Tracking actual work and duration separatley

[Mike C]

We are implementing EPM, which is based on Project 2003. We are looking to
account for all resources time in the system. There are many project that
are ongoing/utility projects which we need to track and book time to. The
problem is, in most cases we want to assign someone say 50% of their time to
it. This project would span the course of the year. So we want them
schedule 4 hrs per day everyday. If they book 5 hours today I do not want
project to respread the hours or adjust the duration. I want to de-couple
actuals from duration or total work. I have seen where you can de-coulpe %
complete, but not the others. Let me know your ideas.

Thanks

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

While you can decouple updates so entering Actual Work does not also update
Actual Duration or vice versa, there's no way you can decouple total work
and the task duration itself. The "prime directive," not just a standard of
MS Project but dictated by the very physical nature of work and time itself,
is the mathematical identity W=D*U and you simply can't violate it anymore
than you can force Excel give you 3.75567 as the answer to the formula
"=2+2" or create a mechanical system that violates Newton's first law F=MA.
Carrying the logic to its conclusion, if a task requires 80 hours of total
work and the resource works on it 100%, it is by definition 80 hours in
duration. If the resource then does 12 Actual hours of work @ 100%, that
means 12 Actual hours out of the duration has been consumed and the
remaining duration is 68 hours. If after 12 hours of duration has been
consumed and something OTHER than 68 hours of duration remains, it's clear
that the total task duration is something other than 80 hours and it must be
revised accordingly. Anything else would be mathematically absurd.

You can decouple actuals when updating because work and duration might be
consumed at different rates - happens all the time in work contoured tasks.
But the relationships of Work=ActualWork+RemainingWork,
Duration=ActualDuration+RemainingDuration, and Work=Duration*EffortUnits
will always hold true amd simply can't be ignored.

By the way - an assignment of 50% does NOT mean they're spending 50% of
their total working time on the task or project. It means that out of each
hour they spend on the project task, they're only generating the output
equivalent to 1/2 man-hour of full-time effort. Usually one can ignore the
distinction but in scheduling as you're attempting to do, it becomes
important to keep in mind the real-world work schedule implications. If
someone is assigned to a 4 man-hour task at 50%, they're going to be
actively working on it for 8 hours. The task is 8 hours in duration and
they're assigned 50% meaning they're doing it along with something else and
so can only devote half of their usual energies to it. On the other hand,
if what you mean them to do is spend half of their workday devoting their
full attention to the task, the task is 4 hours in duration and they're
assigned to it 100%. If your resource sheet shows them a maximum of 50%,
Project will claim they're overallocated.