Duration of task calculated wrongly - not round up

[Peter Bons]

Hi all,

i have a question about MS Project. I am not an expert in this tool, it's
one of our customers that has a problem with the total time of a project
being wrongly calculated.

The project lists 6 tasks with overlapping start en finishdates.
the durations of the seperate tasks are 1,1,1,1 and 2 days, yet the total
displays 4.94 days. What I do not understand is where the .94 comes from.

If I change the duration of one of the tasks from 1 till 2 days, the total
project time is calculated to 5 days.

My main question is, how to get rid of that .94 and make the total time a
whole number

Kind regards,
Peter Bons

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Peter,

You might read:
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm
Faq 5. Default Working hours

Groeten,

(O ja er is ook microsoft.public.nl.office.project waar je in het Nl kan
vragen)

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hello,

Which working hours?
Default start and finish in Tools, Options, Calendar and/or in Tools, Change
Working time?
What you see is definitely the result of a mismatch between these as
explained in Faq 5.
Pity you don't understand, but it is the case, sorry.
Hope this helps.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Peter,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

If you don't align working hours as directed in the FAQ, then, say, you have
entered a 1 day task, it will start at the 8:00 original time and not the
8.30 that you've now set up. This is because, generally, changing the
default only affects the future and not the past. Thus you will have a half
hour discrepancy which is the likely source of your decimals. You need to
re-enter the Durations to correct this.

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

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

You mentioned that you tasks are overlapping and this is most likely the
source of your confusion. The project duration is not necessariliy the sum
of the individual task durations. Instead it is the time from when the
earliest starting task begins until the latest finishing task ends. If the
tasks overlap or some of them run in parallel, the project duration will be
less than the sum of the individual task durations. If there's a gap
between some of the tasks, a lag time, the project duration may be more than
the total of the task durations. Example. If I have 5 1-day tasks all
happening on the same day (5 different people to work on them, perhaps) the
sum of their durations is 5 dayus but the project duration is only one day.
OTOH, if I have two 1-days tasks in succession but one of them occurs on
Monday and then there's a gap until the 2nd task occurs on Friday of the
following week, their total duration is 2 days but the project duration is
10 days (weekends don't count)

 

[Peter Bons]

Hi Mike and all others,

I have done exaxctly as stated in the FAQ, but still I have the same
problem.
I do understand that total duration isn't just a simple addition of al tasks
durations because of the overlaps.

Can I send you the project file by email so you can took a look for me?

Thanx in advance
Peter

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Go ahead Peter, my address is on my website
It is jandemes at prom-ade dot be