No task to finish on the weekend?

[uttster]

Hello,
How do I set Sat and Sun as working time, but not allow any task to be
due/finish on a Sat or Sun? So the task can take place over the weekend, but
it must finish on a Monday.
Thanks

 

[Rod Gill]

That doesn't make sense!! If a task finishes at 11:00 on a Saturday, then it
should be updated as finishing at that time. Otherwise your whole schedule
becomes a series of fix ups and partial fiction.

Perhaps you had better explain why and what actually needs to happen on the
Monday for tasks finished on the weekend.

 

[JackD]

Yep, I agree with Rod..
You can work around this a bit by modelling things differently. If it
requires some other step which can't complete over the weekend, insert that
other (short) task with a Mon-Fri calendar and set it as a successor to your
weekend work task.

 

[uttster]

Thanks for responding (both of you).
I am using this to track a project where actual documents are due on the
"finish date". no one is in the office on the weekends, but if someone needs
4 days to finish a document, they can work over the weekend, but it will not
be read/next step cannot start until that monday.
example: task finish document - 3 days begin thurs end sat
next task: review document - 2 days (this task cannot start on a sunday, it
must start on monday)

so i need to have the weekends as working days, but a subsequent task cannot
start on a sat or sunday.

will this have to be a manual fix in each situation?

 

[davegb]

Thanks for responding (both of you).
I am using this to track a project where actual documents are due on the
"finish date". no one is in the office on the weekends, but if someone needs
4 days to finish a document, they can work over the weekend, but it will not
be read/next step cannot start until that monday.
example: task finish document - 3 days begin thurs end sat
next task: review document - 2 days (this task cannot start on a sunday, it
must start on monday)

so i need to have the weekends as working days, but a subsequent task cannot
start on a sat or sunday.

will this have to be a manual fix in each situation?

This is very difficult to do in Project except for doing it manually.
Which begs the question, are you micromanaging? Do you really need to
know what days the task was worked on? My experience is that most
projects are best tracked on a weekly, rather than a daily basis.
Unless there are extreme circumstances, the PM doesn't and shouldn't
care about the exact time the work got done, only that it got done by
the due date, or not, and how many hours it took. If you're worried
about who's coming in on weekends, that's a different issue.
Hope this helps in your world.

 

[DavidC]

Hi,

I understand your dilema well.

Set up a second calendar which has Saturday and Sunday as non working. Call
it 5 day calendar (orignal eh). Then assign that calendar to the relevant
tasks. Now you can have a project which can work seven days per week where
appropriate, but only five days for 'office' type functions. You could also
set up the resources with the five day calendar as well and leave the tasks
on a seven day calendar and that would give the same result.

Hope this is of some help

Regards
DavidC

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

The finish date of a task is NOT its due date. It's the predicted time the
resource doing the work is able to put down his tools, steps back, looks at
his completed widget and says with a satisifed expression "There, I'm done!"
What happens in your plan if the person in your example who needs 3 days to
finish that document starting Thursday elects NOT to work extra on the
weekend but chooses instead to finish it up on Monday, leaving the review
document task to start on Tuesday instead of the Monday that would result if
the first resource worked overtime? I strongly suggest you never base a
plan on the assumption that people will work overtime or outside of
"official" working hours. That might be your corporate culture, true
enough, but if you plan assuming it's always going to be true, the time you
need it most is the time the resource is going to say "Hey, it's my wedding
anniverary this weekend and my spouse will kill me if I work OT so sorry
about that, ain't gonna do it!" And there's nothing you can do about it -
he's within his rights to refuse and there's potential hugely expensive
legal repercussions if he suffers any negative consequence for that refusal.
IMHO, never plan based on the idea that people will work anything except the
legal official workday - never assume voluntary overtime and reserve
assigned overtime for those situations where you need it to get out of an
emergency problem that has materialized. Contrary to the commericals on TV,
no one ever gives more than 100%.

 

[DavidC]

Hi Steve,

With respect, but there are industries (construction and maintenance) where
some people do work weekends as a norm, yet others do not. The project I am
working on now has one group working 2 ten hour shifts seven days per week,
and other working only one ten hour shift for seven days per week,and then
there are the 'authorities' who only work the normal five day week. It is
therefore quite important to allow those tasks which can and will work
through a weekend, yet those tasks resourced by people not working the
'project' hours are scheduled to suit the calendar of the 'non project
resource'.

You are correct about not being able to compel when people work, but if a
project requires weekend work then that is what prevails. A good example is
a shutdown and major overhaul on a power plant. The maintenance people will
work all the hours necessary, but try and get an inspector from one of the
government agencies to do their inspection outside the 40 hour week. Hence
the need to have resources on different calendars.

Regards

DavidC

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Oh I know all about weekend work. Back in the 60's & 70's I worked in the
airline industry and I went for a 5 year stretch before I had enough
seniority to bid a shift with weekends off. What I was trying to say is
that people always have regularly scheduled working hours and it's smart to
only schedule project tasks during the normal working hours of the resources
doing it, whatever that may be. If it's important for work on a task to
take place on a weekend you assign the task to someone who's regular shift
includes weekends, not a M-F person on the hope they'll be willing to work
extra for you. Uttster seemed to be saying the resource in question worked
M-F but could be counted on working over the weekend, outside of their
normal working hours, if a task started too late in the week to finish
before the weekend arrived. I think it's extremely dangerous to your
schedule to assume they'll do that voluntarily and to build that assumption
into the offical plan and at the very least abusive of the worker if not
downright a violation of labour laws to mandate they do it involuntarily. I
take it as a given that one must always respect the dignity of the worker
and both the letter and the spirit of the law as the price of being allowed
to stay in the game, even if doing so means ther project's schedule is
longer and budget is higher than one might otherwise be able to achieve.

When I read your statement that you have a group that works 2 10-hour shifts
7 days a week I have to wonder when they rest. To me a "group" means all
members of the group work identical hours and days off. So when you say
that, I see people who work 20 hours per day and never get a day off and
that can't be real any place outside of the Gulag. Don't you mean you have
a group that works 10 hour day with sat sun off and another group that works
10 hour days with Mon Tue off and yet another that works 10 hour days with
Tue Wed off etc etc etc? I try to teach my classes that they need as a
minimum however many base calendars are required to cover every unique
combination of general working hours, days off, and stautory holidays that
the resources may have. I don't suggest necessarily a base calendar for
people who arrive at 8am and another for those arriving at 9am - resource
calendars can take care of those minor deviations - but if we cover 24/7 by
working day, swing and grave shifts, some people wth Fri Sat off, other with
Sat Sun off, and others with Sun Mon off and have some resources here in
Ontario and others next door in Quebec (different statutory holidays) you
have at the very least 18 calendars (3 basic shifts * 3 RDO patterns * 2
jurisdictions). Since I'm ultimately going to have to get the task
assignments detailed down to the point of assigning Joe who works 10am-7pm
with Wed Thur off to a task and the consequences to my schedule of that
assignment will be different than if I assign Bill who works 8am-5pm with
Sat Sun off, I can't just lump Joe and Bill together into a group that works
8am to 7pm 7 days a week when viewed in the aggregate even if they both
happen to have the same job skills and are otherwise interchangeable. I
have to split them out and when I assign resources I have to think whether I
should give the task in question to a guy with weekends off or to the guy
with mid-week days off.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Steve's First Law of Project Perversity: The tasks where resources
adamantly refuse to work overtime will always be critical tasks.


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[DavidC]

Hi Steve,

Interesting how the same question can hav different interpretations. My
reading was that the task was a seven day task and only some resources were
restricted to five day weeks. Your point is well taken and valid.

Yes in my project we have two shifts of 10 hours, seven days per week. I
guess where I differ, is that rather than assigning Joe and Bill to do the
welding, I simply assign 2 welders. Then as long as there are sufficient
welders in the pool it then is up to the individual supervisors to assign
specific tasks to a specific person. Certainly the individual will get time
off in any seven day week but that roster is handled outside of Project.
Also makes it easier to handle the situation when Joe decides not to turn up
for whatever reason. The other aspect of this project that makes seven day
weeks more palatable is that is a 32 day project (we hope).

Thank you for your comments they are welcome as yet another thought and
approach and that is always good.

Regards

DavidC

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I've experimented with the approach you've taken with lumping the 2 -10 hour
shift groups into one group and every time I've tried it always runs me up
against a wall and produces invalid schedules. Certainly you don't list
every individual welder and the foreman is the persoin to organize the
workdays of his team and decide which of his team he's going to send where
each day. But I've found it still requires me to split out the resources by
shift and I need to know we have 10 day shift welders and 6 night shift
welders available for assignment. When discussing the requirments needed to
get the job done on time with the foreman, I might ask him to put 2 day
shift and 2 night shift workers on it so it would go around the clock. Or
if your inspector who only works days needed to be onsite as the welding was
done, I'd let the foreman know that he only need to put day shift guys on it
and let the welding stop overnight (since the inspector isn't there they
couldn't work anyway). Doing it that way, the task in my project schedule
will properly adjust its timing to reflect whether a mix of day shift and
night shift workers are on it or or only the day shift workers. The end
date is going to be very different if it only proceeds when day shift
welders are there versus it's being worked by both day and night shift
welders and I think the PM should be able to advise the welding foreman how
he needs to deploy his workers to best meet the project's objectives.
Lumping the shifts together into a single group of welders working in
aggregate 24 hours gives very distorted task timings in comparison.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Dean C]

Uttster,
I got lost in all of the complicated suggestions you received, so forgive me
if the problem was solved. If every task in your schedule is a "delivery"
type task, these suggestions will double or triple the size of your file, so
you probably will not want to use them.
Option 1, doubles the size: Try making hammock tasks. For each affected
task,
1. Add a task with the duration in elapsed days so that the finish date is
about right. This will be the task that has people working weekends.
2. Change the task type so that it is not fixed duration.
3. Add a task that has the same predecessors and successors and your planned
duration in days.
4. Copy the finish date of the latest predecessor and paste special paste
link to the start date of the task with elapsed days.
5. Copy the finish date of of the duplicate task and paste special, paste
link.
6. Maintain the duration of the task using the new task.

Option 2, triples the size, but more accurately represents what you are
doing and is less maintenance.
1. Create a summary task for your task.
2. Create a 1 hour (or duration of your choosing) successor to your task.
3. Link successors to your original task to the new 1 hour task.
4. Collapse the summary task in all views and format it so that it appears
as a normal task.