I have 70 hours of work on a project over 6mnths. How do I set th.

[Tarlo]

I am doing an assignment using MS Project 2003. I have a task that is 70
hours in duration over a six month period.When I set the start and finish
date MS Project keeps given me the total hours for the whole period not the
hours for the task that I specify. How do I correct this? Thanks

 

[CP Jay]

Hi Tarlo,

My suggestion is not to edit the dates directly. You might want to
follow the steps as:

( I am assuming that the task types are Fixed Units - The default.,
unless you have explicitly changed the same - If you haven't, don't
worry about this message inside paranthesis )
1. Remove any resource names u might have added in the resources
column.
2. Change the duration to six months in the duration column.
3. In the work column, set the effort to 70 hours.
4. If you want the work item to start at a particular date - DO NOT
CHANGE THE DATE IN THE DATE COLUMN, instead you might want to set a
constraint - constraints can be availed by double clicking the line
item in MPP and in the task info dialogue go to the advanced tab. You
might want to consider a non-flexible constraint like "must start on"

Hope this helps!

Much Rgds
Jay

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Tarlo,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Don't confuse the Work assigned (70hrs in your example) with Duration (6
months). Don't enter Start or Finish dates: always enter the Duration and
the precedences to let Project calcuate the dates for you, showinf you
what's possible with the data youv'e entered.

In this case, enter the Task Name and the Duration of 13 weeks. Now
Window/Split and change the Task Type to Fixed Duration and click OK to set
up that mode. Now click in the Resource Name cell, enter the resource name
or use the pick list, and then enter the Work of 70 hours, OK. That should
set the Units at 13%.

You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #10, 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://www.mvps.org/project/>

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

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP