Overide Calendar Options?

[Rhi]

Hello,
I have a problem where my summary tasks are not calculating as I want them
to. The 1st phase of the project needs a weekly schedule of five 8-hr days,
and the 2nd needs four 10-hr days. I think I've entered this information
correctly under Change Working Time. I am wondering if the problem stems
from the Calendar options selected (Tools-Options-Calendar tab) since I need
it to calculate duration in two different ways and the Calendar tab only
allows one. According to text on the Calendar tab, times entered here are
only assigned if start/finish dates are entered and no times are specified.
I've specified all working times under Change Working Time, so I assumed the
Calendar tab times would be overridden. This must not be correct or I am
missing something else. Any ideas on how I can set up my calendar so I get
the correct durations? Thanks!
(I'm using Project '07)

 

[JulieS]

Hello Rhi,

The definition settings in Tools > Options, Calendar tab should be set
once based upon the common definition of the majority of tasks in your
project. If most of your tasks are going to be set against a common
definition of 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week, I suggest staying
with the standard definition of a day equals 8 hours and a week equals
40 hours. Those settings only provide a mathematical shorthand that
allows us to specify durations in something other than hours or
minutes.

In both of your examples below, you are referring to 40 hours. When
those 40 hours can occur will be determined by the specific working
times you have set in your calendar through Tools > Change Working
time. So, if during phase 1 you enter a task with a 5 day duration -
Project is going to translate that to 40 hours and schedule that 40
hours during the working time defined in the calendar. If the task
starts at the start of the workday on Monday, it should finish at the
end of the work day on Friday. You *should not* be entering in either
start dates or end dates.

If you have changed the calendar to allow 10 hours per day as working
time and enter a 5 day duration task -- it is still 40 hours. If the
task starts at the start of the workday on Monday,it should finish at
the end of the workday on Thursday. The duration is still going to
show 5 days but because your calendar allows 10 hours per day not 8,
the 40 hours of work can be accomplished in less time.

I know there are some who will disagree, but if you have calendars (or
resources) with fairly widely differing working times (some who work 8
per day, some who work 10 per day, some work 12 per day), I suggest
showing durations in hours. Some posters here do point out that
showing duration in hours can lead to confusion between duration and
work -- but in your case, I would rather have to explain how a 40 hour
*duration* task may have 60 hours of work than have to explain that 5
days duration is really only taking 4 days because of a 10 hour
working day.

Anyway, you can experiment and see if working with durations in hours
suits your needs. You can change all existing durations from days to
hours through Tools > Macros > Macro and run the Format_Duration
macro. To change all newly entered durations to hours, change the
setting on the Schedule tab of the Tools > Options dialog "Duration is
entered in".

You might also like to take a read of FAQ 5 at:
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
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