Tasks of long duration contain w fews days actual work

[Steve D]

I am trying to do something quite simple, but am being twarted by the power
of MS Project.

I have a number of tasks that have a duration of a number of months, but the
work involved woulud only be a few days. I cannot work out how to enter this
infromation in project for example:

A task will start on 1st May 2006 and finish on 30th July 2006, but the
actual work involved will only be 5 days. I wanto to display the work done as
a percentage of the whole task on the Gannt chart.

I have tried to use work and contraints, but as I cannot have more than 1
constrint on a task, when I change the work the start an finish dates change,
and I want these to remaion fixed.

Can anyone help ?

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Steve,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #5 & #10 on Resource Assignment, at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the articles before leaving the site,
Thanks.)

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Easy to do. 3 months is about 60 days duration. Your task requires 5 days
of work. The resource is spending an average of about 5/60 or 1/12 or 8% of
his effort on that task. Hence assign him to the 60 day duration task at
8%.

But is this really an accurate model? Is the first tiny bit of work reaklly
going to be dine about 1 May and then the task worked in bits and drips
spread out over 3 months or is ot going to be that it can start as early as
the 1st of May, is due by the end of July, yet whenver it starts in the time
frame its going to occupy the resource's attention fully until it's done?
That's usually the more common scenario - and if that's true, I ssuggest
that it is NOT a 3 month task with 5 days of work but rather it is a 5 day
duration task requiring the resource 100%, having an Early Start of 01 May
and a completion Deadline of 30 July. This lets you develop a schedule that
is a much more accurate model of reality.