spreading a task over a longer period of time

[Kari]

Hi,

I have a task that is calculated to be 5 days and due to start on a given
date, but it will not be done, done until another date one month from now.
What is the right way to address this scenario? I don't want the task to
show a start date of x and a finish date 5 days later, because it is 5 days
over the course of a month.

Thanks,

 

[DavidC]

Hi,

The way you have described the situation, the task will take one month to
complete, but it is the effort put in to complete the task by your resources.

Look at the situation this way:

The task will be worked on periodically over the next month, when that is
finished the next task can start, because it is reliant on that task being
completed. However the reource assigned to the task is only going to work on
it for a total of five days during that period. That is 25% of the time based
on a 20 day calendar month.

If the task is only five days and will be worked on at 100% resource
allocation then the task needs to be shown as 5 days starting ASAP, or as SF
successor link to the next task if it can only be started five days before
the start of the next task.

Your description does seem to indicate that the effort put into completing
the task is five days spread out over a month, so assigning one month
duration to the task is correct (That is how long it will take to finish the
task) and the effort applied to the task by the reosurce is only 25% of the
time. Incidentally you can contour the effort applied by the resource from
the "resource usge" form. There if you right click on the relevant task and
select "Resource assignment" there is a drop down bax from which you can
select the contour type, flat, bell, turtle etc. This allocates the effort
of the resource over the duration of the task.

Hope this helps a little.

Regards

DavidC

 

[Kari]

Thanks for your help. Your response was helpful and exactly what I needed.