Question on duration and actual working time

[bakkhos]

I am new in using Project. I am running into a problem where I do not
know how to set up Project to calculate duration/time.

Here is my particular situation. My project have tasks that take from a
couple of minutes to actaully do or complete to a couple of hours.
However, it may take days before the tasks are actually delivered to
the client, since most of my team members worked on multiple projects
per day, the do not have 8hrs per day and 5 days a week to allocate for
this project. But in projects, if I were to use "hours" in my duration,
then I will not be able to see in my gantt chart the actual start date,
delivery dates or milestones in a calender. MS prokect will just
calaculate my dyation and show my gantt chart using the 8hr/day model.
It seems that Project asssumes that my tasks and my resource are have
8hrs/5days a week to complete this project, when in truth they have 8 to
10 other projects that they are working on in one particular day.

So how can I solve this issue? Is there a way for me to be able to
calculate the time it takes my resource to do a task in hours, and yet
also be able to show that the hours and days of completeion will be
different?

Please help. I've tried to read many postings, but none have addressed
this particular issue.

thank you.

Nancy

 

[Erico Vasconcelos]

Hi Bakkhos,

I believe this issue can be solved by using the configuration for specify
the work hours by individuals resourses. You can do this by:

1) assigning resourses for you project
2) allocate them for tasks
3) on project tab , click on resourses > define resourses work hours.
4) follow the wizard

Hope that helps.

Best regards,
Erico

 

[vanita]

Hi Nancy

Something more on this.

You can establish a different calendar for each resource and if the resource
works few hours per day for a particular project give that much working
time/per day only in its calendar.

Also inspite of whatever calendar is assigned to a resource, it can be
assigned to a task only for few hours also. First while working with human
resources you may change the resource unit from % to decimals by Tools >
options > schedule > show assignment units as a decimal. After this if you
assign one unit of resource it is assigned full for its working time of one
day. e.g if the resource has 4 hrs working in a day in its calendar,
assigning one unit would assign 4 hrs working/per day and assigning 0.5 units
would assign 2 hrs/day to an activity.

After this to show the start and finish time for using a resource change the
date viewing option through Tools > options > view > date format (take a date
format with hours).

I hope it helps.
Vanita

 

[Dave]

I guess the answer depends partly on the setup you have.

Are you guaranteed a certain availability from your resources, in which
case you can set that availability in the resource sheet in the max
units column (and if you aren't guaranteed a certain degree of resource
availability, then trying to manage the project is probably hopeless)?

Or, do you have a resource pool or server environment, in which case you
can use levelling to fit the work around other commitments the resources
have?

 

[JulieS]

Hello Nancy,

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are trying to do, so let
me first state what I think you are looking for and then an process
of getting there.

You note that your resources are devoted to multiple other projects
and cannot work 8 hours per day on a specific task in a specific
project. To that end, you need to be able to differentiate between
the start to end of a task (duration) and the amount of work for
resources between the start and finish dates.

Project can handle both of those ideas. Create your tasks and set
the duration (the span of time from beginning to end). Create your
resources on the Resource sheet. From the Gantt chart view , split
your screen to show you the Task Form in the lower pane.
Temporarily, set the task type to Fixed Duration and click the OK
button to set the task type. From the task form, select the
resource's name and in the work field, enter in the work (effort)
estimate. Because the task is fixed duration, project will
calculate the assignment units required for the resource to perform
the work you specified in the duration you set. So, for example --
if you set a task with 4 days duration but assign Nancy and specify
5 hours work, Project will calculate assignment units of 16% spread
the 5 hours work over the 4 days duration.

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 about Microsoft Project

 

[tebogom]

I also had the same problem, Julie's solution worked liked a charm
Thanks JulieS (project MVP)!

 

[JulieS]

You're welcome tebogom and thanks for the feedback.

Julie