Finish Date calculating incorrectly - ignoring Duration

[Ana Figueira]

I'm using MS Project 2007 and I'm having an issue on how it is calculation
"Finish Dates" for the tasks.

1. I have set the work hours per day for the project in the “working timeâ€
at 6.5 hours per day and 32.5 hours per week. I have also set the default
start and end time to total 6.5 hours/day (10:00 AM - 4:30 AM). I'm using the
standard calendar which has weekend as 'non-working" days.
2. For example, I have a task that is 80 work. I'm assigning one resource to
the task. MSProject correctly calculates “Duration†for that task (at 6.5
hours/day) at 12.31 working days.
3. That task start date is 7/2/09. If "Duration" is 12.31 working days, the
"Finish Date" should be Monday 7/20/09, but instead it calculating the Finish
Date to be 7/16/09. It is basically using the 6.5 hour/day to calculate
Duration but ignoring to calculate Finish Date.

Does anyone know why?

I understand that resources can be allocated individually at a lesser
velocity (i.e. 80%) but I'd like to know why is MS Project not calculating
Finish Date correctly with my settings.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Regards,
Ana

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

This is not a matter of resource, it is simply a matter of "duration".
TThe origin of the problkem is when you say :

"work hours per day for the project in the "working time"
at 6.5 hours per day and 32.5 hours per week"

You cannot set working time per week so I guess you mean you set this in
Options, Calendar.
But what did you do to the REAL "working time" which is what is shown in
Tools, Change working time?
You "use the standard calendar" which shows 8 working hours per day.
So your 80 hours of work will take exactly 10 "real days" which takes the
task to July 16.

It will SHOW as 12.31 days because you told Project to convert hours to days
by dividing by 6.5

Read more bout it in FAQ 5 at
http://www.mvps.project/faqs.htm

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Ana Figueira]

Thank you Jan!

So I set up the work hours using "Tools-Change Working Time...", but
actually if you go through "Options-Calendar" you get to the same spot. If
you change it in one place, you can see the same changes going the other,
they are both at 6.5 hours/day. I have changed the working hours per day in
the Standard calendar to 6.5 hours and it doesn't work. I have created a new
calendar and applied it as the default calendar using 6.5 hours per day, and
still doesn't work.

Here is a copy of one example task:
test1 12.31 days 80 hrs Tue 8/4/09 Tue 8/18/09 Ana

Thanks for the link!! I'll review to see if I can find the answer...

Ana

 

[Jim Spiller]

Go to Tools-Change Working Time. Click on the Monday column header and drag
to the right to highlight all working days in the calendar. Set the From:
time to 10:00am and the To: time to 4:30 and erase the others. This should
now match your settings under the Options and should now give you the
correct end date. It's using the Options setting to calculate the Duration
and the Calendar to calculate the end date. Your Calendar and Options
settings need to match...

 

[Ana Figueira]

Thanks Jim, this worked!!!

As a reference for other, specifically in MS Project 2007, you to select the
calendar you're using as a default, you need to select the “Work Weeks†tab,
then go to “Details†and set “Specific Working Times†(start and end times)
for every working day to the amount of hours that equal 6.5.

Thanks again!!!
Ana