Scheduling Fixed Work

[Joann]

I am working a level of effort schedule in 2003 Professional. I want to have
the task spread out over the life of the project. For instance, I want the
task to be 1 month of work spread out over 4 years. How do I do that?

If I make the start and finish dates the contract period of performance
Project increases the work or schedules the work for the last month.

 

[Jim Aksel]

Easy way:
Window/Spit..
tie task to approrpiate milestone "Contract Award" or similar as a
predecessor.
Make the task fixed duration, key the desired duration.
Assign a resource. Key work=160 hours (one month).

Better Way (maybe)
Create a hammock task. Milestones are Contract Award, Contract Complete.
Read FAQ#19 Hammock Tasks. URL below my name, select FAQ, browse.
Make your task a hammock task. Change to Fixed Work, assign resource,
assign work 160 hours.

With a Hammock task, as the program length changes the %Units of your LOE
task will "accordian" to accomodate the duraiton change. Potential problem:
If the contract drags out, it is more likely the LOE effort will increase in
work, not decrease (like a Program Manager for instance). In that case,
consider Fixed Units and maybe 10%.

--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

 

[Joann]

The hammock task worked beautifully. Thanks much.