Duration of hrs to span into days

[JS]

How do I enter tasks in a project that will require work of 1 hr each day for
5 days? Not all the tasks follow the same schedule. Others include 8 hr days
or working 2-3 hours a day for this project. I am using Project Pro 2003.

 

[John]

How do I enter tasks in a project that will require work of 1 hr each day for
5 days? Not all the tasks follow the same schedule. Others include 8 hr days
or working 2-3 hours a day for this project. I am using Project Pro 2003.

JS,
This is done using a Fixed Duration type task. You can set the task type
for all tasks under Tools/Options/Schedule tab or you can set it
individually for each task under Project/Task Information/Advanced tab.
Set your task with a 5 day duration and then assign your resource at 5
hours. Project will automatically spread the work effort over the 5 days.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[JS]

I save the original schedule as a baseline. How do I accomoadate the change
if the actual work done is 7 hours in 5 days? If I enter 7 hours, the task is
automatically stretched to 7 days.

 

[Jim Aksel]

A fixed duration task will not increase in duration if additional work is
added. What will increase is the %Units.

Actual work and cost are different. If you baselined the project at 5 hours,
this is the work. Actual Work will total no more than 5 hours. However it
may have taken 7 hours on the clock (timecard hours) to complete these 5
hours of work. The 7 hours is a measure of cost, not work.

What we do is enter the cost (7 hours x rate) into the actual cost column.
We have actual costs set to manual (Tools/Options/Calculations tab).
Uncheck the boxes so that Project will no longer calculate costs.

 

[John]

I save the original schedule as a baseline. How do I accomoadate the change
if the actual work done is 7 hours in 5 days? If I enter 7 hours, the task is
automatically stretched to 7 days.

JS,
Jim may have answered your question but I'm not sure it came across.
First, even though a task is fixed duration, that duration MAY change if
additional work is added (contrary to Jim's first paragraph). It all
depends on HOW that work is added. For example, you said that when you
entered actual work of 7 hours the duration increased. That is because
you entered actual work directly into the Actual Work field. The task,
whether baselined or not, was originally scheduled for 5 hours. With the
fixed duration of 5 days, that means Project scheduled the work to be
done 1 hour/day for 5 days. By entering 7 hours into the Actual Work
field you effectively said there are two more hours of work added and at
a scheduled rate of 1 hour/day, that means it will take 7 days. Make
sense? Kind of?

On the other hand, if you had entered actual work on a day by day basis,
for example into the timescaled values for Actual Work on the Resource
Usage view, you could have entered a total of 7 hours of actual work and
the duration would still have remained at 5 days.

The best advice I can give is to go to the Project help file and search
for the "work equation". That tells how the various parts of Project's
work equation interact given the task type.

John
Project MVP

 

[JS]

John,

This is very helpful.

Thank you,
Jatin

JS,
Jim may have answered your question but I'm not sure it came across.
First, even though a task is fixed duration, that duration MAY change if
additional work is added (contrary to Jim's first paragraph). It all
depends on HOW that work is added. For example, you said that when you
entered actual work of 7 hours the duration increased. That is because
you entered actual work directly into the Actual Work field. The task,
whether baselined or not, was originally scheduled for 5 hours. With the
fixed duration of 5 days, that means Project scheduled the work to be
done 1 hour/day for 5 days. By entering 7 hours into the Actual Work
field you effectively said there are two more hours of work added and at
a scheduled rate of 1 hour/day, that means it will take 7 days. Make
sense? Kind of?

On the other hand, if you had entered actual work on a day by day basis,
for example into the timescaled values for Actual Work on the Resource
Usage view, you could have entered a total of 7 hours of actual work and
the duration would still have remained at 5 days.

The best advice I can give is to go to the Project help file and search
for the "work equation". That tells how the various parts of Project's
work equation interact given the task type.

John
Project MVP