Project.

If you want to assign resources, you can add them as needed. Everyone will
be assigned at 100% units unless you tell it otherwise. So, adding Bob and
Ted will create a 5 day duration task with 80 hours of work (40 for Bob, 40
for Ted). The duration of this fixed duration task will remain at 5 days (40
hours of duration with 80 hours of work).

To change these, I do it this way. In Gantt View, select Window/Split. The
bottom pane shows resources on the left, predecessors on the right. You will
see Bob and Ted on separate lines. Adjust their units% or Work (in Hours)
accordingly. This way you can have a 5 day task with 17.2 hours for Bob and
20 hours for Ted if you wish (obviously I made up the numbers). At this
point the duration is not changing.

When you are all done, select all tasks and change them to Fixed Units from
the Advanced Tab of the Task Information dialog box. You will have a
schedule that retained the durations of the old schedule (keep a copy of the
old one for safety sake). Now, with fixed units tasks, if you add work to a
resource, the task duration will expand according to the %Units assigned to
the task for that resource.

If you wanted the opposite... Bob and Ted will only need 10 hours each to do
this task (20 hours of work) and they can both work it full time -- then
change all the tasks types to fixed units first, then add the work making
sure the assignment units are 100% (or whatever you need).

Is that where you were headed? (I hope).
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

I'm not sure what you mean.
You can select all tasks, activate the task information button and in the
Advanced tab select fixed units as task type.
Do note that nothing will change - this setting only affects changed
introduced after its setting.
Greetings

 

[Steve House]

Fixed duration is a task type setting that affects calculations when
resource assignments are edited. Hours are a unit of measure for either
duration or work. A task can be fixed duration and still have its duration
measured in hours or days or weeks, whatever unit is conventient.