Using effort-driven work, want durations and dates calculated....with no slacking!

M

Mike Jones

I'm sure this is a basic question...yes, I need to get a book.

We generally estimate the actual hours of work a task will take, so I
think I want to use effort-driven calculation. So I want to enter the
hours of Work (right?). If I'm understanding, Duration is calendar
span time, so if I have an 8 hour task, but the resource is available
50% of the time, the duration is 2 days. Am I on the right track?

Then I'd like the durations, start and end dates calculated for me.

What I'm seeing is a little odd. I'm seeing "1 day?" for duration in
many of the tasks, and then even thought the work is 1/2 hour, it
consumes the whole day. The resource is only actually scheduled for a
1/2 hour, even though 8 hours are available. We don't allow such
slacking!

There must be something basic that I'm missing here. How do I make
Project level resources so that all available time is effectively
used?

Thanks.
 
G

Gerard Ducouret

Hello Mike,
Insert the "Work" column besides the duration column in the Entry table.
Enter the value 1d in the Work cell of the task
Click the Assign Resource button in the tool bar
In the Units cell, enter 0,5 or 50% in front of the resource you assign...

What is the task's Duration ?

Hope this helps,

Gérard Ducouret
 
M

Mike Glen

Hi ,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup :)

You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #11 - Task Types , at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc (Perhaps you'd care to rate the article 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
 
G

Gerard Ducouret

Hello Mike,
Your tiny URL returns an error :
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: mysqlerror() in
/var/www/vhosts/tinyurl.com/htdocs/db_connect.php on line 3
;-(
Friendly,

Gérard
 
S

Steve House [MVP]

A couple of things in addition to Gerard's answer.

Effort driven doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. Effort driven
considerations only come into play when there is more than one resource
involved in the task in question. With effort driven tasks the work
estimate is distributed over all of the resources assigned. I have a room
to paint that will take one guy 4 days to do, 1 day per wall, that means
it's worth 32 man-hours total effort, x square feet per hour of work. If I
can get 2 guys, one can be working on the north wall while the other is on
the south, the total work is the same 32 man-hours but because it's now
distributed between the two resources, each does half or 16 man-hours and
the duration is only 2 days. Non-effort driven tasks, OTOH, have the work
replicated between the resources. The business of a 1-hour meeting will
take 1 hour to accomplish regardless of whether 2 resources or 10 are
attending. But the total man-hours of work consumed by the resources at the
meeting depends on the number of attendees - with 2 people I'll consume 2
man-hours but with 10 guys there I'll use up 10 man-hours worth.

The distinction between effort driven and non-effort driven settings ONLY
applies when you add or take away bodies from a task AFTER the initial
resource assignment. It does not effect the calculations for the first
resource assignment nor does it effect the results you get when you edit the
assignments of the resources already on the task. It only influences the
outcome when I add more individuals to those already on the task or remove
some (but not all) of the resources who are already assigned.
 
M

Mike Jones

"Effort driven doesn't mean what you seem to think it does" -- actually,
that's exactly what I want! I know that Task X takes 8 hours of effort;
if two people can work on it, then the duration should be 4 hours.

"It does not effect the calculations for the first resource assignment
nor does it effect the results you get when you edit the assignments of
the resources already on the task" -- I think an exception is if your
resource isn't available 100%. For example, I have people on the team
that I figure are available 50%. So an 8 hour task correctly shows as
taking 2 days.

Part of my earlier problem was that my resource was being allocated
across multiple tasks in parallel, so it was assigned to tasks with
numbers like 13%, 5%, etc. But when I put in dependencies, these
allocations 'stuck', I think, so that person became a slacker.

Is there a way to tell Project that resources should complete one task
before moving on to another? Generally, parallel tasks aren't useful to
me, although there's not necessarily hard dependencies in a lot of cases.

Thanks for the help! A few lights are coming on.
 
G

Gerard Ducouret

Ok Mike,
The full URL works fine for me too. But the tiny one doesn't: I tried on 2
different PCs.

Gérard
 
S

Steve House [MVP]

You are correct if and only if you estimate work, then assign resources and
let Project calculate the duration. Unfortunately that is a very tricky and
error-prone way of estimating in most environments. The vast majority of
time people estimate duration first, simply because that is usually what you
have a historical record of from previous similar projects. "The last 5
years when we redecorated it took us on average 4 days to paint the living
room - therefore this time around it most likely will take us 4 days once
again." I'd enter it in the project as "Paint the Room" with a duration
estimate of 4 days. Then I assign the resource(s) to it and Project
calculates the work estimate for me. In the initial resource assignment the
duration will not change. I put 1 guy on 100%, duration stays at 4 and
total work is calculated at 32. I put one guy on 50%, duration remains at 4
days and total work is calculated at 16. I put 5 guys on at 50%, duration
remains at 4 days and total work is calculated at 80. No matter what my
initial resource assignment, Project assumes I had that in mind when I came
up with the duration estimate.

I was going to include a mention of the above in my previous message but
decided not to. Essentially the SETTING of effort driven or non-effort
driven doesn't effect the INITIAL assignment. If you estimate work and
calculate duration, Project behaves like it's effort driven. If you
estimate duration and calculate work, Project behaves as if it's non-effort
driven. The effort-driven setting then determines what happens if you
change things after that.

On to your question here - the simple answer is not to try to apportion your
resources percentages across multiple parallel tasks at all initially.
Enter your tasks with an estimate based on the assumption that they'll be
working on that one task and nothing else in the project. Do NOT put in
links to resolve resource conflicts, that'll come later. Link tasks that
are logically related - ie, that you have to test the prototype before you
can commit the design to production would be a logical dependency. Assign
the resources to their tasks at 100% (that is what your statement of "a
resource should complete one task before moving on to another" actually
means - you want them to work on one thing at a time and devote their full
attention to it, 100%, until it is done). If it is preferrable that certain
tasks be completed before others even though there is no logical,
process-driven reason that they MUST be done in order, assign higher
priorities to the tasks you want done first. Now you'll have parallel tasks
or chains of tasks and the resources will be overallocated, double booked
for part or all of their work time. Now resource level. Project will delay
work on lower priority tasks so that the resource's total commitments at any
point in time are brought down to within their actual maximum available
effort, the final result being sequences of single tasks for each resource
rather than groups of parallel ones.
 
J

JulieD

Hi Mike

i use your tinyurl regularly (at least once a week) and occassionally it
doesn't work for me either- sometimes i've got to try a couple of times in
succession or wait an hour or so.

It would be nice if there was a link to these articles from the
www.mvps.org/project site in case the tinyurl one doesn't work because i
never remember the full url :)

Cheers
JulieD
 
J

JulieD

Hi

(can't see Gerard's initial response so i hope i'm not just repeating things
that have been said)

now while i COMPLETELY agree with everything Steve has said i would like to
suggest an alternative
if you enter duration as 8 hours and assign Fred to it (at 100%) then
project (with all settings as default) will calculate work as 8 hours. Now
if you add Bill (also at 100%) then project will leave the work at 8hrs and
"decrease" the duration to 4hours which is what i think you're after.

however, having said all of that, i would personally do it the way Steve
suggested in the first place and only use the above method when this job is
on the critical path and i'm trying to crash the project.

Resource levelling is a great tool for ensuring that people do one thing and
then the next - but just a couple of additional suggestions - 1) save before
you level, i've found the clear levelling option doesn't always work that
well
2) use the levelling gantt or resource allocation views to see exactly what
project has done when you levelled (green is prior to levelling, blue is
current situation)
3) you might need to experiement with the tick boxes at the bottom of the
resource levelling screen - as i find that for some reason project always
splits tasks that don't make any sense being split (in the real world) so i
often have to turn this one off.

Cheers
JulieD
 

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