Effort driven fixed duration task

M

Michele

I have a fixed duration effort driven task with one resource assigned.(2 days
of duration and 8 hours of work)
I want to create another assignment for the same task, but with an amount of
work equal to 2 hours so that the first assignment need to work only for 6
hours.
(that's what i understand about the definition of effort driven task)
I know i can do that manually using the bottom pane of any of the tasks
views split window and digiting 2 hours of work for the second assignment and
8 hours for the first but, in my opinion, there should be the possibility to
associate to the second assignment, as soon as you're creating it, 2 hours of
work and Project should than calculate the remaining work of 6 hours for the
first assignment.(If i create the second assignment in a window split and i
digit 2 hours of work without changing the work hours of the first
assignment, the total amount of work becomes 10 hours and not 8 like it
should be since the task is effort driven!!!!)
Why isn't that possible, and if it is how can i achieve that?
Really Thanks a lot
Michele
 
M

Mike Glen

Hi Michele,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup :)

You need to make the Task Type Fixed Work to achieve what you want.

You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #11 on Task Types, at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the article before leaving the site, :)
Thanks.)

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

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

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
 
S

Steve House [Project MVP]

There are several ways to achieve this and Mike has mentioned one. A couple
of things to keep in mind - the terms "effort driven" and "non-effort
driven" are not really descriptions of the nature of the task itself.
Rather, they are controls that you can use to insure Project calculates
correctly what should happen when you add or remove resources from a task.
So if you have a task with one resource already assigned and you're adding
another, if the work on the task should be divided between the two resources
and the duration shorten, make it effort driven before adding the new
person. If the new person's work should instead be ADDED to that of the
first person and the duration NOT change, make it non-effort driven before
adding the new guy. That's really what that setting is - a control so you
can insure MSP does the right thing with this particular task edit. By this
philosophy, a task's effort driven property might change numerous times as
you edit and re-edit assignments to iteratively develop your final schedule
because when you have a task and you add or remove bodies from its
work-force, only you know what should happen to the task's duration.

It's very simple to achieve what you want. 2 hours work over 16 hours
duration is about a 12% assignment. 6 hours work over 16 hours duration is
a 38% assignment. Create the task with a 2 days duration. Mark it
non-effort driven. Add Resource 1 at 38%. Project never changes duration
on the initial resource assignment so it will stay 2 days. Add Resource 2
at 12%. Because it's non-effort driven it stays at 2 days. Done. True, we
haven't our resources WHICH 2 hours and 6 hours respectively they need to
work on that task but that's not a problem - it's not a PM's job to manage
their workday hour by hour. It's enough for us to tell them (or their
supervisor) that sometime on Monday and Tuesday we need them to put in a
total of XX hours on this task at their convenience.
 

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