Naveen said:
Hello
For simple projects I would enter a developer's estimate in days as the
actual start and end date for the task.
However I now face a situation where a developer has estimated 5 mandays to
complete a task. However these mandays will be spread over 3 weeks.
How do I capture both kinds of information in my Gantt Chart.
I have MS Project Standard 2002.
Thanks very much for any help.
Regards
Naveen
Naveen,
Use a fixed duration task. One way to do that is to select the task and
then go to Project/Task Information/Advanced tab. Set the Task Type to
be Fixed Duration and uncheck the Effort driven option. Enter the 3
weeks (or 15 days assuming normal 8-5 workweek) in the Duration field
and enter the manday estimate in the Work field, although you might want
to enter it as manhours since that is the more common designation for
effort. You will note that Project will adjust the resource units to be
0.33 (assuming a single resource).
Just for reference you should NOT be entering dates directly into the
Start and Finish fields. That sets a constraint and does not allow the
schedule to change dynamically. Normally you should only enter a date in
the Start field if that task is not dependent on any predecessor tasks.
If a single resource is going to work 100% on the task, then you can
enter the estimate directly into the Duration field.
Even though you mention the "actual start" I think you really mean the
Start field. In Project, there is a separate field called the Actual
Start field. It is used to manually enter the "actual" start date of a
task if that date is different from the scheduled start date (i.e. the
Start field).
If you are fairly new to Project, I suggest you go to our MVP website at,
http://www.mvps.org/project/links.htm, and click on fellow MVP, Mike
Glen's tutorials. Mike's tutorials will expand and clarify what I
briefly stated here.
Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
