How do I view my Gantt chart in WORK rather DURATION?

[GaffaUK]

I have a project file which has work and duration fields entered in by days.
The work varies between 60 and 100% effeciency. E.g. Tom has a task which
should take 4 days and is entered into the work column as 4 days. However
under units this is 80% (effeciency) so the Duration comes out as 5 days.

So as a project Manager I want to be able to switch effortlessly between
viewing the Gantt chart in Duration (which it currently does) and Work (which
I can't seem to do).

Any suggestions greatly appreciated

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Gaffa,

What exactly do you mean by "The Gantt Chart"?
If it is the graphical representation, a task there will always nebe
depicted from start to finish (that is its purpose) and thus the size of teh
bar will inevitably reflect duration.

OTOH, if it's the left side of the screen..: Insert, Column, Work.
HTH

 

[GaffaUK]

Hi Jan

I am referring to the graphical representation. After all work and duration
are both estimations and been able to graphical see both by switching between
them would be of a great benefit. I would like to print out graphical charts
for each employee which shows them their work flow in terms of work rather
than duration. Again if Tom sees he has 5 days put aside for his task he may
take 5 days whereas the 1 day (20% inefficiency) is only there for slippage
etc.

 

[James G]

Hi GaffaUK,

You cannot actually view a Gantt Chart for "work", because the Gantt Chart
shows the Start/Finish dates for the task, and not the work content. You can,
however, insert column called "work". Moreover, If you care to go to the Task
Usage, or Resource Usage views, you can then see how the work is profiled on
a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

I have a concern, though, that you might be incorrectly interpreting the
Units. They are not an "efficiency" rating. It is their "level-of-effort" on
the task, thus normally shown in hours. If the resource is going to take 5
days (full-time) to execute a task, then it's still 5days x 8 hrs/day = 40
hrs.....and the "units" should reflect the true content of the work and their
true level-of-effort (1.0 or 100%). The fact that it should take only 4 days
x 8 hrs/day = 32 hrs is an irrelevance....although this could be shown in the
baseline. If your interpretation is: "There is four days of full-time work,
but spread over five days", then that's fine....your level-of-effort (units)
is correctly showing 0.8 (80%). This means, however, that the resource is
only working on your task for 80% of his time, and is nothing to do with
efficiency.

HTH.

James. G

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hello,

I see.
There is a way but it's lengthy and I don't have much time left these days
You have to
- Setup a formula in a date field that calculates with the dateadd function
Start plus (work divided by 60*hoursperday) (work is stored in minutes)- for
instance Date1 field
- Make a copy of the gantt chart go to Bar Styles and for all tasks make the
droawing go from Start to Date1.
Hope this helps

 

[GaffaUK]

Thanks Jan I will give this a go and get back to you whether I'm successful
or not in getting it to work. ta

 

[GaffaUK]

Hi James

Yep I appreciate your comments and I agree that I am using this function
incorrectly however I have found using this technique incredibly useful. My
previous clients recommended that a project manager never put any of his
staff higher 80% efficiency and managers at 50% efficiency (due to number of
meetings. additional workload etc - not because they are bigger slackers!).

Also I have found if you allocate a number of days to a teammember they will
tend to use the days and alloting a certain amount of hidden days really
helps in unexpected situations.

Therefore would you recommend another graphical function? Possibly the PERT
analysis but this seems complicated.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

You are interchanging "efficiency" with time committment and they're really
not the same thing.

"Efficiency" is a measure of the quality of work. If I put both Bill and
Bob to work polishing widgets, nether of whom with any other demands on
their time, and at the end of the workday Bill has done 47 but Bob has only
done 23, Bill is twice as efficient as Bob.

If I work an 8 hours day, 100% assignment means I generate 8 man-hours of
output for each 8 hour day of work. If I need to have some time reserved
for meetings, etc, say 2 hours a day, I'm only working 6 hours per day on
the task. 75% of my day is committed to the task. But those 6 hours are
still at 100% efficiency - for each hour of work *on the task* I'm
generating an hour's worth of output. If I have a task that requires 40
man-hours of labour, it would require 5 days at 100% committment for the
complete duration. But since I'm only able to devote 75% of my time to it,
it's going to take a longer duration - 6.67 days - to generate that same 40
man-hours of labour.

And that's why you can't get the Gantt chart using work. A Gantt chart has
the calendar as its basis. It shows the start and end dates of the task,
not the amount of work in the task. Even chaning the units to a day or week
number doesn't really change that because it's still "week number so-and-so
from the project start date" and not really a count of the number of weeks.
Start and end dates are crucial for scheduling and the Gantt is a scheduling
tool. What you're looking for is a work histogram displayed as a horizontal
bar graph showing the number of labour man-hours for each task. The units
would be man-days, not calendar days. This is actually a budget metric, not
a schedule metric. Why not export the task name and work to Excel and
generate a bar graph there - should be a snap?